Let’s take a look at some of the recent upgrades around the LiveCosts catalogue. A general problem we encounter is businesses can have too many unconnected systems that capture their financial data such as WhatsApp, Excel and accounting systems etc. This can lead to frustration on grouping that information in a meaningful way. LiveCosts solves this.
LiveCosts is a cloud-based system that plugs in to the key parts of a construction company, such as taking the estimate in, managing subcontractors, dealing with suppliers, direct labor, deliveries and accounting. This blog will focus on dealing with suppliers and how businesses can be smart about the data they collect. This can help ensure that they pay the right price. How businesses procures material, and being able to manage that in a smart way is essential. From capturing an order to managing material rates, LiveCosts has you covered.
Let’s take a look at the catalogue.
Catalogue
Your catalogue is a database of everything that you buy from suppliers on a day-to-day basis. This makes the ordering & procurement of materials for LiveCosts users a breeze. By creating your own categories and sub-categories, you can re-use your own data again and again. The LiveCosts scanning technology then is given the catalogue information to check the incoming invoice line-items against your catalogue rate. This is very powerful feature and ensures the rates we pay for services and materials are in-line with our orders and our expectations.
In our recent upgrade to the catalogue we have focused on ensuring the catalogue feature is extremely easy to use. The search function adds a huge power to our users. Want to know how much 12mm Plywood is across all of you suppliers in an instant?
Project Specific Pricing
This is a unique feature to LiveCosts and we are very proud of it. When procuring materials for Project we tend to get an discounted rate based on volume from our suppliers. Our catalogue is smart enough to use this information for our orders.
Consider this: normally when we buy 1 sheet of 12mm Plywood our trade rate is €15.00. Our new Project requires 100 12mm Plywood sheets so we in turn will look for a quotation for this from our suppliers. This is a one off price based on volume and is specific to this Project. We call this a Project Specific Price.
LiveCosts accepts this quotation into the catalogue and will use the new reduced rate when raising orders for this Project. Even better the incoming invoice will be checked to see if this matches our Project Specific Price.
This creates a fantastic history of previous & bulk prices in our catalogue that is there to serve us when we need it again in the future.
Managing Invoices
Invoice processing is painful. LiveCosts has developed a software that auto matches your incoming invoices to a Purchase order and a site delivery. LiveCosts takes the invoice in, reads and extracts all the key information from it.
- Who ordered this?
- What Project was it for?
- Where is the delivery docket?
- Are the prices we paid correct?
All these question answered automatically in seconds. Also automatically building our spend on a Project to clearly see how we are progressing against our original budget. Each line item on the invoice is checked against the catalogue price to determine if it is correct, very powerful. If an item is not in the catalogue simply add it from the invoice and it will be there for you next time.
Benefits of the LiveCosts Catalogue
Ask yourself, are you doing all of the above manually or in excel? Most likely you are and it is painful. LiveCosts has been built by Contractors for Contractors. Our aim is to take as many of those manual processes and excel sheets away and provide a workspace for you and your staff that makes sense. The catalogue is one element of this.
The quotes and 100’s of invoices you receive in every week contain golden information that is very relevant to the business and can go unused. LiveCosts uses your own data to build an area that can reuse this data over and over while speeding up on those manual processes in the meantime. The more work you do the larger and smarter the catalogue will get.
Start building today!
