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A Great Fit for Small Construction Business

All small construction businesses struggle to manage their time. Choosing a project management tool built for where you are now is critical. PX360 was created specifically to reduce data entry, manage day-to-day administration quickly and easily, and give you project tracking and insights that allows you to make better decisions to build profits and reduce risk.

In running a residential and light commercial construction business, as well as a construction estimating, consultancy and project administration business, Tom Heneker, Director and Founder of PX360, saw how disjointed project management software and accounting systems were, along with a need to consider how the Australian residential construction industry operates.

“Working with residential construction businesses across different sizes, team skills, and operational differences,” says Tom, “it was clear that three core areas needed to be integrated and reinvented to manage project financial data and provide a system built for the Australia building industry.”

So what makes PX360 the best fit for small businesses in a sea of software solutions on the market? It solves these fundamental core challenges:

Accounting Software
Project Management Software Suited for Your Project Type
Project Administration Processes Suited to Australian Contracts

Accounting Software

Tom explains, “We are big advocates for the Xero Accounting platform, especially when used with receipt management software like Dext, Hubdoc, or Synced.”

Xero provides the accounting needs to manage invoices, bills, and payroll quickly and easily. With the use of receipt handling software, you will see 40-60% time savings across general bookkeeping and data entry. Xero also provides great API integrations to safely share data to other approved software systems.

PX360 has one of the strongest Xero integrations for project management software, working in a linear process to how traditional accounts are managed, which strengthens Xero to better adapt to the construction industry’s needs. This allows for simpler accounts systems that your accountants and bookkeepers understand without needing a construction background.

Here is what PX360 customers are saying about the Xero integration capabilities:

“Working with PX360 and its linked functionality to Xero has really worked well for us. We have reduced our admin/payroll staff costs from 3 days a week to 1 day a week.” – Jackal Constructions

“A common issue that we always find with project management software is that it is never in sync with bookkeeping software. PX360 has done a great job of solving this problem. With its 2-way integration, we don’t have to worry about that anymore. The team at PX360 have really taken the time to build a solution that works for both builders and bookkeepers, making everyone’s work more efficient and reducing double handling.” – Tawanda (Chartered Accountant) at Trendsight

“We have a strong referral rate from accountants and the preference of bookkeepers for this reason,” says Tom Heneker. “Other project management software manages this data process by being the invoice/bill creation point and then pushing it into Xero. This loses all the benefits receipt forwarding software provides, as well as Xero API features like seeing the image attachments of receipts/invoices. With PX360’s Xero integration, when one updates the other updates automatically.”

Project Management Software Suited for Your Project Type

We commonly see software as the cure-all to fix companies that haven’t thought through systems and processes. Software is definitely a tool that can enable you to do more, but the correct software for your business needs to consider the following:

Project Type – Commercial, Industrial, or New Builds Residential, as well as alterations and additions.
Organisational Structure – PX360’s flexible user permissions are ideal for small builders who staff wear many hats, covering multiple roles daily.
Organisation Size – This can vary greatly depending on the above points. PX360 provides unlimited users, allowing you to manage large site teams who can focus on time tracking and daily task management.

Using PX360 has enabled us to remain in front with the required sign-off and tracking of contract admin, as well as working directly with the project budget. The use of the Cost Plus Progress Claims, as well as the labour tracking to tasks has really worked well for this project. We save a lot of time with reduced double entry of information, allowing for reduced staffing costs in our company overheads.” – Andrew from HiSpec Constructions

Project Administration Processes Suited to Australian Contracts

Since COVID19, projects in the Australian construction landscape have developed a greater acceptance for Cost Plus contracts in addition to Fixed Price. Organisations should understand that Cost Plus is more than just the idea of “do and charge”, and it requires a greater understanding of project administration processes in the areas of:

Budget management
Cost Plus Progress Claiming
Labour Tracking for budgets
Change Order (variation) approvals

Tom explains, “Cost Plus is about capturing changes over the procurement process. It’s more about the identification of a budget to the documentation at a point in time.”

Often what undermines a Cost Plus contract is the lack of transparency as the project changes. These changes introduce risks for the builder to manage. This is where PX360 offers a clear separation between “Original Budget” and “New Budget”, providing greater clarity on the “change” element to a build.

a build. PX360 gives transparency at a Cost Centre level all the way down to labour, materials, contractor, and equipment level needed for each construction task. Providing quick and real-time management of savings and overspend so your client can clearly understand where costs come from.

“Working heavily in alterations and additions, we see a lot of variations and provisional sum adjustments. Once the variations are approved, we can always see our original budget and the new approved budget to track separately from the contract scope.

Having the status reports for variation and EOT makes for quick advice to our clients on what has been approved, with the cost and any awaiting approvals. This means that the clients have better ability to manage their own budget with additional contract spend always provided. The clients like the clarity we provide, making for faster approvals and quicker progress on projects.” – Till at Econstruction

“PX360 has created a foundation for projects to be better understood, whilst managed with simple construction processes overall. We see companies running projects which previously they wouldn’t be able to do in the same professional and committed ways,” Says Tom. “With the other software systems mentioned all working as one, it is then down to the business ensuring staff responsibilities are understood, training and improvements are put in place to get it working like a well-oiled machine.”