Systems That Match How You Build
Project and accounting systems should reflect the way work is estimated, structured, managed, and accounted for.
HEAVY CIVIL CONTRACTORS
Connecting the jobsite to the bottom line
Build financial control from estimate through closeout
ERP & Accounting · Integration · Automation · Reporting
For paving, site development, utility, and infrastructure contractors who find out a job went sideways after it is already over.
Industries Served
PavingSite DevelopmentUtilitiesInfrastructure
Problems We Help Solve
You know the signs
The symptoms show up in job reviews, WIP, forecasting, billing, and close long before anyone calls them a systems problem.
Job cost that doesn't reflect the field
Accounting and the project manager see different costs. Equipment rates are out of date, and nobody trusts the job-cost report enough to act on it.
Budgets that don't agree across departments
Estimating, project management, and accounting each maintain their own version of the budget, with no reliable way to keep them aligned.
Commitments and changes outside the system
Committed cost sits in a project manager's inbox. Change orders live in multiple places, leaving accounting and the forecast behind what is happening on the job.
WIP and forecasts rebuilt by hand
WIP takes days and a spreadsheet only one person can operate. EACs stay current only because somebody rekeys the numbers every month.
Connected Financial Systems
Carry the project structure from estimate through financial reporting
Budgets, cost codes, field activity, commitments, forecasts, and accounting must retain the same meaning as the project moves from bid to execution.
The goal is not to replace every specialized system. It is to make the right systems exchange reliable information, expose exceptions, and support the accounting and management requirements of the business.
Estimate & BidBudget & Project SetupField, Labor & EquipmentCommitments & Job CostForecast, EAC & WIPERP & Reporting
THE GAP WE FILL
The problem usually sits between departments
An IT consultant may know how to connect two systems without knowing whether the job cost coming out the other end is right. An accountant may know the number is wrong without being able to fix the workflow producing it. A software consultant may know the platform without understanding how your estimating, field, project controls, and accounting processes fit together.
HBS works across those handoffs. The goal is not just to connect software or improve a report. It is to make sure the financial story of the job remains traceable and reliable from bid to closeout.
WHAT WE DO
Make every part of the job tell the same story
An estimate sets the plan. The field changes it daily. Accounting sees it weeks later. HBS builds the systems and processes that carry field activity into job cost while it still matters, so your WIP and your EACs describe the job you are actually running.
Job Cost That Reflects the Field
Labor, equipment, materials, commitments, and other costs need to reach the right job, phase, and cost code while there is still time to act.
Billing That Keeps Up With the Work
Production, quantities, changes, and contract terms should move into billing without waiting on spreadsheets and manual reconstruction.
Forecasts and Reporting You Can Act On
Actual cost, commitments, EAC, billing, and financial reporting should reconcile without rebuilding the job every month.
ONE WAY TO START
Civil Cost Review
Do your job numbers still agree from bid to closeout?
HBS traces two or three representative jobs from the estimate through job cost, commitments, forecasting, and billing to identify where estimate, budget, cost, commitments, forecast, and billing stop agreeing with one another.
WHAT YOU GET
The cost-flow map
How job information actually moves through the business today, including the manual handoffs, spreadsheets, and rekeying used to bridge gaps between systems.
Findings by financial impact
Not a list of IT issues. Each finding states what is happening, where it breaks, what it distorts, and what should correct it.
Job reconciliation
For the jobs reviewed, where estimate, budget, actual cost, commitments, forecast, and billing agree, and where they have stopped agreeing.
A prioritized correction plan
What to fix first, what can wait, and whether the answer is configuration, integration, reporting, or workflow.
Stop assuming your job numbers tell the whole story.
Find where costs, commitments, and forecasts stop agreeing, and know what needs attention.
Book a 15-minute callWHAT A FINDING LOOKS LIKE
Here is what one finding from a Civil Cost Review might look like.
Committed cost is understated
A project manager tracks pending subcontract commitments outside the ERP. The commitment is real and the work is coming, but accounting has not seen it, so the forecast shows margin the job will not deliver. Everything looks fine until the invoices arrive.
Where it breaks
Commitment capture stops at the PM's approval and never reaches the financial system.
What it distorts
EAC, reported margin, and the underlying inputs used in WIP reporting.
What corrects it
Move commitment capture into the workflow that already feeds job cost, with approval and reporting attached to it.
Joe Carnes, MBA, PMPFounder, Holden Business Solutions
WHY HBS
Built by someone who understands the jobsite, the financials, and the systems behind them.
Joe Carnes has four years of experience in civil construction finance and project controls for a publicly traded federal contractor, working across utilities, site work, and infrastructure projects. His responsibilities have included estimating, forecasting, job cost, EACs, billing, and project accounting.
He also spent more than a decade in the construction materials industry, eventually leading both finance and technology across as many as seventeen entities. That included responsibility for ERP, operational systems, integrations, accounting, and reporting.
That matters because job-cost and forecasting problems rarely belong to just the field, accounting, or IT. They usually happen in the handoffs between them. HBS works across those handoffs so your job cost and forecast match what's actually happening in the field.
Stop rebuilding the numbers.
Start trusting them.
If your systems, job cost, forecasts, billing, and financials are not lining up, let’s talk about what you’re seeing and where HBS may fit.