Over the last few years, tracking your material needs and their impact on your profit margins has become more important for your roofing business. Due to price increases across the board, understanding what materials you use regularly and how much they cost will help your business exponentially.

The roofing material distributor integrations and reporting tools in AccuLynx make it easy to better understand your company’s material needs. Here are the top 2 tools within AccuLynx that will help you better visualize this:

Tool #1: Roofing material distributor integrations

While ordering materials over the phone or through your supplier’s online portal may be what you are used to, there are more convenient and efficient ways to get what you need. Pricing and availability can change rapidly, and while you might think you are getting the most accurate costs through your roofing material distributor verbally or via their website, pricing could vary later. Or, if you are manually putting your pricing into multiple interfaces, data could get lost due to numerous data entry points.

Switching to a digital ordering system through AccuLynx will give you much more visibility into your material orders, save time, and decrease your chance of errors. AccuLynx integrates with the top three material distributors in the country: ABC Supply, SRS Distributions, and Beacon Building Products. These integrations allow you to link up your account and see your unique pricing and material availability by branch right in AccuLynx instead of having to log into a separate entity.

In addition, these integrations help build more accurate estimates, so there is less chance for change orders or adjustments later. When you build estimating templates in AccuLynx, your unique material pricing is auto-populated so you can always provide the most accurate costs.

Longtime AccuLynx user and Beacon Building Supply customer Chrissy Boyd, the Training & Process Coordinator at Yellowhammer Roofing, started using the roofing material distributor integration in the spring of 2022 and saw immediate results.

Before we started using the Beacon integration in AccuLynx, it was time-consuming to order materials, especially when you have the volume that we do,” said Boyd.

Now, Yellowhammer is able to send their orders directly to their Beacon branch from AccuLynx without having to log into the Beacon Pro+ website.

We don’t have to worry about errors from transferring information from one system into another slowing us down.”

Tool #2: ReportsPlus reporting features

Ordering your materials from a direct roofing material distributor integration is the first step to better understanding your material needs. Next, by tracking your material usage and costs, you will better understand overall trends in your material buying habits.

While tracking material spend and usage through spreadsheets is possible, it can be tedious and error-prone. By using reporting software, like AccuLynx ReportsPlus, you can more efficiently track important KPIs. AccuLynx’s ReportsPlus is an extensive database of pre-built customizable reports that can help you better track and understand your data — especially material spending and usage through the Materials Report.

The Materials Report gives you a clear snapshot of different KPIs that are important when looking at material usage. Within the Materials Report, you can see the total costs of materials and how much you spend by material type. You can also create filters to see material type by location, supplier, or product/brand. This is useful if you use multiple suppliers, you can negotiate pricing by the supplier and provide accurate data to back up your proposal. For example, say you buy shingles from one roofing material supplier but notice that they are a better price somewhere else. You can approach one, present how much to purchase from them, and negotiate a deal.

Better understand your roofing material needs with AccuLynx integrations

Having a plan in place to better understand your material costs and availability can help your business immensely, especially when rates are continuously rising. By incorporating AccuLynx’s roofing material distributor integrations and tracking your ordering habits, you can better prepare your business for whatever might come up. To learn more about AccuLynx material ordering and reporting features, check out a custom demo or contact our customer support team at support@acculynx.com.