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Posts covering best practices, trends, and insights.

The Value Asyma Solutions Provides

Asyma Solutions has been helping customers, particularly those in the Field Service and Construction Industries across Canada grow since our founding in 2005. We provide our customers insight into their business faster, more accurately, and with a more integrated approach than ever before. In addition to our deep expertise in helping field service and construction contractors find and implement the right solution for their business, our departments of expertise and experience also reaches into Wholesale/DistributionNon-ProfitFirst NationsFaith BasedHealthcare and Manufacturing/Fabrication

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Sage 100 Contractor - A Year In Review

Sage 100 Contractor – A Year in Review

Talking with a few of our current and prospective customers in Alberta, they all voiced the same sentiments that the job profitability margins were very tight due to the economic climate. Believe it or not, now is the best time to look at improving efficiency; from collecting time from field personnel, reducing job costs to improving bid process.

Sage has had a phenomenal year of strategic alliances and acquisitions. This has made Sage 100 Contractor even more appealing to the construction industry in terms of increasing efficiencies while watching the bottom line.

Strategic alliance.

Sage has partnered with:

Procore Project Management Integration

Procore now works with Sage 100 contractor to automatically share data between project personnel in the field and in the office staff. This means that you will reduce double entry, thus reducing human error that comes about from transcribing handwritten notes.

eTakeoff Dimension

This is a 2D takeoff tool that has two-way integration capability for pushing takeoffs and making changes to an estimate. This will reduce the time you take to do a quantity takeoff by using an electronic drawing. This eliminates the need of printing and measuring your plans.

Acquisition

Liberty reports

This is an Excel Add-in solution that is mainly used for analytics, reporting and workflow. Therefore, you can harness existing Excel skills which means a smaller learning curve. You can also create customized reports according to your reporting needs. This core functionality is extended to any SQL database.

Summary

Sage’s strategic alliances and acquisition shows that they are continually investing and enhancing their product offering.

If you are looking for real visibility for your business, Sage 100 contractor is a logical next step from Sage 50 and or QuickBooks. The core functionality will have General Ledger, Payroll, Accounts Payable and Receivables, Project Management, Purchase Orders and over 1,200 pre-built reports. Optional modules are Estimating, Document Control, Service Receivables and Inventory. Procore, eTakeoff and Liberty Reports are fully integrated with Sage 100 Contractor. These tools that will give you the extra edge to increase efficiencies and productivity at the same time.

For more information on the technology available Click Here

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Accounting For Contractors

Accounting for Contractors

Do you want to provide and know more details about your job costs? If you are like most people, the answer will be absolutely!

Construction Accounting

This is where Construction Accounting Software comes in. Construction accounting has the same accounting principles with regular accounting. However, it has several distinct features like Job/Contract Holdbacks, Fixed Price, Time & Material, Unitary, Progress Billing and Job Costing (direct & indirect).

Operational Costs - aka Job Costing

Since construction accounting is project based and each job is a profit center, we want to make sure we capture all transactions that are specific to each job.

We do this by using a process called Job Costing (or expense, cost coding). This is where you separate costs/activities into different categories like Concrete, Plumbing, Electrical etc. Once you have figured out your cost codes, you further group them in to cost types Labour, Equipment, Material, Subcontract, and other etc. Job costs will work in concert with the G/L.

Reporting

When your tasks for each job is broken into activities called cost codes, it makes it easier for you to identify areas of concern by producing actionable reports. This means you can quickly identify areas that need improvement by comparing your actuals with budgeted costs. Therefore, you will be able to closely monitor your key performance indicators (KPI) like: Sales (Revenue) Growth, Income sources, Profitability over time and Working capital.

Conclusion

Your software should be setup to track each job, then show how it affects your company’s profitability. Construction accounting has a learning curve which can be easily achieved with Asyma Solutions help. Job costing helps any construction/service-related company to properly manage project-centered businesses.

Using KPI’s and being able to generate on the fly reports enables you to know which projects to pursue and which ones to let go.

Sage 100 Contractor is a logical next step from Sage 50 and/or QuickBooks. The core functionality will have General Ledger, Payroll, Accounts Payable and Receivables, Project Costing, Project Management, Purchase Orders and over 1,200 pre-built reports. Optional modules include Estimating, Document Control, Service Receivables/Management and Inventory. Procore, eTakeoff, Sage ToolOps and Liberty Reports are fully integrated with Sage 100 Contractor as added enhancements based off of your business requirements. These tools that will give you the extra edge to increase efficiencies and productivity at the same time.

For more information Click Here

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Is Construction Payroll a Nightmare? Nightmares are for Halloween!

Is Construction Payroll a Nightmare? Nightmares are for Halloween!

Are you doubling up on payroll processes/systems? Are you thinking of using Sage 100 Contractor payroll? If the answer is yes, then keep reading…

Scenario

You have one system that collects time and the other system does accounting. The two systems can’t talk to each other. This results in duplicate data entry and added costs.

Cost

How much is it costing your organization to run two systems? How happy is your payroll person every pay period?

Watching costs is at the heart of every business. Remaining profitable with higher costs is a self-defeating endeavor. However, you can minimize your costs considerably in the long run when you streamline your business processes. This means acquiring or investing in a solution that captures costs against the job, which includes payroll.

