Maxwell Systems American Contractor

Maxwell Systems American Contractor is a feature-rich business management software solution for the construction industry. American Contractor’s versatility makes it the right fit for any size construction or service business. Robust estimating capabilities–from digital takeoff through invoice creation–help contractors manage projects more efficiently.

This comprehensive solution helps companies achieve operational efficiencies, cost reductions and increased profits with these key capabilities:

• Takeoff, Estimating, and Proposal Management
• Project Management
• Financial Management
• Workforce Management
• Equipment Management
• Service Management
• Procurement/Inventory Management

American Contractor gives construction executives the tools to monitor and control the profitability and productivity for construction and service jobs of any size. This specialized software solution was developed to meet the business requirements of every role within an organization and to handle the complexities of the entire project lifecycle.

Maxwell Systems understands the information requirements of construction companies and delivers real-time, business intelligence through an executive dashboard known as the Command Center. This customizable overview of costs and profitability in a single, easy-to-read location can help your construction company succeed.

Equipment Management

Note: While the American Contractor product line continues to be fully supported, you’ll find ProContractorMX includes numerous new and robust features and is Maxwell’s current recommended solution.

Maximize the life of your equipment and capture operating costs with Equipment Costing. All costs associated with each piece of equipment, including automatic depreciation entries, can be efficiently tracked and applied to jobs and work orders. Equipment hours and costs from timecards may also be applied directly to jobs or work orders, giving contractors full control over this capital-intensive part of a construction business. Preventive maintenance tracking is incorporated to help minimize the costs associated with repairs and to keep your equipment active at your job sites.

Equipment Management Helps Contractors Maximize Use and Minimize Maintenance Costs of Equipment Fleets:

Equipment Costing simplifies Preventive Maintenance scheduling with separate schedules for each piece of equipment. This component of Equipment Management complies with Highway Patrol BIT reporting and is integrated with Dispatching. User-defined billing rates may be created for each piece of equipment, giving you the ability to separate billing and cost rates.

Note: While the American Contractor product line continues to be fully supported, you’ll find ProContractorMX includes numerous new and robust features and is Maxwell’s current recommended solution.

Maximize the life of your equipment and capture operating costs with Equipment Costing. All costs associated with each piece of equipment, including automatic depreciation entries, can be efficiently tracked and applied to jobs and work orders. Equipment hours and costs from timecards may also be applied directly to jobs or work orders, giving contractors full control over this capital-intensive part of a construction business. Preventive maintenance tracking is incorporated to help minimize the costs associated with repairs and to keep your equipment active at your job sites.

Equipment Management Helps Contractors Maximize Use and Minimize Maintenance Costs of Equipment Fleets:

Equipment Costing simplifies Preventive Maintenance scheduling with separate schedules for each piece of equipment. This component of Equipment Management complies with Highway Patrol BIT reporting and is integrated with Dispatching. User-defined billing rates may be created for each piece of equipment, giving you the ability to separate billing and cost rates.

Financial Management

Note: While the American Contractor product line continues to be fully supported, you’ll find ProContractorMX includes numerous new and robust features and is Maxwell’s current recommended solution.

Combining robust cost management with a complete line of financial reporting options, Financial Management synchronizes job costing and ongoing changes with hard financial data. The integrity of Financial Management audit trails gives you peace of mind. Job Ledger balances to the General Ledger and historical detail is maintained. Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable are specifically tailored to fit industry needs such as tracking retention and discounts.

Financial Management includes features such as streamlined transaction entry, warnings for questionable entries, and automated bank reconciliation. In addition, a variety of billing forms (including AIA), invoice forms, and numerous reports give you control and flexibility with your financial data. Drill down to transaction detail or zoom out in Command Center for a ýbig pictureý of your financial standings.

Financial Management Provides Flexible, Complete Financial Control:

• Accounts Payable provides strict control and flexible processing of financial obligations. Tight integration with General Ledger, Job Costing, Purchase Orders, Subcontract Control, Equipment Costing, Material Handling and Service Management ensures that commitments and payments are processed efficiently and accurately.

• Accounts Receivable handles the special requirements of construction and service billing. This American Contractor component provides information needed by managers to minimize questions and disputes, monitor accounts receivable, and pursue timely collections.

• General Ledger features a powerful financial statement formatter, recurring journal entries, and complete integration throughout American Contractor.

