Todd:

As a former employee of one of your subcontractors (CW Purpero) back in the 90's as well as the IT director of an international heavy civil construction company that implemented Viewpoint in 2006, and now Principal Consultant at Construction Imaging as well as President Elect of the Colorado chapter of CFMA, let me throw in my two cents.

First, I would request that you look at a bigger picture than just Payroll. Payroll is typically only one place where construction firms need to improve communication and data collection from the field. Quite often the same companies that are looking to solve a tactical issue within Payroll, when they step back and look at the bigger picture, they actually have a number of tactical initiatives in various departments such as HR, Safety, Project Management, etc. that could warrant looking at a more strategic long term solution; one solution that can address everything instead of multiple solutions to address individual needs.

To illustrate this, people are often relieved when they move onto Viewpoint software because what they were doing in seven or eight pieces of software before is now combine into one. However, then they add numerous software packages to address remote time capture, subcontractor payment workflow, HR hiring and termination workflow, etc. Soon they are right back working seven different pieces of software. Of course, they are now doing a lot more than they were before they switched to Viewpoint, simply because Viewpoint is such a good foundation to build upon.

Because of the endless software sprawl that can occur to constantly address the needs of individual departments, I would suggest looking at Construction Imaging Systems as a solution for everything listed above. Construction Imaging has an electronic forms system component that allows you to take your current paper forms and convert them into electronic forms that do a number of things. First, they allow you to capture data at the source, in the field in this case; validate the data at the time of capture against your Viewpoint database; submit the form to a workflow for approval; and finally place the data directly into Viewpoint, without the need import the data. And, “yes”, it runs on iPads and Androids.

For your remote time capture needs, the field fills out the timesheet, signs and submits the electronic form, a project engineer reviews the time and signs the electronic form, the data collected is now available in Viewpoint for processing. Notice that there was not any manual data entry into Viewpoint, nor was there the need to perform an import process.  Of course this workflow and form can be modified to fit your specific needs because Construction Imaging is not selling a remote time capture solution, instead we sell an electronic forms system is fully integrated with Viewpoint.

The electronic forms system allows the construction company to build forms and workflows for all kinds of processes. Some of our clients currently use electronic forms for remote time capture, HR new hire processing, subcontractor payment processing, field purchase requisitions, field safety inspections, field quality control reports, etc.

Again, because our electronic forms system is a strategic platform, it can be used to solve problems throughout the organization using your current forms, and workflows.

Now, of course, your likely thinking that I am biased on the technology because of my current position as a Principal Consultant with Construction Imaging and that is fair. However, I would like to point out that I recently joined Construction Imaging because I believed in the technology and saw the value in what it could do for companies that needed a true electronic content mangement system.

Steve Hathaway

We use Mytimesheets within Viewpoint for office payroll time entry which works great but our field people wanted to enter time & production within one process which Viewpoint doesn't have (can be done but two seperate processes & more Accounting feel).

We have very pleased with Viewpoint (on current version since 2005) & they have been very progressive in adopting changes & new technology.