Drowning In Paperwork

Prior to management researching paperless subcontractor management solutions and ultimately choosing GCPay, Sherry and the team at Cityscape would use printed spreadsheets and centralized paper files to track and review projects in progress and email, faxes and phone calls to chase lien waivers, change orders and compliance documents in order to process payment applications.

Staying on top of all the paperwork and math issues associated with 20-30 subcontractors could take a hand full of hours each day and then up to a full week during the month to manually process pay apps and get the draw completed. It was a long, slow, lethargic process to get the draw completed and get lender funding in hand. Cityscape Residential knew they needed to look for a way to improve both the accounting and the subcontractor part of the process and they came up with a few solutions to look at.

But, Sherry found that “GCPay, from the get-go, seemed user-friendly, wasn’t complicated to learn, wasn’t tough to look at on the eyes and did all the basic things that we needed it to do to stop pushing paper and emails. And, price-wise, it was a no-brainer compared to the competition”.

Clear And Immediate Benefit With GCPay

Once Cityscape started using GCPay, the benefits were instantaneous. Mike conveys “When I was introduced to GCPay, I was like, wow, this is interesting software here… I immediately dove into the system, and it did not take but a couple of weeks to recognize the shift and the power that GCPay brought to our management… it was very explosive. The moment I started utilizing it, I realized that it is a software that I should have been using for the last 10 years.

As President of Construction, Mike was able to see exactly what project managers were doing without having to go to them and he can track everything in real time, which is one of his favorite parts of GCPay. He tells us “I don’t even have to bother Accounting. I can automatically go in, look to see what is going on with that subcontractor, what they’ve billed, what we own them, and I don’t have to make a call to Accounting … If I can save them that extra phone call that is coming from my team or me, you know, they are in heaven!”

Now, Mike says “The difference between what we were doing on paper prior to GCPay and what we are doing now is like night and day. It’s almost a like a miracle when it comes to pay applications. It totally changed how we approached everything”. “With GCPay and our other systems, everything we did on paper is now electronic and is at everyone fingertips immediately, we all have access to the same documentation so we’re all in the know more than we ever had been” Sherry states. And, she adds that collaboration between accounting and construction and development and others in the company is so much easier with GCPay vs. the hassles of trying to get everyone in the loop to understand what ‘s going on so they could make decisions.

Improved Relationships With Subcontractors

Their relationship with their subcontractors is important to the team at Cityscape Residential, so making sure that they would see the benefits from adoption of GCPay was essential. According to Sherry, it makes collaboration with subs much easier and eliminates a lot of conversation, because they all see the information on the same screens in GCPay. “From a subcontractor standpoint it just made sense. It was clear and easy for them to use. We knew that GCPay could support the subcontractor if they had any issues to get their billings in so there would not be delays. Both sides know where the other is. It’s eliminated heartache from stupid mistakes and makes the subs feel better about identifying issues before there is a time crunch”.

The Bottom Line

“A 4-6 day process to get a draw has become a 4-6 hour process”, Sherry shares. The process takes the same amount of time whether it’s one pay app or 30 pay apps”. “Superintendents can use their iPads in the field and if work is done, they approve the pay app and we’re not fighting time – we are making more thorough, correct decisions”. And importing pay apps into their accounting system takes about 30 seconds rather than re-keying all of them. 

“It integrates so well. Info from Sage is automatically being pushed into GCPay. One more thing that we don’t have to think about. We get time back to focus on the more important things.” 

Both Sherry and Mike are so passionate about the positive changes that GCPay has made in their business, Sherry tells us “If Cityscape got rid of GCPay tomorrow, I’d be updating my resume very quickly and I’d be looking for contractor or a developer who used GCPay!”.