Innoconn Construction's Customer Story
InnoConn Construction Found a Better Way to Pay Subs
InnoConn Construction Management, LLC is a licensed major contractor, based in Hartford, CT. They specialize in multi-family high rise construction and have significant experience in large adaptive reuse and urban infill commercial/office mixed-use projects. Without layers of overhead, InnoConn has the flexibility and efficiency to make decisions more expediently. Their business model is based around innovation in the building construction industry.
In 2021, Wendy Swanson, Accounting Manager for InnoConn knew there had to be a better way to manage sub-contractor payment applications. The current process was quite manual with SOV, payment applications, and documentation all being sent via email. Juggling between 25-50 subs and up to 10 projects at a time, communicating with them ate up much of Wendy’s time. She tells us “Without a doubt, at least 50% of the subcontractors would forget documents that would hold up my billing process. It would turn into sending emails to chase after them, so there was a lot of extra work.” InnoConn’s president who was new at the time, noticed the struggle they faced and wanted to find a solution, so he began looking at software providers that could automate the pay app process and asked Wendy to look at GCPay. Although she was initially reluctant to integrate any third-party application into her Sage ERP, her lifeline for accounting needs, she agreed to participate in a product demo. Wendy shares, “I was hooked after that first session. I was sure I could do this. GCPay had been integrated with Sage for long enough that I think they’ve got this right!”
Benefitting from GCPay’s EPayment & Waiver Exchange
After implementation, Wendy noticed an immediate savings in time and control for managing payment applications. The transparency within GCPay allowed subs to know what was missing on applications, how to properly submit change orders, and submit lien waivers. There was no more back and forth communication required.
One of the features in GCPay that brought great benefits
to InnoConn was ePayment and Waiver Exchange. This functionality not only allowed their subs to get paid much more quickly via electronic fund transfer vs. paper check but allowed Wendy to collect lien waivers in real time when the payment was released. She conveys “the delays in checks being received in the mail was unacceptable. I tried ePayment out with one of our subs and the process was so quick and easy that we’ve been suggesting to all our subs to get paid this way! We offer it on every project.”
For InnoConn, this process had paid dividends when considering they process between 50 and 150 pay apps
per month and the number continues to grow. “I’ve actually had subs come into the office and thank me for instituting it because it made life so much easier” Wendy shares. “I can tell you the subs that agreed to get paid through ePayment get paid in a third of the time compared to those receiving paper checks.”
The advantage of Transparency
An unexpected benefit that Wendy has seen is the transparency within the product, “everybody knows where pay apps stand. The sub knows whether we accepted it, the project manager is seeing it and we have that audit trail that says he saw it. You can see when I’ve reviewed it, when I’ve looked at it and we can see all the comments, it’s open book for everybody”, according to Wendy. Overall, she and the InnoConn team are extremely happy with the advantages they get from GCPay. In closing, Wendy sums it all up by telling us “All I can say is I’m a big fan!”
