Spending time reviewing your equipment billables is worth the investment.
When a tradesperson misses hours on their pay cheque, you had better believe they’ll come tell you.
Diligent employees keep a log of all their hours or a summary of time sheets for each day in the pay period. When the paystub comes out… it's quick math for them. Bad news for the contractor is that if the employee was not paid, they likely were not billed out on on a T&M contract for that day's work. This error is often fixable if you have a forgiving inspector.
Unfortunately, we cannot expect the same outcome with equipment.
In our journey to uncover billing leak points, both for the owner and the contractor, it is obvious there is one leak point that consistently cost contractors in lost revenue: equipment.
If your light tower or excavator was not billed on your T&M contract, you will not get an email or a panicked late night text message from the equipment.
For that reason, all too often, un-billed equipment never gets corrected and owners get a free lunch. When you start adding up the cost of heavy equipment, well … it adds up very quick.
I’ve seen equipment trackers take the form of spreadsheets, white boards, sticky notes and dispatch tools all used to reduce the likelihood of missed equipment billing. All of these are helpful; none of them bulletproof.
My recommendation is to spend a disproportionate amount of time reviewing your equipment billables. It’s worth the investment.
If you are looking for tools and strategies to de-risk this leak point, or just want to talk about your experience, please reach out anytime.
Our team is here to help. Let's talk.