• WIP and Bonding reports are automatically created whether you are on a work-in-progress or direct cost accounting basis.

Procurement/Inventory Management

Note: While the American Contractor product line continues to be fully supported, you’ll find ProContractorMX includes numerous new and robust features and is Maxwell’s current recommended solution.

Procurement/Inventory Management is tightly integrated with Accounting, Purchase Orders, Inventory, Service Management, and Job Costing to automate material handling and to accurately track materials. Purchasing tools streamline the processes of ordering materials from vendors and managing materials-related documents. Procurement/Inventory Management tracks purchase commitments, quantities, pricing, and receipts. Materials may be tracked by job, work order, equipment part, or inventory.

With Inventory, easily account for materials received, invoiced, backordered, produced, and used. Take advantage of bar code technology to maximize inventory efficiency. From start to finish, contractors can streamline processes and maximize profits by having the right materials on site at the right time.

Procurement/Inventory Management Automates Processes and Streamlines the Handling of Materials:

Purchase Orders may be created from estimates, other purchase orders, or through manual entry. To streamline your operations, materials may be received in the warehouse through bar code scanning. On-screen alerts will warn you if a purchase order exceeds a user-defined setting such as budgeted amount.

Inventory supports multiple valuation methods and automatic valuation adjustments. This full-featured component of Procurement/Inventory Management also includes on-screen warnings for handling inventories and the ability to track multiple locations (service trucks, warehouse areas, and job sites). Up-to-the-minute inventory item status reports and trade-specific item databases extend the functionality of this powerful application.

AC Tracker streamlines inventory operations with bar code scanning capabilities for your warehouse. AC Tracker collects data for Purchase Order Receipts, Inventory Physical Count, Equipment Location, Tool Tracking, and more. Information may be transferred from a remote location to your accounting office, which reduces data entry, improves data accuracy, and provides real-time analysis.

Project Management

Note: While the American Contractor product line continues to be fully supported, you’ll find ProContractorMX includes numerous new and robust features and is Maxwell’s current recommended solution.

Project Management can streamline business processes in the office and in the field. American Contractor gives project managers the ability to track the optimal amount of detail for each job or sub-job. To get started, job budgets may be created from estimates, previous jobs, or imported from third-party applications.

For the inevitable changes of any job, American Contractor handles pending, internal, and contract change orders. Project Management includes components that manage Lien Tracking, Quantity Tracking, Subcontractors and Scheduling. The Command Center centralizes the critical, real-time information from Project Management and gives managers insight for informed decisions. American Contractor gives contractors the flexibility to manage jobs for maximum efficiency.

Project Management Streamlines Business Processes for Any Job Regardless of Size, Location, or Complexity:

Job Cost Tracking: Fully integrated throughout American Contractor, Job Cost Tracking is the focal point for profitably managing jobs for your construction business. This software component interfaces with a number of third-party applications for ultimate flexibility, including MS Office, estimating, outside payroll, project scheduling, and national price updating services. Job Cost Tracking manages change orders, budgets, and burdened labor, including exact calculated burden or user-defined percentages.

• Quantity Tracking: Quantity Tracking and Unitary Billing are incorporated into Job Cost Tracking.

• Lien Tracking: With the on-screen alert system, project managers may quickly identify liens that require action. Tracking is provided for Customers (Accounts Receivable - Job Billing) and Contractors (Accounts Payable - Payment Processing).

Subcontract Control provides control over subcontractor commitments and activity, including contract printing, over-billings, and required lien releases. Alerts bring to light upcoming expiration of subcontractor licenses, insurance, and Workers’ Compensation policies.

Project Scheduling: Using Gantt charts with imported tasks from jobs, monitor critical paths and schedule resources such as vendors, employees, or equipment from lists within American Contractor.

Info Center manages important project documents and Outlook e-mail with maximum efficiency. Info Center supports multi-page images, allowing you to associate scanned images with master records, documents and transactions. Info Center also organizes and retrieves electronic files and scanned documents. In addition to full integration throughout American Contractor, Info Center features integration with third-party imaging and file storage solutions for extended flexibility.

Job Invoice Printing: Choose from AIA, Progress Billing, T&M, Cost Plus, Over-the-counter and more. T&M and Cost Plus billing items are automatically created, and billing percentages are automatically computed based on costs to-date.

