Testimonial: Tim Havlat, Chicago Electrical Company

Tim Havlat, Project Engineer
Chicago Electrical Company, Chicago, Illinois

The F.I.T. System has provided increased reliability to our Payroll process while greatly reducing the manhours devoted to it each week. With the F.I.T. System, we have access to hours in a centralized and standardized app. This helps with daily review and approval of hours. The integration with Sage 100 Contractor (S100C) ensures that the job information and employee details are up to date – we no longer have hours inadvertently assigned to completed or closed jobs. The app for field users is easy to learn and intuitively laid out. Furthermore, the app is secure and customized to provide only the necessary information to our electricians.

For our back office, the F.I.T. System has streamlined the approval and payroll entry process. All field entries are collected in a filterable view – this allows us to easily identify any hours that are missing or incomplete. Each day’s hours are approved by the end of the night and can be done with a click of a button. We still import the hours and create timecards weekly, but we can easily do this daily thanks to the F.I.T. System. Getting the hours into Sage is a simple two click process (one to import and a second to confirm). What used to be manually typed into S100C is now completed in minutes. Overall, the F.I.T. System saves us time and has reduced errors with payroll processing.

Prior to using the F.I.T. System, we relied on a process of emails and Excel spreadsheets to collate field time. Starting in the field, the Foreman at each jobsite would send an email at the end of the day with hours for their crew. The hours on these emails were reviewed by our owner, who is in charge of manpower and then were manually transferred to an Excel workbook with a tab for each employee. This workbook would need to be modified every time an electrician joined or left our company. At the end of the week, the workbook was shared with our back office.  They then manually typed, or more accurately retyped, this information back into S100C to create timecard entries. There was minimal visibility throughout the week until the hours hit Sage; this also meant that S100C was lacking anywhere between 2-6 days of worked hours. The system functioned but was full of inefficiencies, chances for inaccuracies, and delays.

For us, moving to F.I.T. was a clear improvement and I can’t recommend it enough. In my opinion, there are two unique components of the F.I.T. System that make it stand out. First, it integrates seamlessly with S100C. Changes in Sage are reflected in the F.I.T System and switching to F.I.T. for recording field time reduced redundancies and automated previously manual work for us. As an independent application, the entries in F.I.T do not have any impact on Sage until explicitly imported. Secondly, the knowledge and support of the Syscon team is excellent. They worked with us to customize the F.I.T System to serve our needs – for example, we removed cost coding and added an injury report checkbox on the app for our field users. The F.I.T. system is reliable, secure, and overall a great example of what technology should be – a tool to make everyone’s lives easier.