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The Digital Executive
Optimizing Construction Finances and Technology with Founder Timothy Wingate Jr. | Ep 1037
00:12:46
In this episode of The Digital Executive, host Brian Thomas welcomes Timothy Wingate Jr., founder of G+F Business and Financial Consulting, to discuss the financial challenges faced by construction companies.
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Timothy Wingate Jr. Timothy Wingate Jr. Is the founder of G F Business and Financial Consulting, a specialized accounting and financial consulting firm dedicated to serving the construction industry. As an Intuit Tax Council member for five years and a construction industry specialist, he provides comprehensive services including tax planning, bookkeeping and strategic business consulting while emphasizing contractor education and technological innovation. Based in West Palm Beach, Florida, G F helps construction companies nationwide build sustainable financial futures through industry specific expertise and practical solutions. Well, good afternoon, Timothy. Welcome to the show.
- [00:56]
B
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
- [00:58]
A
Absolutely, my friend. Appreciate you making the time. We're an hour apart. You're in South Florida there, West Palm beach, and I'm in Kansas City, so I envy your weather. But I'm just glad we can get on a call today. So, Timothy, I'm going to jump right into your first question. What inspired you to establish G F Business and Financial Consulting? And how did your personal experiences influence your decision to to specialize in the construction industry?
- [01:24]
B
Great question. Really, what inspired. It was just the need to help individuals who are starting companies or have companies that were struggling financially. And I know what those financial problems can cause. You know, they can cause lawsuits to happen. They can put you just in a funk, you know, where you're just home and you feel alone and you just feel like you're just doing all of this by yourself. And then sometimes you feel like you're just doing it in vain. What can I do next? And I understood that feeling, you know what I mean? Because I was there when I had ran a nonprofit organization for six years prior to this and I went through nine lawsuits and I felt alone. I was trying to change a culture that was already established before I got there and all those different things. And it was challenging and tough and I didn't really have anyone to hold my hand or to consult with and be a solid sounding board for me. So that's what made me want to start a company, an accounting firm at that, to help business owners not fall into these traps. So I started off as a generalist in the beginning, but then I said, man, that was too complicated because I'm serving too many different industries. They look different, they feel different, their lingo is different. And it was just very hard for me to resonate with them and in a way that helps them move the needle a lot faster and quicker. And so I said I got to niche down and my father who showed me a lot growing up because he's an entrepreneur himself. He is a GC and he, you know, he's been a GC since 1984. And so I realized that, man, I really know the construction industry. My father, he has poured so much knowledge into me as a child about the industry and I know what it feels, what it feels like to be a child of a construction owner and all the different things that you go through when construction businesses is going up and going down. And so I said, that's it, I'm going to serve the construction industry. And that's how I chose.
- [03:32]
A
I love that, love the stories when we start on these podcasts. Of course, you know, you've got a lot of experience helping people and you got into this to help people and business owners that were struggling financially and again at the end of the day, helping people make the world a better place. But I like how you niche down that transition to the construction industry was second nature to you because your dad obviously was a general contractor for many years and just poured a ton of knowledge and was probably a great coach and mentor for you. So I love the story. Timothy, from your perspective, what are the most significant financial challenges that construction companies face and how does G F address these specific issues?
- [04:07]
B
Great question, Brian. The way we address the challenges that construction business have, we first have to establish the baseline, like where things are, you know, get a lay of the land. And the way that we do that is we ask them to give us a bunch of information up front. Tax returns, hey, give us access to your accounting platform if you have one. If you don't have one, okay, then we know where we need to start. So a lot of it is just assessing where they are today. And then once we get a good lay of the land now we can start to make recommendations and say that hey, we need to implement this system. Have you thought about this? And so those are the things that we do. We get them to communicate the vision of their company and their business, like where they want to take it. Because my recommendations would be very different for a construction company that wants to be a million dollar construction company and only grow to, you know, maybe a 5 million at best versus someone who just out the gate wants to be a $25 million construction company. So the systems and recommendations will be different. That is the core of what we do. We really are great at bridging the gap between the field and the back office. And the way we do that is we recommend tech stacks. So there's certain tech stacks that integrate with their accounting system that also integrates or share information with, with their project management softwares, which are software that are out there in the field. And so when those two things are talking and communicating constantly and sharing information, you can imagine that the field is getting, you know, information that they can make changes right on the spot because of the financial data that they've received from the back office and saying that, hey, we need to make a shift here because, you know, I mean, we're about to overpay, you know, a vendor or, or supplier, and we haven't even collected from the client the customer money to cover that payment and also to cover overhead and also to give us a little bit of profit. So that is what we do. We help infuse technology that make construction owners make strategic decisions. And you're doing that because you're now job costing. You know, you're allocating every cost to a job and you're using that data to make key business decisions out there in the field. And you're not doing it blind. Most construction companies are doing it blind or have some haphazardly way of, you know, making those decisions. But we want to make sure that they're using solid data to make business decisions and they're not fooling themselves.
