Don’t Stress the Billing Process

Invoicing is imperative to the survival of your contracting business, but it is often one of the most loathed tasks. We have a few suggestions for making the invoicing process easier.

You don’t get paid if you don’t invoice. If you ask many financial professionals why some contractors have persistent cashflow problems, the frequent response is that they put off invoicing until they absolutely need the money. In a rush to collect, some contractors fire off sloppily created invoices that are riddled with math errors and may not even correctly identify the work done. There are better, faster ways to invoice for the money you are owed.

The best invoicing tip you will get is to invoice each customer as soon as the job is done. Do it that night, get it in the mail in the morning, and the customer—still basking in the splendor of a new kitchen or bathroom—most likely will pay without question.

Ask your customers how they want to be invoiced at the start or completion of a job. Some like faxes, others U.S. Mail, still others will prefer e-mail. The medium doesn’t matter; what matters is that you cater to your customer’s preference.

Make sure your invoices stand out from other materials you send out. If you use U.S. Mail, put invoices in a different color envelope than the envelopes used for mailing out quotes or marketing material, and clearly label this sheet of paper: INVOICE. If you use e-mail for invoices, include a clear header: Invoice from ABC Remodelers, for instance. The goal is to get the recipient to pay special attention to your invoices and, above all, to keep them from getting trashed along with incoming "junk mail."

Handwriting isn’t on the Wall
Handwritten invoices are a no-go that make a business look unprofessional. A printed, computer-generated invoice has become a must. Probably the small business standard is Intuit’s QuickBooks, which provides intuitive bookkeeping tools along with invoicing capabilities. But, specialized software is not a necessity. Microsoft Word, for instance, provides an invoicing template, as does Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet. Both create invoices that can be printed and mailed easily, or for a more high-tech flavor, the document can be transformed into an Adobe PDF and e-mailed to the recipient.

The real goal is to make it easy for your customer to pay as soon as possible. It helps to include a stamped, self-addressed envelope with mailed invoices. With e-mailed invoices, try accepting payment via PayPal, an online bill payment service offered by eBay, the giant auction house. Anybody who has a credit card and Internet access can pay via PayPal, and any business with a checking account can transfer payments quickly to PayPal into a bank account. That won’t appeal to everybody—PayPal charges recipients significant transaction fees—but when getting money fast is the goal, it’s an option worth considering. The bigger point: When customers find it easy to pay, they have one less reason to procrastinate. Let your customers pay by check, credit card, online services such as PayPal and, of course, cash.

If you are a hardcore invoicing procrastinator, dictate invoices into your voicemail, and then forward that voicemail to a bookkeeping assistant. It will be worth the price you pay your assistant. That’s because by doing this easy exercise you will see invoices paid faster, fewer invoices that just never get sent because they are forgotten about and a healthier business bottom line.

A Customer’s Lament
Here are some common complaints customers have about the invoices they receive from contractors:

• Invoices that aren’t itemized, including when and what type of work was performed.
• Mistakes like addition errors, invoicing twice for the same thing, etc.
• Misunderstood rates.
• Being handed an invoice by a contractor expecting immediate payment.

Remember that an invoice is a marketing tool and, when done right, it can leave a customer happy to pay you.

Rules for Hiring the Best

These rules have been designed to aid employers in the difficult task of recruiting and interviewing prospective employees. Interviewers must be diligent in their questioning of each potential staff member. Here are some things to keep in mind when considering an interviewee.

