Sub Specialty Contractor

Hello CFMA community - I'm the CFO at an HVAC subcontractor (in Southern California) and we are in the process of implementing Foundation Software as our core construction accounting / job-cost system. Because we are union-subcontractor heavy, we are considering outsourcing payroll to a 3rd party for our weekly payroll for both office and field employees.

What we're trying to find out from this group:

1. Which third-party companies have you used for Foundation Software implementations (or deep customizations/integrations) in a union-subcontractor context?

2. What were your biggest lessons learned (good and bad) from those engagements - e.g., in scope-definition, data conversion, job-cost structuring for union work, payroll/benefit integration, change-management, timeline, cost overruns, etc.?

3. For companies running Foundation Software in a union/subcontractor setting, what extra things should we build into our vendor engagement (e.g., union payroll rates by local/trade, certified payroll reporting, change-order flows unique to subcontractors, multiple divisions and joint ventures, etc.)?

4. If you did choose a particular 3rd party for payroll, how did you arrive at that decision? Would you recommend them again?

Any referrals, war-stories, or "you should avoid this" tips are very welcome.

Thanks in advance!

LK

Hello CFMA community - I'm the CFO at an HVAC subcontractor (in Southern California) and we are in the process of implementing Foundation Software as our core construction accounting / job-cost system. Because we are union-subcontractor heavy, we are considering outsourcing payroll to a 3rd party for our weekly payroll for both office and field employees.

What we're trying to find out from this group:

1. Which third-party companies have you used for Foundation Software implementations (or deep customizations/integrations) in a union-subcontractor context?

2. What were your biggest lessons learned (good and bad) from those engagements - e.g., in scope-definition, data conversion, job-cost structuring for union work, payroll/benefit integration, change-management, timeline, cost overruns, etc.?

3. For companies running Foundation Software in a union/subcontractor setting, what extra things should we build into our vendor engagement (e.g., union payroll rates by local/trade, certified payroll reporting, change-order flows unique to subcontractors, multiple divisions and joint ventures, etc.)?

4. If you did choose a particular 3rd party for payroll, how did you arrive at that decision? Would you recommend them again?

Any referrals, war-stories, or "you should avoid this" tips are very welcome.

Thanks in advance!

LK

Good Morning Ligia, 

We are a non union subcontractor and have been using foundations for a couple of years now and about a year ago there was a decision to move away from doing in house payroll and finding a 3rd party payroll system to integrate with foundations to allow job costing as well as help take on some of the reporting for Certified Payroll. Since I have come on board this summer I have been seeing/hearing all of the issues and at this point we are looking to move back to doing payroll in house/Foundations P4c as all of the time savings we were promised is not there/now we lack visibility into job costing data that we had when payroll was native in foundations. The solution we came up with said they helped with Certified Payroll reports and instead there was another software we had to buy to verify that and we have our internal payroll person still doing it and cross checking all the numbers from both third party softwares with excel uploads to both. 

If you are looking at a 3rd party system some of the items to ask about is the data transfer process (this is the same for timekeeping and getting punch times in/out of foundations to the timekeeping/payroll software). The 3rd party payroll provider we went to was Paychex, while it has decent HR/single login to see all paychecks and 401k for an employee we had to help build a manual report that needs to be run and reuploaded back into foundation that still takes 1-2 hrs of manual adjustment to upload correctly via J/E back into foundations. My main concern now is when discussing timekeeping and payroll is if there is a back and forth native connection vs a csv upload, this is especially important if you have a fair number of jobs/cost codes. With paychex we cannot lock cost codes as some jobs are only specific cost codes but right now someone can log into any on Paychex which then has the issue of throwing errors in the upload as the job in foundation doesn't have all cost codes opened up, along with that ease of use in the field is not there. We are currently having to manually add each job both in foundations/Paychex and then select each employee that needs access to that job in Paychex. 

With the csv upload back into foundations we lost a lot of visibility into who is on which job, if you are looking for deep job costing data I would heavily vet any 3rd party vendors and ability to naturally sync/communicate with foundations to avoid unnecessary double work and focus on setting everything up correctly on the front end. Foundations has a fair number of quirks but they also allow for a lot of visibility. I was at another company and we rushed a foundations integration which turned out to run into a lot of hiccups, foundations requires more time intensive data entry but that also allows for a better total job cost picture. Make sure there is enough time to appropriately train your team on the entire process and get time to play in the sandbox to make sure it does everything you want it to.

As a final note that when we had payroll in foundations the certified reports were easier to produce/took less time than we are spending now with "dedicated" 3rd party software we purchased. 

Hope this helps, good luck on the transition!  

------------------------------
David Milligan
Executive Director of Finance
Ritsema Associates
Grand Rapids MI
(616) 644-5950

Original Message:
Sent: 10-24-2025 01:31
From: Ligia Keith
Subject: Foundation Software / 3rd Party Payroll

Hello CFMA community - I'm the CFO at an HVAC subcontractor (in Southern California) and we are in the process of implementing Foundation Software as our core construction accounting / job-cost system. Because we are union-subcontractor heavy, we are considering outsourcing payroll to a 3rd party for our weekly payroll for both office and field employees.

