Compared with Timberline or Great Plains, Intuit's QuickBooks
Pro is a simple entry-level accounting system. But "simple" is
a relative term. For a small contractor who just needs a way to
replace the checkbook in his back pocket, even QuickBooks can
be overwhelming. For such a builder, Synapse Software
(www.synapsesoftware.com) has gone back to
the future and released a new member of its BuildWorks product
line that might be exactly what the doctor ordered: BuildWorks
Basic ($395) uses Intuit's Quicken Premier Home & Business
instead of QuickBooks Pro for accounting and includes several
other critical management tools in a value-priced package. And
for all of you who are sick and tired of wasting time
"estimating" jobs for tire-kickers, Synapse also has released
its unique BuildWorks Quick Quote estimator as a stand-alone
product ($229). Add them together and you have a solid
financial management system that will grow with you.
Figure 1.BuildWorks Basic is built around a
Quicken Premier Home & Business accounting file that is
fully configured for the small contractor, with customized
reports, memorized transactions, and a complete chart of
accounts.
BuildWorks Basics
BuildWorks is not a single piece of software. Instead, it is a
suite of tools, built with Microsoft Office and Intuit's
accounting products, that work together to create a complete
construction management system, and it has evolved over the
years into several editions with varying capabilities. The Pro
editions of BuildWorks take QuickBooks and Office integration
just about as far as it can go, with dozens of business
management tools: estimating, purchase orders, change orders,
job costing, scheduling, document templates, PDA tools, online
components, and more — but with a price tag and
complexity to match.
Most people forget that BuildWorks started life in 1993 as
GC/Works; it consisted of a Quicken (not QuickBooks) accounting
file and a handful of management templates built in
ClarisWorks, not Microsoft Office (Word and Excel were the new
kids on the block back then). It was a simple but effective
system for small contractors. The new BuildWorks Basic is
really a re-release of the original GC/Works accounting system,
with some interesting modern twists, including the
following:
- a fully configured Quicken company file, complete with
a chart of accounts, memorized transactions, and customized
reports (see Figure 1);
- the basic version of the BuildWorks Navigator (Figure
2), which is used to organize and launch various project
documents;
- the BuildWorks Jobs file, which stores and organizes
project information and provides some "at a glance"
analysis of your financial health (Figure 3);
- two estimating and job management templates: the Mini
Estimate, which is geared toward remodelers (Figure 4), and
the Basic Estimate, a versatile line-item estimator, both
of which have a proposal form and "pro forma" budget sheets
(the Basic Estimate also includes a form to log payments
and graphical charts to monitor budget vs. actual job
costs);
- the BuildWorks Components file, which is really the
estimating cost database for the estimating templates;
- a two-part change-order template with a printable
request form that can be completed by the client for each
change, plus a pricing worksheet that can be used to
deliver a selling price for the change;
- tools for creating pdf (portable document format)
versions of any BuildWorks file, which can be e-mailed or
faxed to anyone in your Outlook address book;
- a printed accounting guide, written by CPA Jim
Silverman, which explains exactly how to use the Quicken
accounting file to run a small construction business.
Using BuildWorks
BuildWorks Basic follows the same working procedures as the
Pro versions: A prospect or customer is entered in the Jobs
file, which automatically sets up a folder structure inside My
Documents to organize all the BuildWorks documents for that
project. An estimate is then started in one of the Excel-based
estimators, which in turn establishes job budgets that later
can be used for job-costing comparisons. It's not rocket
science, but BuildWorks imposes a level of computer
organization that would take a lot of effort to build from
scratch.
Figure 2.The BuildWorks Navigator is the launching
point for the estimating templates and accounting files, and
also provides a simple document management system. Project
files, whether created inside of BuildWorks or not, can be
linked to the worksheets of the Navigator and opened with a
single mouse click.
Job costing. BuildWorks
tracks 25 predefined job-cost categories. These are used to
produce budget-vs.-actual reports in the accounting system and
to log job costs in the Jobs file. You shouldn't change the
name or order of the main categories — an aspect of
BuildWorks that has drawn complaints. Still, it's much better
to get accurate job-cost information in 25 key areas than to
have half-baked information in 125.
BuildWorks follows a "management by exception" philosophy,
which basically means if it ain't broke, don't fix it: If
you're watching 25 key job-cost areas and 24 are mostly within
budget, don't worry about them. This gives you the freedom to
concentrate on the one or two categories that might be spinning
out of control in time to actually affect the outcome of the
job.
Conforming templates. One
key to success with BuildWorks is taking the time to tweak (or
"conform") each of the Excel-based estimating templates to
reflect specific types of work. So instead of having to
struggle with a blank estimating worksheet for every job, there
is an existing template — already created by you —
for "kitchen," "whole-house," "basement remodel," and so forth.
As with any estimating system, it does take time and effort to
get these items set up for best efficiency, but the raw tools
are all there to help you.
QuickBooks vs. Quicken
Because BuildWorks Basic uses Quicken Premier Home &
Business — unlike the more expensive BuildWorks editions,
which use QuickBooks Pro — the accounting is simple and
straightforward, but it creates some limitations.
Pro editions of BuildWorks generate an automatic job budget
import file and synchronize with QuickBooks automatically,
greatly reducing manual data entry. Unfortunately, Quicken
lacks that capability, so you are forced to manually update
both your accounting file and the BuildWorks Jobs file by
rekeying numbers in the correct location.
Figure 3.The BuildWorks Jobs file stores basic
information about each project (above) and provides some good
"at a glance" financial analysis tools (below) to help keep
projects on track.
Also, I found out the hard way that Quicken 2004 and 2005 do
not like each other. Upgrade installations failed on every
machine I tried, and Intuit's tech support was no help
whatsoever. This is not Synapse Software's fault, but it's
still a gotcha that you need to be aware of if you're already
using Quicken accounting and want to upgrade to the latest Home
& Business version.
The solution is to completely uninstall Quicken 2004 and
install 2005 from scratch.
Figure 4.BuildWorks Basic ships with two
estimating templates. The Mini Estimate, shown here, takes
entry of labor, materials, subcontracts, and other items in
each of 25 cost divisions to arrive at a selling price (right).
The estimator generates a presentable proposal form (below)
that you can use for clients, and a budget worksheet (bottom)
that you use to enter the project budget into your Quicken Home
& Business accounting file.
Upgrading
One nice advantage of using BuildWorks Basic is that you have
a built-in upgrade path to BuildWorks Lite ($695), the
QuickBooks Pro version of Basic, and later to the full-blown
versions of BuildWorks ($1,195 to $2,995), if you need them.
Accounting migration services are available from Synapse
Software.
BuildWorks Basic is $395 direct. The price does not include
Quicken Premier Home & Business ($80) or Microsoft Office
2000 or later. Many new computer manufacturers are now
including Office 2003 Basic, which includes Word, Excel, and
Outlook, for under $50 with a new computer.
So, for just a little more than the price of one licensed copy
of QuickBooks Premier — which you would have to set up
completely from scratch — you can have the beginnings of
an industry-specific financial management system that will grow
with you.
Joe Stoddardis a JLC contributing editor and a
technology consultant to the building industry. You can reach
him at www.mountainconsulting.com