1. If they look too good to be true, they might be. Explore further.
2. A negative person often spends more time complaining than they do working.
3. If the problem that caused them to leave their last position exists in your company, common sense says they will also leave your company.
4. People do change, but don't assume you or your company has the power to create that change.
5. If someone had problems in the past, it is not unlikely that they will have similar problems in the future.
6. Trouble tends to follow people around.
7. If you choose to hire someone out of charity, (or because the bosses tell you too), recognize and accept the risks of your choice.
8. A detail-oriented person does not have numerous cross-outs and blanks on their application.
9. If they job-hopped in the past, what makes you think they won't job-hop in the future?
10. Neatness counts in an interview.
11. There are some people that are good with both paperwork and details as well as with people. However, most people who are really good with paperwork and details are not so good with people, and vice versa.
12. If their email address is lazygirl@aol.com, they probably are.
13. A potential employee will have to like your job/company a great deal to be willing to travel over an hour to work for a sustained period of time.
14. If they can't spell, they don't read. If they don't read, they don't think.
15. Always question dates of employment listed on a resume or application (by asking how long they were at each job); it's the #1 item that applicants "exaggerate" on.
16. Always ask if they can provide proof of salary if it looks inflated; it's the #2 item that applicants "exaggerate" on.
17. When interviewing, ALWAYS ask reasons for leaving for each job. It provides the most important information for making your selection.
18. If you ask a person what they like best and least, you will get more honest information on what they are good and not so good at than if you ask for their strengths and weaknesses.
19. If they had difficulties working with co-workers in the past, there's a good chance they will also have difficulties with your co-workers.
20. If they didn't like their last manager, what makes you think they will like you?
21. If they were fired in the past, it was probably their fault (regardless of the story that they tell you!).
22. If they were laid off but the company didn't close, why were they not selected to stay?
23. If they left their last job for more money, how often will they be expecting raises from you?
24. Most people don't quit jobs because of money; they just don't want to tell you the real reason.
25. If they are looking for "better opportunity", when will your opportunity no longer seem better?
26. If they say they don't want to work overtime, don't hire them for a job requiring overtime.
27. If they list a skill on their resume, it doesn't necessarily mean they are proficient in it. Probe further.
28. If they didn't like the long hours or commute at one of their past jobs, why will they accept the long commute or hours at your job?
29. If they are in sales, ask them to name some of the titles or authors in their personal self-development library. If they don't have any, they may not be serious about being successful in sales.
30. Find out the singular most important thing they are looking for. If your company/position doesn't offer this, don't hire them. If it's compensation, definitely don't hire them.
31. Do you want the applicant with the odd handshake shaking your clients' hands?
32. Don't expect them to want to work for your company if you tell them only the negatives.
33. Get references from past supervisors, not from friends and acquaintances on their reference list.
34. None of the above rules apply to applicants right out of high school or college. It often takes a couple of years and a couple of jobs to find their niche. Decide carefully if you might be their niche.

Who Has the Keys?

How to protect your company and employees by emphasizing driver safety on the road and at the jobsite, with close monitoring and ongoing training.

Safety in the workplace has emerged as one of the top issues facing business executives today, particularly for contractors. Federal laws clearly require employers to provide a safe work environment for all employees, and 26 states have adopted their own workplace safety standards and enforcement policies.

What does that mean for you? Simply put, it means the days of blindly handing out keys to your employee-drivers are over. When examining your own worker safety policies, your primary concerns should be the safety of your drivers and the condition of their vehicles, both on the road and at the jobsite.

Driver safety must be emphasized across the board. Not only should your company take aggressive steps to monitor potential safety issues, it should also make safety the focus of new employee training. Statistics indicate that ongoing training reduces the number and severity of driver accidents over time.

Some of the safety practices business owners can implement include:

• Collecting and verifying the motor vehicle records of your driver-employees. Typically, about two-thirds of drivers have relatively clear driver histories, but about 25% will present some degree of risk on the road, and between 5 and 7% will be revealed as high-risk drivers with multiple infractions.
• Not skimping on the maintenance of company vehicles. Having cars and trucks routinely serviced ensures that they stay in good working order. This is especially important in the construction industry, where jobsites generally expose vehicles to much higher levels of dust and dirt, which shorten the intervals between oil changes, replacement of air and fuel filters and other maintenance.
• Keeping complete and accurate files on all fleet vehicles. Hire a fleet management provider to monitor fleet maintenance and ensure vehicles are inspected regularly.
• Reading the factory guidelines for each company vehicle in your fleet and requiring your drivers to do the same. The safety guidelines listed in a vehicle manual are there for a reason. Most vehicle specifications outline the loads the vehicle can safely carry. Your employees may think they can push those limits and occasionally overload a work vehicle, but an unbalanced load is an unsafe load.
• Putting a system in place that assigns consequences to unsafe drivers in your work force. Analyze your drivers and look for repeat offenders. Implementing consequences for unsafe driving protects employees, other drivers and your company, and it levels the playing field. A top sales executive with an unsafe driving record is just as liable for his or her actions as the new construction foreman or summer intern.
• Implementing a point assignment program that ranks your drivers according to the severity of previous motor vehicle infractions. After conducting an MVR search, assign points to each infraction to determine each driver's overall risk.
• Providing drivers with training opportunities, so that poor driving behavior can be ad-dressed and changed immediately and good behavior can be rewarded.

As your company grows, so will your vehicle fleet. Consider partnering with a fleet management company to assist with related issues-and possibly save money and manpower in the long run.

Tips For Running An Effective Fleet Safety Program:

• Do your homework. Know your drivers and evaluate their risk behind the wheel.
• Implement a safety policy. This sets specific guidelines for acceptable and unacceptable driving behavior.
• Enforce your policy. From the top down, drivers must be held accountable.
• Be proactive. Address poor driving behavior with training opportunities and reward good driving habits that save your company money.

Building Material Innovations

An explosion of new materials, both confusing and intriguing, lands on the designer's palette.