Compatible system

In my experience, you should invest in a system that is able to address your key pain points and has a high Return on Investment (ROI). If current systems and procedures do not tick all your boxes, then the alternative is to look at other complementing systems (vendors).

For example, you can have a great system that does a great job in accounting and project management but doesn’t capture time in the field. True nirvana is one system that does it all. The reality is that no system will ever give you 100% of exactly what you need but you can sure as heck get very close to 100%.

An integrated solution that you plan to implement should:

  • help you eliminate double entries between systems
  • Implement an approval process
  • Reduce paperwork
  • Enhance communications
  • Enhance customer service
  • In many cases, complement or improve existing workflows

Conclusion

As listed above, there are several advantages of having ‘one’ integrated software solution. But, how do you off the two separate systems?

At Asyma Solutions we are well versed in moving/converting customers from other payroll systems to Sage 100 Contractor Payroll. You can use Sage Service/Field Operations and/or HH2 to capture time in the field and have it sync in real time to the back office Click Here.

If you are interested in learning more about the technology available for your business don’t hesitate to contact us at info@asyma.com or 1-877-448-9895.

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Leveraging Technology & The Cloud

Historically, it is easy to see how technology has been adopted and how it has fundamentally changed a lot of key business practices around us. From the first commercial use of technology in an 1890 United States census (Source) to the mass adoption of Steve Job’s iPhone, technology has always pushed the limits of what is considered possible and opened our eyes to further opportunities. Today, that same sentiment still exists.

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Battling the pandemic on the Cloud

Running a business is never easy. When dealing with a global health concern, this difficulty rapidly expands and forces many business owners to adapt in order to survive. We have seen many changes made by business owners and have helped many others transition towards a system which allows organizations to become more efficient – even in such trying times.

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Moving Forward

 

There is an old quote in business that says, “even if you are on the right track you will get run over if you are standing still”. In these challenging and uncertain times this is still very much true. If we stop moving forward as a business and all steps to improve, we will be faced with the huge force of inertia when trying to start up again. By standing still, will we lose talented employees and risk losing our share of the market to the competition who likely isn’t standing still? What can we do to keep moving forward? How do we keep our employees, customers and vendors safe during this pandemic? The logical answer to these questions, I believe, is through technology and using it effectively to your advantage.

At Asyma Solutions we have been championing the use of the web, remote access and effective automation in businesses for many years.

For construction companies this involves real time field and other data collection with project management access. The field staff are not required to manually prepare daily field reports, safety documents, employee or equipment time and then deliver them to the office administration.

For non-profit organizations and other types of businesses, technology allows for anytime access to management information from anywhere and provide field data collection for health care or other field staff. How does this help? You can continue to work with limited contact to others but maintain complete access to your information to effectively management your organization/business.

But what happens if you have a small business system like QuickBooks/Sage 50 or are not using a system currently that will allow for that type of access and functionality? The question then becomes, is your glass half empty or half full? We prefer to believe that the glass is half full. In business, we are all used to the continuous changing situations and issues both economic and social. This pandemic will eventually pass and go away. What can you do now?  The answer again is technology. Things have slowed down and you finally have some time to breath for a change. You have employees who are home, likely bored and looking for something productive to do. Why not keep moving forward and start looking at working on your business instead of in your business?

Our team at Asyma Solutions believes in using technology and have been promoting it to our customers for years. We utilize this technology ourselves through remote conferencing and hosted system access capabilities. We can provide hosting or full cloud accounting solutions like Sage Intacct to streamline operations.

The biggest issues and problems with implementing a new system and the related procedures involves the lack of time and focus of the customers internal staff. With the current situation the whole world is facing, contact and unnecessary face to face interactions can be greatly reduced through technology and therefore a perfect time to improve your organization for the future.  You have the time and the resources available and with the use of technology you can continue to move forward.

For more information about how technology and improved procedures can help your organization check out our web site www.asyma.com.

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Taking your Organization's Pulse - Measuring What Matters

Let’s face it -- accounting information is almost completely useless unless you have the reporting tools to help you measure what really matters to your non-profit organization. This applies to all non-profits; from educational institutions, faith-based and ministry organizations, to health and human services agencies. How can the executive directors or management possibly understand the complexity of their overall operations and make sound decisions without good reporting?

We are in an age of increasing demand for transparency/accountability and are looking for ways to generate and demonstrate successful outcomes. We must have simple, easy to understand metrics that can quickly take the pulse of an organization and assist with decision-making.  We must have metrics reporting that never loses focus on what is important and what truly matters to management and stakeholders.

A modern, non-profit accounting solution will consistently track your data by key components and give you instant insight, empowering you to proactively manage funding, programs, students, members, and more. These systems can provide access to both financial and statistical data that allow you to automatically calculate key metrics to measure what matters. These metrics can report on critical information such as financial (revenue), statistical (students), or any number of combinations (donations per attendee).  Sage Intacct is such a software solution that was designed to provide real-time visibility into all components of your organization. 

As management of a non-profit organization, consider the potential immediate and long-term value to your organization of real-time & accurate reporting. Think about the benefits of being able to easily generate and clearly demonstrate successful outcomes to all stakeholders including funders, board members, or donors. How could you improve the health of your organization by having real-time visibility into funding, programs, donations, expenses and more?

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