Carson Reid Homes saves time with HomeBuilder

Ten years ago, employees at Carson Reid Homes, a medium-sized builder centred in Guelph, had to work out all the company's Job Costing and Payables by hand. The process was time-consuming and difficult, so Carson Reid came to Slofstra Software Inc. (SSI) in search of a new solution.

Employees at SSI developed a program to suitably meet the needs of Carson Reid Homes. Now called HomeBuilder, the program serves as a database and entry system for Payables and Job Costing for small- and medium-sized builders.

Employees at Carson Reid Homes noticed a marked change in productivity due to the new program. "It did free up more time to do other things," say Tracey Gorasso of Carson Reid Homes.

Since then, HomeBuilder has become fully incorporated into the company's business process. "I use it every day in one way or another," says Tracey Gorasso, an employee at Carson Reid Homes.

HomeBuilder provides Carson Reid Homes with a database and entry system for Payables and Job Costing. With the HomeBuilder system, employees at Carson Reid Homes can enter payables, print cheques, enter job cost adjustments, keep track of vendors, and print job cost reports.

Carson Reid Homes employees find benefits in all areas of the HomeBuilder program, but the feature that has been especially beneficial is the job costing reports. Users can easily view or print reports of anything from simple job cost summaries to detailed cost breakdowns by cost code and supplier. "The costing is very detailed. It breaks everything down for you," Tracey comments. "It's well-organized. There are reports we use for year-end, and ones we use for all the time; there's a nice variety."

An added benefit of HomeBuilder is that SSI features versatility with their programs. "If you buy a program off the shelf, you might have some support, but if you want to add something, you can't," comments Tracey Gorasso. "With [Slofstra Software Inc.], things are very flexible. We just say, 'Can we do this?' and they manage to create something."

SSI also provides ongoing support for Carson Reid Homes. "As for customer support, with companies [providing off the shelf software], I phone them up and think, I might as well not have called. But SSI works to resolve the problem, they explain it and they fix things," says Tracey.

As Carson Reid Homes has expanded over the past years, HomeBuilder has become crucial to their business process, helping to save time and effort as well as keep things organized. "If we still had to do [the Job Costing and Payables] manually, we would definitely need more people because there's no way we could manage," says Tracey Gorasso.