Even in a flooring company, delays occur in ways that rarely make it to a jobsite. An estimator loses a quote. A worker waits for a confirmation. A client wants to know the status of a project and no one knows where the details are. Software won’t solve problems for good salespeople, estimators, or workers. It provides a single source of truth that allows you to move your project from lead to payment.
In this article, we explore the most common challenges faced by flooring companies and show how software helps overcome them. We’ll also discuss what to look for and how to evaluate the options.
Map the Workflow Before Comparing Features
Every software company will tell you their features are vital to their product. But before getting too deep into a software comparison, you need to outline the flow of work (Forbes spells this out at forbes.com/advisor) in your company. Include all the steps from lead to estimate, order, schedule, install, invoice, and any service calls that happen after installation.
What’s the bottleneck? Where do things break down or duplicate?
Are leads entered manually in someone’s phone or in a separate spreadsheet? Does the estimator need to enter estimates again in order to create an order? Are quantities calculated for material needs independently of the estimate? Is an installer provided the job with incomplete information? Are change orders made to the field not passed along to accounting?
Good software reduces data entry and tells people what the next step should be. An easy test to run is: Could a new employee pick up a job record and figure out its status without asking multiple people?
Make the Estimate Carry More Than a Price
Flooring estimates include measurements, product selection, waste factor, labor, transitions, removal, subfloor prep, and delivery. Most invoicing software only captures a total amount but doesn’t necessarily give you all the information necessary to track the estimate assumptions.
When you create your estimate, you want a template you can reuse but you also need to allow for specific conditions of each job. Your estimate needs to be easily updated, and the person doing the work needs to know what was changed and why. Did the customer switch from a laminate floor to a vinyl floor? What’s the impact to the cost, the profit margin, and has an order been placed?
How the inventory is handled is important, too. For instance, flooring stores usually have excess materials from an order used for callbacks or warranty issues. That leftover material isn’t considered inventory, but if you don’t make sure it isn’t showing up in your inventory it could easily get used on the next job!
Schedule Around Real-World Conditions
It’s not just about entering dates and times on a schedule. An installation date depends on many factors, the condition of the site, materials availability, the skill of the installer, the arrival of the materials, and how much prep work is needed. Good scheduling software allows you to view those dependencies without having separate calendars for the crew members.
Features like assigning a crew, viewing job notes and documents, setting reminders for tasks, seeing field updates are helpful. Having the ability to view this information on a mobile device is important when you need an installer to take measurements, check product specs, or capture a photo of a problem discovered once the existing flooring is removed.
Think about how you currently work. Maybe there’s an element that keeps impacting your efficiency. Perhaps you need to let flooring materials sit in the job site for a few days prior to installing so the temperature and humidity can equalize. Can your software notify the owner or scheduler that the flooring needs to sit in the room prior to scheduling the installation crew?
Use Reports to Find Operational Problems
You should be able to go beyond just your total revenue, but also see a breakdown of what’s happening in your jobs. Being able to see jobs on a busy schedule don’t necessarily mean they’re profitable.
Reporting that’s important to run:
1. Jobs that are waiting for customer sign off, material availability, or scheduling.
2. Jobs that are running over/under on labor or material.
3. Jobs that have outstanding change orders that haven’t been billed yet.
4. Outstanding receivables to follow up on.
5. Total booked vs. quoted value.
Test the Entire Process Before Committing
Finding the Best Flooring Company Software is a combination of matching your workflow, getting buy-in from the team, and having accurate data in the system. (Kronus Flooring Business Management Software is the page that matches this.) Software that’s packed with functionality doesn’t do you much good if the crew doesn’t use it, or if your office has to maintain multiple systems just to complete a daily task.
Make sure you ask about data import, security, training, and mobile access. Determine how well the software integrates with your existing accounting system. Once you’ve gathered this information, try processing a mock order from start to finish with all the detail that you use in your real world operations.
Once the trial period starts, take a job you completed and put it into the system. Compare the estimated margin, the actual labor and material, and the final invoice with what you have in your current accounting software.