Over the last decade, roofing business management software has taken over many industries and benefited businesses of all types, residential roofing companies included. Software can enhance your business in many ways, from helping you stay more organized to better tracking how your leads and jobs move through the pipeline. Depending on your goals, you might be looking at many different types of software, leaving you unsure of what will work best for you. Or you don’t know much about software and how it can benefit you.
To help you navigate the software market, it’s important to understand business management software, why you need it, and how to determine what is best for your business and goal. This brief guide will walk you through an overview of business management software for contractors and what to look for.
What is business management software for contractors?
Business management software helps to support roofing businesses during all stages of a roofing job, from the initial lead to accepting payments. While there are many types of software solutions on the market, finding a robust, all-in-one program that can help your business is essential to help your business run more smoothly.
Why do contractors need it?
Whether you’re new to software or have used programs before, you might be wondering why an all-encompassing system is necessary to help your business. By having a more all-in-one system, you will have all the essential tools and integrations needed to run a successful roofing company in one place, and your business will increase its productivity and decrease overhead costs.
Which software is best for your company?
With so many different types of software for contractors on the market, it may take time to decide which is best for you. Doing your research beforehand and understanding what tools you want from your provider can help narrow down your options and help you save money in the long run.
Here are the top ten features you should look for in business management software for contractors:
1. Lead management
Keeping your leads organized is an essential aspect of your business management system. Software helps streamline the process of gathering lead information and keep you organized from the get-go.
With AccuLynx, you can better organize your leads right from the start. Once you collect a lead from a web-to-lead form, external websites or a landing page, it will automatically upload into your database without any manual steps. This feature also includes lead statuses, which are updated as they move through various stages of the sales process, providing an easy way to see which leads have been followed up on at a glance. This can help your sales team move more quickly and win more jobs.
2. Enhanced estimating and ordering
Taking estimates by hand and jumping through many hoops when ordering materials can take up significant time and potentially cause errors. With a more streamlined system, and tools such as aerial measurements and online material ordering at your fingertips, you can speed up this part of the process and get to the actual job more quickly.
AccuLynx integrates with top aerial measurement providers (EagleView and GAF QuickMeasure) and the top 3 material suppliers (ABC Supply, SRS Distribution, and Beacon Building Products). Through these integrations, you can order measurement reports from your account and autofill important documents, such as estimates and material orders, with the measurements. You can then order your materials from your preferred supplier right through AccuLynx and see a real-time catalog of products, saving you time and giving you increased visibility into material availability and cost.
Learn more about AccuLynx’s integrations
3. Integrations
Your software system must include integrations with other systems that work together flawlessly. Integrations help you streamline your processes and eliminate the need to rely on multiple programs to manage your business.
For example, AccuLynx integrates with QuickBooks to help streamline the accounting process. Once a sale is made, the customer’s information is automatically pushed to your QuickBooks account, eliminating the need to input data in multiple areas and leaving less room for error. This integration also works two ways, meaning that what you see in AccuLynx you can see in Quickbooks and vice versa.
4. Templates
Manually setting up emails every time a correspondence needs to go out to a customer can be time-consuming. Investing in business management software with template-building capabilities can simplify and speed up your communication process so that communicating with your customers is quick and straightforward.
With AccuLynx email templates, you can convert commonly used emails into templates to use over and over again. Including dynamic tags in the templates pulls information directly from the job file to keep the emails personalized for each job. To create a standard look and feel, you can add specific branding to the emails, such as logos. If you are still trying to figure out where to start, AccuLynx even has starter templates with drag-and-drop features that are easy to use to help you get started.
5. Email, texting, & internal notification automation
Having automated features, such as appointment reminders, payment notifications, or material delivery, within your business management system can help streamline standard processes and leave your teams more informed throughout a job.
AccuLynx automations work by setting up specific actions, such as an email or text going out, that are triggered by events in AccuLynx. For example, suppose you want to alert a crew about specifics around a material order. In that case, you can set an automation up to alert them via email when the order is ordered, processed, or out for delivery.
6. Scheduling tools
Having tools to better manage how your production team can help you keep important things from falling through the cracks and make scheduling a smooth process. This is especially important during storm season when multiple jobs are happening at once, or you have to adjust your schedule due to storms or material delays.
With the scheduling tools in AccuLynx, you can easily keep an organized production calendar outlining everything from which crews are where and when materials will be delivered. Instead of having multiple calendars, you can see everything in one place, making it easy to reschedule appointments and deliveries by dragging and dropping. This way, the office staff can know at a glance what is happening throughout a roofing company, even if there are multiple locations.
Learn more about AccuLynx’s mobile Crew App
7. Mobile app
Choosing software with a mobile app can help visibility between the office and the crews on site. Having someone from the office drive back and forth to get updates, answer questions, or fix problems can be costly and time-consuming.
AccuLynx’s mobile Crew App is another feature of business management software for contractors that can help manage your business better. Available in both English and Spanish, the mobile Crew App provides labor crews with everything they need while on site, such as job assignments, directions, work orders, and messaging capabilities.
8. Payment processing & job financing
Roofing jobs are expensive and can be a financial burden on homeowners—especially with the threat of a possible recession in 2023. However, you will have a better chance of closing more deals by providing alternative payment options for your homeowners outside of the standard cash or checks. In fact, 25% of homeowners plan to finance their roof, and the other 43% will turn to credit cards to help fund work.
Online payment processing, such as AccuPay through AccuLynx, allows you to process credit cards, debit cards, and e-check payments online or over the phone. Using a payment system such as AccuPay can benefit both the homeowner and the contractor, providing more convenience and flexibility for your customers while also allowing contractors to get paid more quickly.
Job financing is another key element of business management software for contractors that can help both homeowners and contractors. With AccuFi AccuLynx, you can provide your homeowners with multiple competitive financing offers right from their job estimate so that they don’t have to go to a bank, and you can get moving on a job more quickly.
9. Customer communication tools
Communicating is key during a roofing project, especially with your homeowners. Having an easy way to connect with your homeowners throughout a project will enhance your customer service exponentially and make it easy for your customer to follow along with their roofing project.
When you have a customer portal feature in your business management software, you can easily keep your customers in the loop with everything happening within a project. The AccuLynx Customer Portal provides a centralized site where your customers can view project details and documents, see upcoming appointments, send and receive messages, and make payments.
10. Reporting
Keeping a pulse on your business’s performance can make a big difference on how your business runs. You can access accurate business data through reporting software that helps you make actionable decisions to keep your business profitable. Reporting software provides tools to track specific KPIs that can help you stay focused on your business goals.
Business management software for contractors, like AccuLynx, have reporting capabilities so that you don’t have to rely on outside products or spreadsheets to stay up to date on your business performance. With over 20 customizable roofing reports, you can easily track KPIs such as your job profitability, lead source, closing percentage, and more.
See why AccuLynx is the best business management software for contractors
AccuLynx is the premier all-in-one system designed specifically for roofers to help manage jobs. Our software is full of all the tools and integrations to help you better manage your jobs from start to finish without the need for other programs. On average, contractors who implement AccuLynx see a 32% increase in revenue after their first year. Want to see these tools and more in action? See a demo today!
