Last Updated on October 20, 2023
Prior to joining Jonas Construction Software, Alltrade Industrial Contractors was using QuickBooks as their construction software system. With QuickBooks being primarily an accounting software, Alltrade found tracking costs by job to be quite cumbersome and very time consuming to complete. Alltrade was relying on manual processes to make QuickBooks fit with the way they wanted to run their business, which was challenging to say the least. As Alltrade continued to grow, they began to realize that QuickBooks was no longer going to work for them and a change was required.
Since implementing Jonas Construction Software, Alltrade Industrial has grown by about 300%, all without adding any additional staff. They have also been able to reduce their union reporting time by 90%, going from about 4 days per month previously to only about half a day currently. Alltrade is now able to store all of their union rate codes within Jonas, allowing them to quickly pay out their employees applying the correct union rate code.
We recently spoke to Bob Ritzmann, President of Alltrade Industrial Contractors, to discuss how their business has improved since implementing Jonas Construction Software.
Tell us about what you were using before partnering with Jonas Construction Software, and why you decided to make a change?
Bob: Prior to Jonas, we were using QuickBooks. It was their Enterprise System, which I believe was their best software package. It certainly worked for us as we started the company, but the as we grew, it became apparent we would need a software system that could grow with us. We needed a more robust system. QuickBooks allowed a lot of changes to be made manually, some which weren’t good for accounting practices and we had to fiddle around with QuickBooks a lot to make it work for us, so that we could track the costs by job. However, it really wasn’t set up properly to do that. Jonas, of course, allows us to track every one of our jobs, labors, materials, subcontractors, tools, and equipment, and all of those things directly to the jobs. It gives us a much more accurate picture of what is the real cost of doing that job.
Since implementing Jonas Construction Software, how are you able to manage all of your union trades and various union rate codes?
Bob: Sure, we currently have about 750 to 800 different union rates setup within the Jonas system that we could pay any particular employee on any given week. Sometimes there are multiple rates in one week because of the different locals that they travel between and also each local most likely has a construction rate, ICI rate, and a maintenance rate. Some of those rates are straight time, time and a half, or double time. In addition to that, each one of the locals has your standard journeyman’s rate, foreman’s rate, general foreman’s rate and then all the apprentice rates, as well. Jonas actually does a really good job for us to keep all of our union rate codes organized, so we can easily pay out according to the appropriate rate.
WANT THE FULL STORY? CLICK HERE TO READ THE ALLTRADE INDUSTRIAL CASE STUDY.
Have you experienced any tangible benefits since deploying Jonas Construction Software?
Bob: It’s been about two years since we switched over to Jonas Construction Software. Since then we have grown about 300%, and the number of people that are working for us out in the field has remained the same. Before transitioning to Jonas, it was a good three to four days’ worth of work every month to complete all of our union reports and a lot of manual Microsoft Excel calculations. Now with Jonas, my staff hears me say, “Just press the button” and it generates the report for each one of the different locals and the different trades. Currently, we are down to about half a day a month of work to complete our union reports, compared to three to four days each month with QuickBooks. We have also grown dramatically since then, and our union reports are still completed 90% faster.
How was the transition process going from QuickBooks to Jonas Construction Software?
Bob: When our trainer came to do our implementation, it went relatively seamless and she was very knowledgeable about the software and catered the training to our needs. One of the nice things was that, especially in our area, we’ve found there are a lot of people that are familiar with Jonas Construction Software already. We were able to hire people that had the skill sets that we needed before the training was given to us. We still needed to set up the system itself, but we were able to hire people fairly easily that already had an understanding of Jonas. Overall, the transition process went quite well and we were up and running on Jonas in no time.
