Small construction company owners like you already have a time-consuming and challenging job running your business. If you're working on weekdays, you usually need the weekend to catch up on paperwork, pay bills, and manage any tasks you didn't get to during the week. 

But this weekend is Christmas, and with it comes time to relax, focus on family and friends and take stock of what is essential in life. Phone calls from employees dealing with a minor crisis will pull your focus from your family, or your Christmas dinner will be taken over by business talk. Like the merry bells of Christmas, your cell phone will constantly chime with the sounds of urgent text messages and emails that must be dealt with. Clients will need your attention.

So, if you've been waiting for a sign or permission to pause, this post could be the one you're waiting for. It's easy to let the construction company take over your personal life, but as a small business owner, it's vital that you get some time away from work.

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Topics: Construction Cash Flow, Outsourced Accounting For Contractors, Construction Bookkeeping And Accounting, Do What You Do Best And Outsource The Rest, Contractor Tips, contractor delegation, Switching Off During The Holidays

When you're a construction business owner, your to-do list is often long and constantly growing longer. You need to do many things, and it can feel like they're all urgent. In such cases, it's easy to push essential tasks to the side and focus on less-vital activities, but that often means you miss deadlines, make mistakes or always feel as though you're trying to catch up.

 

Construction Companies have two basic leadership styles; wait until an urgent situation occurs and react like a firefighter or develop business processes that allow the company to respond calmly and natural resources and solutions to the issues like a traffic police officer on a sunny afternoon.

 

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Topics: Business Process Management For Contractors, Winning Teams, Construction Productivity, Contractor Guidance, contractor delegation

One of the biggest challenges construction company owners like you have with an in-house bookkeeper is training them to work for your best interest, not theirs, and deliver consistent results and the reports you can trust daily, year after year.

 

Having been involved with construction and construction accounting and bookkeeping for over thirty years, we have seen a consistent pattern repeated over and over that will turn ordinary, decent, pleasant bookkeepers into a disheveled, broken, mean, nasty, arrogant trolls, and that's a good day when the sun is shining, and the birds are singing!

 

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Topics: Business Process Management For Contractors, Winning Teams, Construction Productivity, Contractor Guidance, contractor delegation

Some construction business owners believe in maximizing production by driving everyone from the laborers to the project managers to work harder, longer, faster, hustle, and run. And if they are giving less than 110% to the company, they are not doing enough.

One thing to consider: Don't let construction workers think too much; they may injure themselves.

Apprentices and most Journeymen working on a construction job site are better off not thinking but simply following routines and patterns established by management based upon best practices. At first read, this sounds harsh, and yet it comes from our own experiences as a contractor operating multiple job sites with small crews on each from two to ten people; this one concept generated a lot of bottom-line profits and kept injuries very low.

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Topics: Business Process Management For Contractors, Winning Teams, Construction Productivity, Contractor Guidance, contractor delegation

Steady, reliable cash flow is crucial for the survival of your construction business – so taking steps to ensure your customers pay promptly is a key priority.

 

Debtor days refer to the length of time it takes clients, on average, to pay you for the work you've done. A higher number of debtor days means clients take longer to pay you. A lower number of debtor days means clients take less time to pay you, which means there's more cash available for your business to use. 

 

In the construction industry, debtor days can average as long as almost three months. Shortening that length can have a significant impact on your cash flow.

 

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Topics: Outsource, Do What You Do Best And Outsoure The Rest, Invoicing, Winning Teams, Clients, Contractor Guidance, contractor delegation

Most construction workers are good decent people who enjoy working with their hands making, building, repairing, remodeling, and fixing homes and commercial buildings.

 

Good construction workers will not tolerate chaos or unfair labor practices. They will try out many construction companies until they find a contractor with a system. Preferably with documented processes and procedures.

 

Desirable construction workers have these five traits in common:

• High Self Esteem
• Strong Work Ethic
• Always Learning
• Loyal To Family And Friends
• Law Abiding Citizen
  

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Topics: Hiring Employees, Outsource, Winning Teams, Contractor Guidance, contractor delegation

Construction company owners - predominantly service-based businesses with monthly or yearly client subscriptions, likely deal with some level of customer churn, especially given the COVID-19 pandemic. Even customers who love your business and services may have lapsed for various reasons. 

 

Whatever their reasons for leaving, it's still a great idea to win them back. Why? This is mainly because winning back a lost client still has a higher success rate than converting a prospect into a customer. After all, they've already hired your service once, so you don't have to convince them of the need. And you don't need to build brand awareness; they already know you exist. 

 

Even if you can't win everyone back, those yo u can bring back to your business will affect your bottom line–and will do so at less expensive overall. 

 

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Topics: QuickBooks For Contractors Financial Reports, Profit and Growth Strategies For Contractors, Contractor Guidance, contractor delegation

When you run your own business, it's tempting to take on every responsibility. There are many reasons for doing so: you want something done a specific way because you don't have the time to explain how to do it or because you're not sure someone else can handle the task. 

 

Delegating saves you valuable time and energy. Sharing duties with your team also fosters a sense of responsibility, engages them, and helps them develop their skills. 

 

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Topics: Outsource, Do What You Do Best And Outsoure The Rest, Winning Teams, Contractor Guidance, contractor delegation