Performance Contracting Inc. (PCI) is ranked one of the top ten specialty contractors in the U.S. They have a commitment to innovation which allows them to complete projects efficiently and with quality craftsmanship. At their Austin, Texas branch, Dawn Moers, the company’s Branch Administrator, has a lot on her plate to keep the administrative functions running smoothly.
A main focus of her job is accounts receivable and collections. Part of that is sending Texas monthly notices to protect their lien rights and secure payments on every job. This process caused Dawn a lot of stress in past years, but with the help of Levelset – a full lien rights management solution – Dawn no longer carries the full burden of Texas monthly notices.
Read the case study below to learn more.
The challenge
Keeping up with Texas monthly notices on 100 or more jobs per month was extremely time-consuming.
“We probably could’ve used a full-time person for two days each month to prepare all of our monthly notices because it completely takes us away from our normal daily tasks,” said Dawn. “For one thing, it would take two of us just to stuff envelopes and take care of postage on 120 letters per month.”
Not only did this process take up hours of valuable time, but also Dawn occasionally struggled with ensuring the accuracy of key details on their notices.
“We don’t always get the general contractor’s name or the bonding information. And I’m sure there are times we lost our lien rights because we didn’t have the correct job information. I would get letters back because we had sent them to the wrong address or had some other incorrect detail,” Dawn explained.
Even though the monthly notice process was extremely slow, manual, and stressful for Dawn, she thought this was the norm until she was introduced to Levelset.
The solution
By partnering with Levelset, Dawn is able to automate the monthly notice process and take a lot of manual effort off of her plate.
PCI’s accounting system sends job and invoice info to Levelset, and Levelset automatically creates the correct monthly notices for all jobs with outstanding payments. All of these notices are queued up in Levelset where Dawn can review them.
“From there I will print a report, and I can weed out the people who pay and move them out of the monthly notice queue,” said Dawn.
All remaining notices are automatically sent on the 15th of the month, the day they are due.
Meanwhile, Levelset’s Scout researches and verifies PCI’s job details to ensure that the notices are valid and contain accurate information.
“The only other time I go in and touch the process is if Levelset Scout finds something that is missing. That’s all I have to do and I’m done for the month. Levelset takes things from there to ensure my notices are sent to the customer. They have taken a ton of weight off my shoulders,” Dawn said.
The results
“Before Levelset, I spent a good 16 to 20 hours on monthly notices. Now, I spend maybe four hours a month on these notices,” says Dawn.
She now spends a quarter of the amount of time she previously spent creating and sending monthly notices, which means Dawn has more time back in her day to focus on her administrative work and other vital parts of her job.
Now, Dawn is confident that PCI’s lien rights are always protected.
“There are times in the past where we probably lost our lien rights because we had the wrong address or we missed a deadline,” said Dawn. “But in the 18 months that we’ve been using Levelset, we’ve never missed a notice deadline or had any situation where we couldn’t move forward with filing a lien if needed.”
Overall, Dawn sees Levelset as a vital part of operating a construction company in Texas.
“Our company has seen the value in Levelset because Texas has such strict lien laws. Every branch of PCI in Texas is now on Levelset. The training is easy, and it’s a great product,” Dawn said.
Discover other construction companies that have simplified their notice process by using Levelset.