How to scale restoration finance without losing control

For growing restoration businesses, effectively managing growth can become an unexpected challenge. This is especially the case if the company doesn’t utilize specialized software designed to accommodate growth. Processes like job costing, month-end closing and financial reporting can become extremely labor-intensive as a restoration business adds more entities and takes on additional customers. What once worked for the business may now cause headaches as inefficiencies become exposed. To make things worse, the data generated from these tasks may be inaccurate and fail to paint a clear picture of the company’s performance.

Disjointed data and manual tasks: A risk to strategic growth

The main culprit behind inaccurate data that distorts a growing business's numbers is reliance on manual processes. If a business isn’t leveraging software to automate procedures, manual tasks like bookkeeping and spreadsheet tracking bog down finance teams. With the influx of data, finance staff find themselves stuck inputting and double-checking data entries, hoping their entries are accurate, instead of focusing on value-added work like forecasting.

Disconnected systems only make these problems worse. When platforms lack integration and don’t communicate with each other, it forces finance teams to pull important data from various sources. This makes it nearly impossible to gain a holistic view of the business's financial health and drives up the risk of human error.

These inaccuracies can have serious implications as a business looks to expand or make strategic moves. For example, a company looking to get acquired may struggle under the scrutiny of a PE-firm if its financials are inconsistent, leading to the deal falling through. Or, incorrect job costing could lead to shrinking margins, with jobs incorrectly marked as profitable when they aren’t. As these missteps compound, leadership continues to make decisions based on inaccurate data, leading the company to miss opportunities that could position it ahead of the competition.

Selecting the right financial management platform before chaos hits

Selecting the right financial management platform before growth outpaces your systems is critical for scaling a restoration business. The growing pains that you’re experiencing won’t resolve on their own. As your data volumes increase, your systems will undergo more strain, making it harder for you to remain in control.