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Proof

Solutions
delivered.

Applications I have built and put into production for contractors, and the problems that made them necessary.

A few highlights

This is a selection, not a catalogue. The solutions below were built and deployed over a 25 year accounting career. If your problem is not on this page, it is almost certainly a cousin of something that is.

Highlights

Built and put to work.

Each one started as somebody's recurring headache. Some are still in daily use, others did their job for the life of a project.

ERP Rescue · Pipeworx Ltd · Mechanical & piping construction

Field time and equipment capture across 30 projects

Situation

Labour and Equipment entry was being captured by the field crews with pen and paper or Excel files, then re-entered into other Excel workbooks for payroll and client reporting. Efforts were duplicated, reporting was constrained by Excel limitations, and with repeated touch points, project data was spread across hundreds of Excel files or e-mails.

Solution

Field Time and Equipment Capture records time and equipment on the phone with zero connectivity and syncs when service returns. Foremen enter once and it moves through the workflow. Payroll processing dropped by roughly half a full-time workload, and the person who had been doing it moved to work that had been waiting, while the company absorbed more projects without adding office headcount. Project administrators had been keying spreadsheets for 30 to 60 minutes a day before payroll could run; across 5 to 7 admins that is 75 to 90 hours a month returned to the projects, while the projects without administrators run leaner and smoother. The workflow also requires submittal and ticket alignment, so an item cannot be quietly billed twice or dropped, and anything unresolved stays visibly outstanding.

Applications · Large industrial contractor

Gate-swipe reconciliation to client invoicing

Situation

A large oilsands client implemented a robust LEM and invoicing program tied to contractor resources and gate-swipe data collection (CDMS / Track). To be paid correctly, the contractor had to match resource billing rates, schedules, allowances and specific gate-swipe attendance times to the client system, then complete the required adjustments and time entry.

Solution

A database application sat between the contractor ERP and the client invoicing program, reconciling payroll data against it and reporting exactly which adjustments each system needed. The contractor was paid correctly and on time from implementation onward, while other contractors on the same client program struggled to navigate it. That extra workload was absorbed without adding staff.

Applications · Large North American construction company

Lifetime PST tracking across thousands of assets

Situation

When equipment from Alberta is used in provinces where PST applies, the contractor must self-assess PST on that equipment. Once a unit is fully assessed it is no longer subject to further assessment. The pain point: each unit's anniversary date and calculation was not tracked from project to project, or within projects spanning multiple years.

Solution

A tracking application followed every assessment on thousands of pieces of equipment, both retroactively and going forward, and could accurately prove the amount of PST owed and paid. It identified overpayments just shy of $100,000 and produced a corresponding refund. It also let the company send already-assessed assets to that province for future work, increasing margins.

Applications · Large North American construction company

EI, CPP and WCB reimbursement reconciliation

Situation

The contract allowed for reimbursement of EI, CPP and WCB overpayments. With workers coming and going and starting at various points in the year, identifying the amount to accrue or repay was difficult.

Solution

A reconciliation application first identified the exact EI, CPP and WCB invoiced to the client from the billing rates, then reconciled that against actual ERP data of what had been paid for each employee. The contract carried an accurate accrual and subsequent reimbursement to the client. The calculations were later audited by one of the Big 4 accounting firms and found to be 100% in compliance.

Applications · Large North American construction company

Gate-swipe clawback to the nearest 0.05 hour

Situation

A large multi-year project had a contract term allowing clawback of reimbursable time billed by the contractor, based on gate swipes to the nearest three minute interval.

Solution

Mapping the client gate-swipe data to the internal time entry system came first; a database application then reconciled the variances so corrections reached payroll before any LEM or invoice was produced. Invoicing was accurate and passed every client audit. Had workers already been paid for those variances, the contractor would have carried the cost and taken the revenue reduction.

ERP Rescue · Large North American construction company

Daily LEMS without changing the payroll cycle

Situation

The contractor had to provide daily LEMS to a client, but could only invoice from weekly payroll reports because the ERP calculated billing rates during payroll processing. Either payroll ran daily, upending established process, or something else had to give.

Solution

A second application, linked to the time capture system, produced the LEMS the client needed, on site, daily. Workflows ensured every hour and adjustment sent to the ERP for payroll was accounted for in the LEM database, so any audit would show a direct match.

ERP Rescue · Major construction project

Subcontractor LEM capture at scale

Situation

A major project carried dozens of subcontracts with large crews, all billing daily T&M with supporting LEMS. The project had to confirm subcontractors were billing correctly, and also needed their manhours for productivity and safety reporting.

Solution

Repurposing the internal time entry program captured subcontractor LEMS daily. To keep it efficient, contract rates were entered once and data captured per billing class rather than per resource. The result was far stronger auditing of client LEMS once invoiced, and it supplied the hours reporting that Safety and Project Controls needed.

ERP Rescue · Large industrial contractor

Client-format LEMS in minutes instead of hours

Situation

A large oilsands client wanted daily LEMS in a format the existing ERP could not report. Meeting the contractual format took hours of Excel formatting and manual adjustment every day.

Solution

An import routine took the raw Excel export from the ERP, compiled the data correctly, and output the exact LEM the client required in minutes. It removed hours of manual accounting work daily and improved accuracy for the one to two year duration of the project.

Applications · Midsize pipeline & facility construction company

Field payroll workbooks that upload straight to the ERP

Situation

When field time and equipment reporting reached the office, payroll had to re-enter all of it into the ERP. High volume periods needed extra resources purely to keep up with data entry.

Solution

Rebuilt field payroll workbooks uploaded time straight into the ERP. That cut manual entry and keying errors, and let payroll be processed with a smaller team even through peak periods.

Applications · Midsize pipeline & facility construction company

Fuel card reconciliation and consumption reporting

Situation

The company issued fuel cards to employees for business use only. In some cases those cards were being used personally.

Solution

A monitoring application checked fuel card use against payroll and equipment time entry, watching both card use and fuel consumption. Beyond safeguarding company resources, the reports produced genuinely useful data on average consumption across equipment types and position types.

Applications · Midsize pipeline & facility construction company

Transport LEM distribution and cost recovery

Situation

Internal transport LEMS were being generated and charged back to projects, but the paper flow lagged behind. Project costs and transport division revenues were both inaccurate as a result.

Solution

A database application recorded and organized every transport LEM, allowing timely distribution to projects and accurate cost recording. It uploads both sets of data into the ERP, and cut the administrative time involved by half.

Fun projects

Not everything is a job site.

The same habit, pointed at problems nobody is paying me to solve.

StrategicSystems · Web application

Cookbook web application

Situation

The hardest part of cooking dinner is deciding what to make.

Solution

A cookbook application that stores, edits and categorises recipes from any web link, paper cookbook, or manual entry. Cookbooks are shared with family, who help choose meal plans by ingredient, cooking style, or time required. Anyone can suggest meatloaf for Tuesday up to two weeks out, and the owner approves or declines. Meal plan items roll into a shopping list by week or by meal. Recipes are scalable, rateable, shareable, and carry a history of when they were last cooked.

StrategicSystems · Web application

Golf tee time finder

Situation

Being the one who books the tee time means checking course after course across separate booking sites, then working out which of the times left actually suit everybody.

Solution

Choose the day, the time frame and the courses, then hit search. The application lists every available tee time inside those selections in time order, showing how many spots are open at each one, prices where the course publishes them, and a link straight through to that course to book it.

Recognise your own problem in there?

Most of these started with a conversation about something that had been annoying somebody for years.

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