Concrete—that gray, monolithic building material—is getting a face-lift. Inventors are reshaping it to do more, last longer and show off. A new kind of “translucent” concrete uses fiber optics to carry light and shadow. New light-sensitive terrazzo flooring can reflect a rainbow of colors. And high-strength concrete placed inside buildings and bridges can flex like hard rubber to dampen earthquake shocks. The possibilities seem endless.

Innovation is infusing other traditional building blocks, such as steel, glass and wood, with renewal, while nanotechnology and “green” building has brought a host of hybrid materials. A heightened interest in building smart, clean and fast is driving this rapid research across the material world.

Finding thousands of examples is easy, thanks to new resources. Bringing these products to market is another story, inventors say.

The ongoing quest for innovation has put some wild, new products on the designer’s palette. Reflect for a moment on glass: It protects people from the elements, provides modest insulation and offers a nice view. But now it can do so much more. One type can clean itself using a catalytic film that uses sunlight and rain to break down and wash away dirt particles and smudges. Suppliers are starting to experiment with similar substrates that help concrete buildings, bridges, and highway barriers take pollutants out of the air. Even paint can clean itself.

You might say that designers wishing to use radically new concretes are waiting for the critical mass. New materials are a tough sell. Some offer a long-term cost benefit at a short-term price premium; others simply have architectural appeal controlled by the whimsy of consumers.

Fast computers, aeronautic inventions and environmental sensibilities have contributed to these recent material developments. The playing field is broad. If these innovative products have one thing in common, it is their ability to transcend expectations, often confusing the mind and engaging the eye.

One of the most striking examples is a new type of translucent concrete called “Litracon,” developed by Åron Losonczi, a Hungarian architect. Inside Litracon’s precast blocks and panels are glass fibers, arranged in parallel like millions of tiny windows. They transmit light from one side of the concrete to the other. Tight manufacturing tolerances make production of this material a challenge, not to mention complicating on-site casting.

The end result, however, is illuminating. On his website, the inventor says he has inked agreements with “leading manufacturers” and hopes to offer it soon worldwide. Designers are fascinated because the addition of the glass fibers completely changes the whole way architects think about concrete.

Kinetic and Mimetic

Innovative materials are finding new ways to interact within the natural world and reflect its beauty, both architecturally and structurally. A promising new technology is ultra-high-performance concrete, such as Lafarge’s “Ductal” product. Introduced several years ago, it casts like concrete and feels like concrete. Once cured, it behaves more like a metal, using carbon fibers, polyvinyl-alcohol fibers and other embedded materials that bring compressive capacities up to 30,000 psi and flexural strengths to 6,000 psi. Available in custom precast shapes, it costs somewhere “between” traditional concrete and steel, says the French producer. It is the featured material on a highway bridge completed this past spring in Wapello County, Iowa.

“Bendable” concrete is another material emerging in the fast-growing UHPC segment. It is similar to Ductal, resisting cracking 500 times more than traditional concrete, weighing 40% less and reducing the need for reinforcements and joints, especially in seismic zones. Under development at the University of Michigan, the combination of high strength and elasticity comes from synthetic fibers placed in the mix using traditional construction equipment and techniques.

Engineers are also experimenting with fiber-reinforced-polymer composites, such as glass-epoxy wraps, that can be applied to existing buildings and infrastructure to extend their life. Structural engineers say that the greatest aspect of this material is the high strength-to-weight ratio.

The construction industry prides itself in innovation, yet inventors cite major problems in bringing new building materials and systems to market. Building codes that do not yet address new technology and risk-averse owners are partly to blame.

The conservation movement also has helped bring along some “green” materials, such as a new product called “Kirei Board.” Made from sorghum and starting at $7 per sq ft, it behaves like plywood but is friendlier to the environment, the manufacturer claims.

Inventor Bob Simmons is doing for steel what others are doing for concrete. The design-build contractor invented a moment-resisting space frame, called “ConXtech,” that arrives on site and within minutes snaps together like a model airplane. But the building system is no toy, having solid roots in a seismic region and capable of rising to heights of up to 100 ft in about half the time of traditional frames. His patented “boltless” connectors, which robotic welding machines affix to the ends of 12-in.-deep beams, mate with dovetails welded on faces of hollow columns. The beams lock into the tubular columns, measuring between 4 in. and 8 in. square, using gravity. With the help of a mobile crane, the contractor can stand the frame without bolts. “We erect it from the top down,” explains Simmons, “then we deck from the bottom up.” Crews install bolts at each floor before pouring concrete slabs.

Amid the innovation, traditional materials still have their place, and can look just as cool. In Chicago, an 82-story rectangular, mixed-use tower called “Aqua,” which begins construction this month, will have concrete balconies that cantilever as far out as 12 ft. Each slab has a unique shape in plan, with random undulation that will make the building appear to “ripple” from bottom to top. Underneath, the 10-in.-thick slabs and the core-and-outrigger structure couldn’t be more typical.