How Scheduling Software Improves Your Cash Flow and Volume of Slabs

Building homes on time and in budget is essential. Not only does completing a project quickly prevent inflation from reducing your profit margin, but it also means you can lay your next slab down faster, improve your cash flow, and build a trusted reputation.

However, labour shortages and supply issues are making it hard to stay on track and it’s amazing to think that so many of us are still managing our project plans on paper or in spreadsheets.

What is Scheduling Software?

Scheduling software has everything you need to build a home on time and in budget. It can also help you to scale up your business by empowering you to manage multiple projects at a time.

The right tool will support you all the way from sale through to maintenance. It will help you deal with project scopes, estimates, procurement, task allocation, and financial management.

Scheduling software is also web-based so you and your team can access and update your plans from anywhere.

That means you can have your evenings and weekends back.

Start Forward Planning

Every action you take today has flow-on effects, and project management tools (picture Gantt charts) can help you to visualise workflows across multiple projects. When you sign a contract with your customer, you make a promise to deliver their future home on time. So, it’s important to use a tool that’s more effective than a simple calendar and break down the crucial steps to get you all the way from the start to completion and warranty.

A good scheduling software platform will help you to zoom out and look at your critical path across multiple projects at a time. It’s that type of forward planning that helps you anticipate bottlenecks and navigate the complexities of turning a slab into a home.

Keep the Cash Flowing

When you’re putting together a quote, it’s essential to get the price right. If your estimates aren’t an accurate reflection of costs, then you might not have enough cash flow to secure supplies and labour at key phases of your build.

This will only cause delays and the last thing you want is late fees and slippage to reduce your margins.

A good scheduling tool will also have a robust estimating system so that you’re on track from day one. It includes an integrated supplier pricing system and item recipes so that you can quote quickly and accurately.

Rather than relying on yourself to catch price increases and update every quote manually, an estimating system will automatically update any time a linked supplier adjusts its price.

Monitor Your Progress

You can set up automatic reports that will help you stay on track. Cash flow forecasting reports will help you to better anticipate major expenses while vendor and supplier reports can help you figure out where you might run into resource allocation issues.

Tracking your progress in real-time can save you time, money, and headache. If you don’t know where your actual costs are tracking with estimated costs, then you won’t sense a problem arising and will hit bottlenecks.

Plus, when you keep your finger on the pulse, it’s a lot easier to keep your site supervisors and clients informed. You will anticipate if you’re going to run into delays and can take corrective actions when they count while resetting expectations early.

Put Your Energy Into Shifting the Dial If you’re struggling to scale up your business, then it might be time to investigate GJ5, which is G.J. Gardner Homes’ proprietary home building software. When you go from spreadsheet chaos to cloud-based calm, you’ll become more profitable, be able to manage more projects at once, and have happier customers.