Dewey Homes quickly settled on Sage Timberline Office's Production Management software, which includes applications to help builders control construction costs, pinpoint the reason for a variance, manage trade contractor costs and handle contracts.
"Now we know our profit for every option and every house, and we know it before we build anything. And not just approximately what we would make, but exactly," says Rick Cosgrove, Dewey's purchasing manager and systems administrator.
Tracking options
Dewey Homes is currently working on a project with $500,000 to $700,000 homes that are very customizable, and Production Management helps Dewey track every option.
"Without the Builder 1440 Web-based sales system, which integrates with Production Management's purchasing system, that would be almost impossible to do. We would have no clue what we were going to make until we were done with them," Cosgrove says.
Paying by purchase orders
Using Production Management, Dewey was able to streamline its accounting system so contractors are paid via purchase orders rather than invoices.
"Our vendors know that if it's not on the PO, it needs a variance purchase order sent out or they won't get paid," Cosgrove says.
The system simplifies things for the contractors, who just need to do the work and they get paid automatically when the superintendent marks a task as completed, which integrates the scheduling software with approving purchase orders. "It works really well for them," Cosgrove says.
Saving time
The software is well integrated and automates many tasks, saving Dewey staffers time and cutting down on the number of workers needed. Cosgrove handles purchasing for the company's apartment and home construction with just two other employees.
"In just an hour a day, I'm handling $16.5 million worth of purchasing for all of our apartments myself. The system works that smoothly," Cosgrove says.
Cosgrove and another person primarily concentrate on bringing up new communities, while the third person maintains the system and handles variances.
The integrated software makes it possible to enter data once and have it automatically entered into other appropriate modules. "It's nice to only have to do something in one place and not in 10 different applications, or even two. It's amazing how confusing things can get when you have to do that," Cosgrove says.
Cosgrove says it's impossible to quantify how much time is saved because Production Management provides so much more information than Dewey's previous software.
"It didn't matter how much time was put into it, we were not getting what we get now. We're getting so much more out of it that there's no way to compare," he says.
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