CONTROLQORE FOR PRECAST CONCRETE.
Generic accounting software can't report cost per bed-day, spread a purpose-built mould across the castings it produces, or tell you how much finished working capital is sitting in the yard this week. ControlQore can.
ControlQore for precast contractors uses cost codes by production phase, meaning engineering and shop tickets, mould build and setup, casting by bed, curing and finishing, yard inventory, freight by route, and erection, to track cost per bed-day against the rate the quote assumed. Mould cost amortizes across the castings a mould produces instead of hitting the first order that paid for it. Finished pieces held in the yard are reported as a working capital position, and the WIP schedule is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete.
A precast plant is a factory paid like a subcontractor. Cost is incurred at casting, construction terms release money at delivery and erection, and every finished piece in the yard is working capital in concrete form until a crane picks it up. A monthly income statement can't tell a producer what a bed cost to run or which pieces are financing the schedule. Cost codes built by bed and by mould turn plant hours into a bed-day rate you can quote from, and yard inventory into a figure you can take into a stored-materials billing conversation while the pieces are still in the yard.
THE NUMBERS GENERIC SOFTWARE MISSES.
WHAT IT IS.
ControlQore is a job costing and WIP platform for contractors that tracks cost by job and cost code, so a precast producer can read cost per bed-day and cost per piece cast while the elements are still moving through the plant.
WHERE IT GOES WRONG.
No Cost Per Bed-Day
Plant capacity is beds and moulds, and unit cost rides their utilization. Purpose-built moulds have to amortize across the castings they produce, bed-days are the plant's crew-days, and published plant research points to equipment breakdown as the main cause of task-time variance. QuickBooks reports total cost by job, which tells a producer nothing about what a bed cost to run last week. The 22 percent gross margin benchmark for this trade at $1M to $5M is derived from the nearest comparable trade rather than measured on precast plants, which is one more reason a plant needs its own bed-day rate instead of an industry figure.
A Factory Paid Like a Subcontractor
Precast is manufacturing. Elements are cast to the erection sequence, cured, finished, and inventoried in the yard weeks or months before they ship. The cost is incurred at casting, and construction payment terms release money at delivery and erection milestones, so a yard of finished pieces is working capital in concrete form. Without stored-materials billing, carrying the insurance, marking, and inspection provisions an owner will demand, the plant finances the whole stretch between casting and crane day.
The Change That Re-Casts a Piece
A field change on cast-in-place concrete is a saw cut. On precast it can be a scrapped piece, a re-booked bed, and a resequenced erection, which is why the published schedule lever in this trade is engaging the precaster before bid award rather than after. When engineering, shop tickets, and design-freeze milestones aren't on the schedule of values and not costed as their own phase, the re-cast gets absorbed as a plant efficiency problem instead of priced as a change order.
Freight Carried as a Percentage
Transport cost limits the radius of a plant's activities and therefore its potential market. Oversize permits, lowboy trailers, route surveys for bridge clearances, escort costs, and delivery windows synchronized to a crane make freight a priced engineering problem per route. A bid that carries hauling as a percentage of contract value instead of a route plan donates the difference on every load, and nothing in a monthly P&L will tell the producer which routes did it.
WHAT WE BUILD.
SPM builds ControlQore cost codes for precast clients by production phase: engineering and shop tickets, mould build and setup, casting by bed, curing and finishing, yard inventory, freight by route, and erection. Labor, material, mould cost, and freight post to the correct phase on the correct job. The plant's cost curve then reads in the order the plant works and not in the order the invoices post.
Bed and mould are configured as job attributes, so hours and machine time post to the bed that ran them. ControlQore divides burdened cost by bed-days used and reports cost per bed-day against the rate the quote assumed. Mould cost amortizes across the castings a mould produces instead of hitting the first order that paid for it, which stops the first job off a new mould from reading as a loss and every later one from reading better than it is.
Finished pieces are tracked in ControlQore as cast, cured, and awaiting delivery, carried at the cost already incurred. That total is the working capital the plant has tied up in concrete, and it sits on the 13 week cash flow forecast as its own line. SPM also reviews every new subcontract schedule of values before signing and pushes for engineering and mould setup as early billable lines, casting milestones billed against inspected yard inventory, and delivery and erection as the final tranches.
Design-freeze milestones go on the schedule of values, and a re-cast carries its own cost code so the scrapped piece, the bed time booked a second time, and the erection resequencing are costed as one event. When the change order conversation happens, there's a cost record behind the number rather than a recollection. A late decision on precast collides with fabrication physics, and the contract is the only place that fact can be priced before it happens.
The WIP schedule for precast clients is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete by job. Because casting and curing carry real cost, percentage complete reflects money already spent in the plant instead of jumping when the first truck leaves the yard. Underbilled positions, meaning work performed but not yet billed, trigger a corrected pay app. Overbilled positions flag jobs where billing has outrun production, which happens easily on work sequenced to somebody else's crane.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SOFTWARE INVOICE.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. ControlQore comes with Strategic, and it never appears as its own line item on an SPM invoice. Which tier you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk.
Pricing
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
