Downes construction's customer story
Downes Adopts Pay app automation with GCPay
In business for 90 years, Downes Construction based in New Britain, CT provides comprehensive construction services and building excellence throughout Connecticut and Rhode Island with projects including hospitals, corporations, municipalities, colleges and universities, non-profits, and many others. We had a chance to have a conversation with Suzanne Randall, a member of Downes’s accounting team, to get her perspective on why they chose to use GCPay to manage their pay application process and the benefits she and her team are now experiencing. Along with Suzanne, we were joined by Bruce Dominick from Accordant, Downes’ Sage business partner who worked with them to help bring GCPay aboard.
Downes is now using GCPay for about 14 projects simultaneously, each with anywhere from 7 to 25 subcontractors who are submitting pay applications. Prior to using GCPay, they would manage the pay applications manually through spreadsheets that were emailed back and forth with the subcontractors. Suzanne tells us “If the subcontractor didn’t move things over from this period to a previous period, it would cause an error, or the sub would bill for a change order that wasn’t approved and it might slip through the cracks. Things would just get lost.” The same manual process was true with the exchange of lien waivers, which would be generated through Sage and then email each sub and wait for them to be signed and returned. Bruce emphasized that it was a very tedious process for Downes without GCPay.
Suzanne Randall
Accounting Team
Company Info
Founded in 1934
Headquarted in New Britain, CT
Finding A solution
When Suzanne started at Downes 3 years ago, they were just beginning to research automated solutions and got Bruce involved in the conversation. He suggested GCPay based on the great experience that he had with other customers who implemented it. Bruce tells us “GCPay was the way to go based on the tight integration with Sage 300 CRE. And Suzanne will attest that GCPay onboarding and support as second to none.” Suzanne continues “GCPay has been fantastic and if I need support, I just hop on a chat. If they can’t resolve it immediately, which doesn’t happen often, they will have a solution to me by the next day at the latest. You can also look up help articles within GCPay, too, which is great.”
The fact is that Suzanne was able to set up GCPay to automatically send a lien waiver to a subcontractor and once their pay application was approved, she rarely has to chase it down. Suzanne adds “I also want to mention the compliance portion, as well, because I can set it up so that if my sub’s insurance expires, GCPay won’t allow them to submit a pay application until their certificate is updated. That’s fantastic!”
GCPay + Sage 300 CRE
GCPay and Sage are integration partners. This partnership allows for information within Sage relating to subcontracts, change orders, and compliance to sync automatically with GCPay. The integration ensures subcontractor invoices and change orders are detailed properly and processed accordingly, plus eliminates the need to enter contract and invoice data twice.Integration with Sage
And the integration with Sage has made the whole payment process seamless. According to Suzanne “All of the information just goes from Sage to GCPay and it’s just there and it syncs. There’s no double entry, so there is far less margin for error. Subcontractors can’t sneak in a change order that has not been approved. Their SOV must match their contract value. It makes the sub accountable.”
Onboarding & customer Experience
So, how was the onboarding process for Downes? Based on Suzanne’s feedback, it was made easy by the GCPay Onboarding Team. “The training session with Tim was fantastic. He went through everything and then recorded the session so we could go back and review it.” The same applies to her experience with GCPay Support — Suzanne tells us “They’re friendly all of the time. I’ve never had a support person who couldn’t answer my questions.”
When we asked about the time saved from their previous process, Suzanne shared “We’ve saved so much time, I can’t even put a number on it. Before GCPay sometimes I spent a whole day looking for a needle in a haystack, but I don’t have to do anything like that anymore. Now we can work on other things – it’s allowed everybody to breathe a little bit.” Along those lines, Bruce conveys that the feedback he’s gotten from the team at Downes, all the way from accounting to operations is that everyone is thrilled with GCPay. And Downes’s subcontractors have seen how easy it is for them to use. Suzanne has not received any negative feedback, noting that the support that subs receive directly from GCPay allows them to get answers quickly, so they do not have to come back to Downes for help.
In wrapping up, Suzanne tells us that GCPay has helped Downes manage their growth so while the company is growing, they do not have to add to their accounting team to manage pay apps. “It’s the best thing that we have ever done for our company to streamline our process.”
