“Sage is really at the foundation of our accounting operation – everything builds off of it,” says Sylvia Lamas, controller with general contractor Tricorp Group. The Sacramento, Calif., constructor has been using Sage 300 for years, and recently added Sage Office Connector Suite.
Tricorp uses Procore’s Sage 300 Connector to connect accounting and the contractor’s Procore project management system. The integration provides field teams with untethered access to vital financial data they need to do their jobs. Project managers have one-click access to accurate job cost information while on the construction site.
All project management, contract management, subcontracts and purchase orders, change orders, and invoicing is performed in Procore, and the data is automatically transferred into Sage 300. By pushing commitments straight into accounting, Lamas and the rest of the management team can make informed budgeting and forecasting decisions based on actual project data.
The bi-directional integration of Sage and Procore gives both the finance and the operations teams real-time data so that they can accurately monitor the financial health of a project and make changes before costs spin out of control.
“We are always investigating ways we can work more efficiently by automating manual tasks and finding technology tools that work together to solve challenges,” says Lamas.
Sage Office Connector allows users to move data seamlessly between Excel spreadsheets and Sage 300. A query wizard within the solution speeds and simplifies users’ access to live data. Preformatted financial and operations reports available through a familiar spreadsheet interface simplify generating even the most complex reports.
Lamas routinely uses Office Connector to create quick queries.
“I use the Query function to quickly search for a particular transaction, such as those of a particular dollar amount, or related to a specific vendor. It’s fast, easy and accurate.”
Some of Tricorp Group’s work is government-related and requires the company to file certified payroll reports. Sage supports certified payroll, but one of Tricorp’s customers required the data submitted in a specialized format, retroactively back to the start of the project. Office Connector offers a template that matches the required format. Tricorp Group could simply export its payroll data to the Office Connector template, creating the required submittal in a few simple steps.
“Sage 300 with Office Connector has literally saved us months of time,” says Lamas. “We were able to use an Office Connector template to easily export large quantities of payroll data in the format required to create certified payroll reports. Without it, we would have had to manually enter historic data, which would have taken several weeks.”
More Resources
An In-depth Guide to Construction Reports and Reporting
Manage Project Data in the Cloud to Beat Construction Competition
How Construction Cost Trends Data Can Help Contractors Operate More Profitably
