One of the hardest things for any home builder or medium to large sized renovation company is the handling of payments & invoices. If you employ a lot of subcontractors then you know firsthand the pain of tracking invoices and fulfilling payments in a timely fashion. I recently had a meeting with an experienced custom home builder who has started building luxury, high-end condos/apartments. When I asked him if he was going to sell his custom home building company he replied, "It'd be really hard to sell".
The reason is that so much of the process is tied to him. He manages all the subcontractors, invoices, and payments. It takes up a tremendous amount of time and hiring someone full-time to do it would only eat away at the profit.
There's got to be a better way!
The good news is Bolster's unique quoting engine has allowed for the first time the ability to facilitate payments in such a way that the general contractor no longer needs to track everything manually. The entire process is taken care of right on the platform. Here's how it works...The consumer uploads funds into Escrow into Bolster. That's just a fancy way of saying the consumer no longer needs to write checks to the general contractor and trust that they will manage the money properly. Instead, the consumer can upload funds into a safe bank account in Bolster where it remains visible and protected.
As the subcontractors complete their work, all they need to do is check-off the jobs they have completed. These jobs are already there for them to check-off from the quote engine which has every line item broken into jobs based on the subcontractors/vendors. The subcontractor gets a private link sent to them when a project is booked and they only see their jobs they need to complete. Upon checking off the jobs it sends an email/text to the general contractor and they simply verify the job is completed properly.
The consumer also receives an email/text letting them know the job that's been completed (i.e. plumbing the bathroom) and they have 72 hrs to abort payment from being sent to the subcontractor. As long as the consumer is happy and the general contractor has signed off as well, the payment goes directly into the subcontractor's account. The G.C. gets their commission and the consumer feels in control and happy. It's a win/win/win for everyone involved. Let's face it, subcontractors want to get paid faster. General contractors want less headaches and admin work and consumers want more visibility and control over payments.
Remember, none of this would be possible without Bolster's proprietary quoting engine. It's the H.A.R.T. of the platform.
Construction Estimating Software