Service Management

Note: While the American Contractor product line continues to be fully supported, you’ll find ProContractorMX includes numerous new and robust features and is Maxwell’s current recommended solution.

Service Management increases profitability and customer satisfaction with comprehensive dispatching/scheduling, work order tracking, pricing and billing, contract maintenance, and financial reporting. American Contractor addresses the key elements of the service industry: responsiveness to customers, efficient scheduling of resources, realistic pricing, prompt and accurate billings, and informed management oversight of critical financial indicators.

The powerful Dispatch Board provides drag-and-drop technology and user-definable color coding to track employees, service agreements, warranties, and customer locations. The Dispatch Board also handles scheduling equipment for work orders and construction jobs. Dispatch options include basic, one-way dispatch to phones or fully synchronized dispatching with PDAs.

Integration with MobileMAX, which is a mobile dispatch and tracking system, can help reduce labor hours and paperwork. Mobile technology can also enhance customer confidence, improve accuracy and timeliness of data, and enable significant expansion of the field technical force without additional management overhead.

Service Management Streamlines Business Processes for the Service Industry:

Dispatch Board is a single-screen, customizable component of Service Management. Instant access to customer information and technician locations/schedules helps your team provide quick, accurate responses to customer calls. Multiple views within the Dispatch Board allow outstanding calls to be organized, formatted and displayed by location, type, priority, assigned technicians, day and time, and more. Drag and drop incoming calls to schedule arrival times and assign technicians for dispatch.

MobileMAX: This fully integrated, wireless solution allows technicians to receive work orders on the road, indicate work completed, complete timecard information for multiple technicians, and review equipment information and history. From the field, technicians send completed information back to the home office, including material used, pictures of work completed, and customer signatures.

Work Order and Service Agreement Printing: This Service Management component simplifies the creation of work orders from estimates or from on-going service agreements. Set up preventive maintenance schedules and create work orders automatically, which appear for dispatching. Service Management tracks maintenance calls and invoicing separately, and reminds you when it is time to perform the work, invoice a customer, or renew an agreement.

Takeoff, Estimating, and Proposal Management

Note: While the American Contractor product line continues to be fully supported, you’ll find ProContractorMX includes numerous new and robust features and is Maxwell’s current recommended solution.

Maxwell Systems streamlines the process of completing estimates and incorporating them into projects. Estimating and proposal writing are built for quick bidding with familiar spreadsheet formats and customizable, color-coded bid views. With a single click, items or assemblies, including 3-D visual assemblies, may be added to a bid. Proposals can be created with the desired amount of detail, and they can be tracked by project, client, estimator, likelihood of acceptance, bid date, and so forth. Proposals are customizable and purchase orders may be automatically created for the buyout of a job.

Estimating begins with digital or digitized takeoff and concludes with the final proposal. Powerful tools allow contractors to begin by tracing over plans with a stylus pen and digitizer board, or using onscreen takeoff with digital plans to generate accurate measurements and quantities. Store an unlimited number of cost items and details for your estimates, and easily edit items to reflect real-time costs. The Bid Command Center provides insight into proposals by estimator, salesperson, client, and more.

Maxwell Systems also provides a tool for simple estimates when detailed takeoff capabilities are not required. It uses tracking codes to produce activity-based cost estimates. These same tracking codes and cost estimates are then used to track job costs and billings for the job.

Workforce Management

Note: While the American Contractor product line continues to be fully supported, you’ll find ProContractorMX includes numerous new and robust features and is Maxwell’s current recommended solution.

Workforce Management meets the challenges of ever-changing government and construction regulations. Payroll and workforce reporting can be managed efficiently with this fully-integrated solution. It is much more than a payroll check system.

Payroll includes everything needed to process and report construction payrolls. Record work and calculate earnings, benefits, fringes, insurance liabilities, and taxes. The Payroll component features easy timecard entry and the ability to track labor burden, paid time off, 401K, workers’ compensation, and certified payroll. Printing checks and updating all costing and financial records completes the payroll cycle.

Davis-Bacon Certified payroll reporting, along with union, workers’ compensation, and benefit tracking for merit shop are also included.

Critical reporting includes quarterly and annual state reporting. Federal forms include W-2, W-3, 940, 941, and EEO-1.