Case Study: How One Easy Change Helped Everbuild Construction Gain More Hours in the Day

Company overview

Everbuild founder Grayson Whitted grew up around construction. At age 14, he started learning the trade — tiling, carpentry, flooring, and drywall — as he worked part-time for his father who owned Aslan Interiors.

Since then, after graduating college and starting his own company, Grayson is joining with other professionals to form Everbuild: an end-to-end residential builder in the Lehigh Valley area.

And they have big plans for the future.

A vision to change perceptions and grow the business

Business situation

As Everbuild came together, Grayson created a vision for the company: to stand out by taking care of customers, and earning a reputation for a quality experience.

That meant maintaining a clean and professional workspace, giving clients a custom, personal product, and always being on time.

“There’s a stereotype about contractors not being organized, or being messy and late, and there’s a lot of stress that comes with it,” Grayson explained.

Working to better serve customers — and change the perception of contractors — has a direct benefit to Everbuild’s business.

“Referrals count for about 70% of our work,” Grayson said. “Taking care of customer is one of the most important aspects of residential modeling because people talk. So, if they are excited about you, they’re going to share that with their friends.”

Everbuild’s vision of a customer-centric business is part of its growth plan, as 70% of company revenue comes out from referrals.

When you grow, so do the operational headaches

Challenge

As Grayson grew the company from three to six to ten people over the years, the operational headaches became unavoidable. The administrative tasks of managing schedules and communication to tracking crew members and recording hours was too much.

To put it simply, the way Grayson was tracking his crew and their time was not scalable.

“I would have a mental list in my head of where people were,” Grayson said. “But since everybody handed in time cards individually, there wasn’t one streamlined way to track hours.”

Grayson resorted to any means necessary to get hours in for his crew. “Honestly, sometimes it was a text message. Sometimes it was an email. They say who they’re with and how many hours, and I make sure they match up.”

Time card accuracy quickly became a concern. “If Andrew says he worked eight hours with Sam, and Sam says he worked seven hours with Andrew, that’s where I’d have stop and say okay, there’s an hour missing. Let’s figure this out.”

Once the hours looked right, Grayson would enter them into a spreadsheet. “There was human error on both sides. People trying to remember their hours and me trying to figure it out if they were accurate.”

The time spent managing this process, the mental work of remembering where his crew is, and the risk of inaccuracy all led Grayson to time tracking solutions.

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Construction time tracking software to the rescue

Solution

Having worked in the industry for awhile, Grayson knew there was a better, more efficient way to run his business.

“I had seen the benefits of time tracking as an employee at a previous company, so I started looking for time tracking apps for contractors.”

After initial research and trying out a few different tools, Grayson decided to move forward with Hubstaff.

Why Hubstaff for construction timecards? Three reasons.

1. The comprehensive 14-day free trial
2. The user interface (UI) – “I especially loved the sidebar.”
3. The timesheet reports and scheduling features

These were the features that initially caught Grayson’s attention. However, the real benefit became clear once he started tracking his crew’s time.

“When I sat down to deal with time cards, I saw everything was already in the Hubstaff dashboard. I was like, ‘Oh! Everything’s already imported’,” he said. “That’s huge because I can track each project, and see how much money I’m losing or making at any point based on labor.”

The crews prefer Hubstaff over text messages, too

Sometimes, it’s a challenge to get a crew on board with a new process. But when it’s simple enough to use, they might end up preferring it. That was the case for Everbuild.

“It’s definitely a lot less stressful for them than manual time cards,” Grayson said. “To be able to clock in and kind of forget about it until the end of the day? It’s just one less thing to worry about.”

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Your guide to better construction time tracking

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Better forecasting for the future, less wasted time

Results

Of course, with Hubstaff, Grayson saved time by not having to track down hours. But he found an added benefit: he could also reduce the time spent manually reviewing profitability at the end of a project.

“Before Hubstaff, I would create a spreadsheet to see how much I paid my crew, where we’re at with budget and pricing. It could take me well over an hour for a single job,” Grayson said.

Using Hubstaff, it’s instant. Grayson just looks at the dashboard or project page, and sees if work is staying on time and on budget. A clear view into projects and crews allows Grayson to spot issues before they arise, and then address them with clients if needed.

With Hubstaff, Grayson can see a project’s profitability in real time, instead of manually calculated at the end of each project.

“Sure, time spent in the office has been cut down. But being able to look out the front windshield with reports? That has changed the company. I can manage my crews based on how profitable we are on a particular job at any time.”

Hubstaff offers robust reports that allows owners and managers to see:

• Weekly timesheets – Time worked by team member or project
• Attendance – Late, missed, or abandoned shifts
• Payments – How much was spent on labor at each job
• Budget – How much of a project’s budget is used, and what’s still available
• Invoices – Paid, open, and aging invoices

The cost-benefit factor

Business owners tend to be rightfully cautious about how they spend their operations budget. But for Everbuild, Hubstaff’s ROI was clear right away.

“If I value my own time at $50/hour, and if Hubstaff saves me at least an hour a month, that already pays for it,” Grayson said.

Benefits for the crew

“Tracking a project as it happens is also a way to motivate crews to get jobs done faster. We’ll say, ‘Hey, you’re getting this done way ahead of schedule, and there’s a bonus at the end if we can keep this up’.”

A better customer experience by focusing on what Everbuild does best

Customer success

With time tracking, profitability monitoring, and payments streamlined through Hubstaff, Everbuild can dedicate more time to delivering top notch customer service and building premium products.

“I cannot tell you how many times people will be like, ‘Oh, we’re so thankful you showed up on time. You were trustworthy and honest, you didn’t hide unforeseen issues,” Grayson explained. “That has been huge. Being able to do that, plus the time it saves. It’s been awesome.”

See for yourself.

Try Hubstaff free for 14 days, and discover how it can help you reduce operational headaches and pay for itself.