- [06:46]
A
Great, thank you. I really appreciate that. And you kind of unpack how you do this assessments for the company so you can provide a recommendation helping them to scale where they want to go. But I like the technology integration. You talked about bridging that gap between the field and the back office. Right. There's a lot that goes into it. And whether it's software to help people manage projects or accounting or whatever that is, you're there to help guide them and make better business decisions. So I appreciate that. And Timothy, can you discuss the importance of integrating technology such as QuickBooks Online and BuilderTrend into construction accounting practices and how G F facilitates this process?
- [07:24]
B
Yeah, these are two huge softwares, you know, and they, they can feel like a heavy load to take on if you haven't used them in the past. Buildertrend is a huge project management software. QuickBooks is a huge accounting software. Very powerful softwares. They can do a lot, but sometimes it's like, okay, who can lead this or champion this effort? And so that's where we come in. And with these softwares, build a train. We'll start with that. So build a trend project management software. First thing that we need to do is we need to get the right information into the software. We need to get the projects in there, making sure the vendors are in there, making sure the customers are in there. Then we need to make sure that information is set up to feed QuickBooks the right way. Also we need to make sure QuickBooks is set up in a way that is going to read the information from build a trend properly. So that way when the information flows in now we see that this cost is coming in by cost codes are tied together inside both platforms. So that way we know that we can reconcile the information, make sure that QuickBooks data is also matching BuilderTrend data. And then we use the two different softwares to give us different types of reporting. BuilderTrend will be used more so to give you those job, you know, reports, daily logs your schedule, who's supposed to be there, who's not supposed to be there. It's going to keep up with the time clock. The guys in the field are going to be clocking in. So that way their hours are allocated by job and then we can do a proper job costing on labor, you know, for those jobs. And then with QuickBooks we're giving out getting an overall company budget or company reporting, financial reporting to understand how well the company is doing. And then the analysis done between the two reports helps us to make decisions about the future of the company. And I hope that answers your question, Brian.
- [09:16]
A
It absolutely does. I appreciate that. And those are pretty popular, powerful software systems and I know how that is being in technology for a long time is integrating software project management with your financial system is so important and you do such a great job of that for the folks that really need to focus on construction or the really the scaling of their business. So thank you for breaking that apart for us. Timothy, last question of the day. Looking ahead, what emerging trends do you foresee in construction finance and how is G F preparing to address these developments to continue supporting contractors effectively?
- [09:53]
B
With the advancement of AI artificial intelligence, we're going to see more technology infused into the construction industry. Believe it or not, the construction industry is at the bottom for adopting technology. You know, out of all the industries that, that exist in the world, construction is at the very bottom and the financial industry is at the very top. And so what we're trying to do is, you know, close that gap. And so you're going to see more technology be infused into the construction industry. There's a lot of that happening already with BIM engineering, with robots out there on the job sites. Those are the huge commercial companies that are doing that. But I think you're going to start seeing products being developed for the smaller contractor, you know, and I consider a small contractor, someone who's doing 25 million or less. That's still a lot of money, you know, if you ask me. But those are the emerging things that are going to be happening for the construction industry. So you, if you're not adapting technology right now, you need to do it and you need to start working with it right now because otherwise you're going to be competing against other contractors who can do things faster, better and have better data so they can do better analysis so they can be more profitable. And you don't want to be a contractor who can't be as profitable as the next man next door or who can't communicate to the customer in a way that feels modern and up to date because they're going to start asking you questions like, hey, can you send me, can you give me access to my job so I can see the daily logs every day with you? Can you give me access to build a trend so that way I could see the invoices right away instead of having you to send it to me? Or I can see whatever information you decide to give them access to. But it's going to be a new way of running a construction business. So you have to really start to think about how are you going to change your business model to cater to the customer, but also to help you, propel you in the future for keeping up with how things are moving and things are moving at lightning speed right now, especially with AI and just all the different technological advances.
- [12:00]
A
Thank you, I appreciate that. And I know you can really see being in this industry for such a long time, you can see what is needed and what's starting to happen happen in the construction industry. But as you mentioned, construction does a lot of times lag behind when it comes to technology adoption. But I love to hear you saying that AI and RPA or robotic process automation are starting to be adopted in this space.
- [12:22]
B
You're right.
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A
It's time for these construction owners and businesses to modernize their systems and business processes. So I appreciate that. And Timothy, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [12:35]
B
Thank you so much for having me, Brian. I appreciate it.
- [12:37]
A
Bye for now.