What we're trying to find out from this group:

1. Which third-party companies have you used for Foundation Software implementations (or deep customizations/integrations) in a union-subcontractor context?

2. What were your biggest lessons learned (good and bad) from those engagements - e.g., in scope-definition, data conversion, job-cost structuring for union work, payroll/benefit integration, change-management, timeline, cost overruns, etc.?

3. For companies running Foundation Software in a union/subcontractor setting, what extra things should we build into our vendor engagement (e.g., union payroll rates by local/trade, certified payroll reporting, change-order flows unique to subcontractors, multiple divisions and joint ventures, etc.)?

4. If you did choose a particular 3rd party for payroll, how did you arrive at that decision? Would you recommend them again?

Any referrals, war-stories, or "you should avoid this" tips are very welcome.

Thanks in advance!

LK

------------------------------
Ligia Keith
Chief Financial Officer
Couts Heating & Cooling, Inc.
Corona CA
(714) 493-1399
------------------------------

David,

Did you look at Foundations own 3rd payroll offering - just curious if that was every an option, and if it was what did you turn it down?  I know they are pushing that hard right now.

-Evan

------------------------------
Evan Horowitz
CFO
Kaw Valley Companies LLC / Rivers Edge Scrap
Kansas City KS
(913) 634-8816

Original Message:
Sent: 10-29-2025 08:10
From: David Milligan
Subject: Foundation Software / 3rd Party Payroll

Good Morning Ligia, 

We are a non union subcontractor and have been using foundations for a couple of years now and about a year ago there was a decision to move away from doing in house payroll and finding a 3rd party payroll system to integrate with foundations to allow job costing as well as help take on some of the reporting for Certified Payroll. Since I have come on board this summer I have been seeing/hearing all of the issues and at this point we are looking to move back to doing payroll in house/Foundations P4c as all of the time savings we were promised is not there/now we lack visibility into job costing data that we had when payroll was native in foundations. The solution we came up with said they helped with Certified Payroll reports and instead there was another software we had to buy to verify that and we have our internal payroll person still doing it and cross checking all the numbers from both third party softwares with excel uploads to both. 

If you are looking at a 3rd party system some of the items to ask about is the data transfer process (this is the same for timekeeping and getting punch times in/out of foundations to the timekeeping/payroll software). The 3rd party payroll provider we went to was Paychex, while it has decent HR/single login to see all paychecks and 401k for an employee we had to help build a manual report that needs to be run and reuploaded back into foundation that still takes 1-2 hrs of manual adjustment to upload correctly via J/E back into foundations. My main concern now is when discussing timekeeping and payroll is if there is a back and forth native connection vs a csv upload, this is especially important if you have a fair number of jobs/cost codes. With paychex we cannot lock cost codes as some jobs are only specific cost codes but right now someone can log into any on Paychex which then has the issue of throwing errors in the upload as the job in foundation doesn't have all cost codes opened up, along with that ease of use in the field is not there. We are currently having to manually add each job both in foundations/Paychex and then select each employee that needs access to that job in Paychex. 

With the csv upload back into foundations we lost a lot of visibility into who is on which job, if you are looking for deep job costing data I would heavily vet any 3rd party vendors and ability to naturally sync/communicate with foundations to avoid unnecessary double work and focus on setting everything up correctly on the front end. Foundations has a fair number of quirks but they also allow for a lot of visibility. I was at another company and we rushed a foundations integration which turned out to run into a lot of hiccups, foundations requires more time intensive data entry but that also allows for a better total job cost picture. Make sure there is enough time to appropriately train your team on the entire process and get time to play in the sandbox to make sure it does everything you want it to.

As a final note that when we had payroll in foundations the certified reports were easier to produce/took less time than we are spending now with "dedicated" 3rd party software we purchased. 

Hope this helps, good luck on the transition!  

------------------------------
David Milligan
Executive Director of Finance
Ritsema Associates
Grand Rapids MI
(616) 644-5950

Original Message:
Sent: 10-24-2025 01:31
From: Ligia Keith
Subject: Foundation Software / 3rd Party Payroll

Hello CFMA community - I'm the CFO at an HVAC subcontractor (in Southern California) and we are in the process of implementing Foundation Software as our core construction accounting / job-cost system. Because we are union-subcontractor heavy, we are considering outsourcing payroll to a 3rd party for our weekly payroll for both office and field employees.

What we're trying to find out from this group:

1. Which third-party companies have you used for Foundation Software implementations (or deep customizations/integrations) in a union-subcontractor context?

2. What were your biggest lessons learned (good and bad) from those engagements - e.g., in scope-definition, data conversion, job-cost structuring for union work, payroll/benefit integration, change-management, timeline, cost overruns, etc.?

3. For companies running Foundation Software in a union/subcontractor setting, what extra things should we build into our vendor engagement (e.g., union payroll rates by local/trade, certified payroll reporting, change-order flows unique to subcontractors, multiple divisions and joint ventures, etc.)?

4. If you did choose a particular 3rd party for payroll, how did you arrive at that decision? Would you recommend them again?

Any referrals, war-stories, or "you should avoid this" tips are very welcome.

Thanks in advance!

LK

------------------------------
Ligia Keith
Chief Financial Officer
Couts Heating & Cooling, Inc.
Corona CA
(714) 493-1399
------------------------------