CUSTOMER
Shallow Ford Construction
Company
INDUSTRY
Construction
LOCATION
Temple, Texas
Number of Locations
Four
Number of Employees
190
SYSTEM
Sage FAS
Modules in Operation
FAS Asset Accounting
FAS Report Writer
Shallow Ford Construction Company (SFC) is one of the largest excavation contractors in Central Texas, specializing in excavation, grading, and paving services for more than 36 years. They handle work for the Texas Department of Transportation, as well as commercial, industrial, residential, subdivision and public school projects, performing site layout and engineering, site clearing, demolition, mass excavation, concrete, drainage and structure installation.
Every day, SFC moves between 1,500 and 2,000 tons of material. As Edwin Tyroch, company controller, puts it, "We're always the first guys at a construction site, doing grading and leveling. And we're sometimes the last, too, when we come in to finalize the parking lot and topsoil for landscaping."
SFC also operates two quarries-one for concrete and asphalt products, and another for crushed limestone products. They supply concrete rock, larger rock and various gradations of limestone, operating light and heavy equipment, from box blade tractors, motor graders and water trucks to big scrapers, dozers and front-end loaders.
Rocky Road With Old Software
"The software we used before Sage FAS-I won't mention their name-was barely meeting our needs," says Tyroch. "We'd been growing fast, and knew we had to upgrade to meet our future goals."
SFC converted to Sage FAS Fixed Assets, along with Sage Timberline Office, for a truly professional end-to-end solution. "We have almost 100 pieces of big machinery, and we track and depreciate it all with FAS Asset Accounting," says Tyroch.
Tracking More than Trucks
"Big machinery" covers the excavators, scrapers, motor graders, water trucks, and compaction rollers used on construction sites, as well as the loaders and rock trucks in SFC's mining operations. All other high-cost assets are managed with Sage FAS as well. This includes office equipment, light trucks, and leasehold improvement buildings.
In addition, SFC uses Sage Timberline Office for accounts payable, accounts receivable, contract billing, pay requests, and invoices for their contract jobs. They also use the job cost module to track job costs, the equipment module and Sage FAS to track fixed assets, plus the general ledger to produce financial statements.
Soon, SFC plans to implement the digital photo feature in its Sage Software system. "It will be fantastic to store images of all our pieces of equipment," says Tyroch. "We'll be able to keep even better track of our assets."
Rolling Out Reports
An important element of the Sage FAS solution has been FAS Report Writer, which SFC uses for depreciation, totals, new assets, and quarterly acquisition reports.
"We can generate all sorts of reports, including assets by type," comments Tyroch. "When we do our local property tax each year, we easily generate a report to show which assets we still own and which have been disposed of, saving a great deal of time."
Linking to Sage Timberline Office
Sage FAS is valuable to SFC in another area, too-the ability to be used in conjunction with Sage Timberline Office financial software and other industry-specific packages. "Sage FAS and Sage Timberline are great together, because there are few limitations to their use. They integrate well, and are also able to communicate key information to and from other software," says Tyroch.
"For instance, you can use them as core packages and still make them work with specialized applications, such as the heavy duty construction scheduler required by our estimators, or the timesheet information from our payroll software," he continues.
Seamless Integration
The integration has been important for bottom-line savings. "We have trimmed at least an hour each month from our administrative workload because we post Sage FAS depreciation data directly into the equipment module," says Tyroch.
"We have cut at least three more hours off the time it takes to close the books at the end of the month in Sage Timberline Office due to the integration of the two products," adds Tyroch. "These and other efficiencies resulted in Sage FAS paying for itself within a year of implementation."
Streamlined Depreciation
"My job is much easier since the switch to Sage FAS, because I no longer need to print out depreciation data and re-enter it into Sage Timberline," Tyroch adds. "I just import it with a few mouse clicks and I'm ready to go. Sage FAS has been a very helpful tool in streamlining our depreciation processes."
Tyroch has been so pleased with the new system and its efficiencies that he has become an advocate. "We frequently recommend Sage FAS and Sage Timberline Office to others, including our subcontractors," he notes. "It's great to be able to say we've finally found a system that truly meets a contractor's needs."
