From Sage 100 to Autodesk + AI: How a 3rd-Gen CFO Runs 475 Jobs with KPIs, WIP & PM Finance Bootcamps | Kim Beeler-Peterson

Rishi Srivastava (00:41)
Today our guest is Kim Beeler-Peterson. Kim, welcome.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (00:45)
Thank you.

Rishi Srivastava (00:45)
First section here is on your journey, family business, and leadership. You’ve been part of Beeler Construction since your early days working part-time in high school and college, and you became a part owner in 1993. Over those 32 years as an owner, moving through roles from executive VP to CFO, how has your perspective on financial leadership evolved

throughout the journey?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (01:13)
Boy, you really age me there when you said the 32 years. yeah, so basically when I was in high school and college, I just helped with bookkeeping. My dad, it was very important to him to make sure that the other employees saw the hard work that the family did. So I would wash trucks, clean the office, run to get permits, plans, whatever it took. But I’m really glad that I got that experience to see more than just the pieces of paper that came across my desk.

When I started, we had absolutely nothing in the computer. Everything was on the old school general ledgers. Everything was done by hand. And shortly after, my dad retired in 93, is the year that I started buying my shares. And at that time it was my two brothers and myself. So the three of us are the second generation.

And we decided that with, you know, we’d range anywhere between 50 and 100 employees, that it would be more advantageous than hand computing all of the payroll taxes. And we were unions. So I think we were signatory to four or five unions at that time. It would be more efficient to put in the computer. So we really started with just our payroll on the computer.

And I was learning the books. You know, obviously the year end was December 31st. So my mom kind of pushed all this paperwork over to me and said, here’s the name of the CPA and taxes are due on March 15th. Good luck. And so the, you know, the C P – A at the time was very patient with me and we learned a lot together. Just making sure that I was understanding what we were doing and what we were reporting and what they all needed.

We did have a office manager at the time, so she had a good handle on things. It wasn’t like I was on an island by myself, but she wasn’t shown any of the financials. So when I had to work with the CPA, I had to understand what they all meant. So did that for many years, a couple years after that. Then we put the rest of our, all of our books on the computer. And at the time it was called the Master Builder.

And I’m sure a lot of other fellow CFOs and controllers out there have heard of Sage 100 Contractor. Basically Sage bought Master Builder, incorporated it with the other ERPs that they had and so on and so forth.

long winded story, I basically took all of our manual hand books and put them into more of a digital format and it was DOS based. So then basically during those probably 20 to 25 years, I did you know anywhere from bookkeeping, we didn’t have a safety program, so I was our safety director.

you know, any kind of payroll compliance changes that came along way, whatever it was, we just had to incorporate those. We didn’t really have anyone else to do that for us. So my brothers and I both, all three of us were very heavily involved in the operations of the company as well.

So it wasn’t until at that time our office manager retired and we hired a new office manager to replace her. And this new office manager had ⁓ a CPA degree. So she and I really then elevated things, more of the accruals and the different, not just more of how to say this, as the expenses came in, but more of accruing for the expenses. So kind of where I’m getting at and where my journey has been is I’ve learned and especially now,

forward is so much more important than just reporting from the past. just trying to think. Yeah, so I mean just basically everything I’ve learned I’ve learned on my own and from help from the CPA that would help us prepare taxes.

I have to say as of the last five years, I became a member of the CFMA. In the first two years, it was just looking at the cafe connection and maybe connecting with a few people. But last year, I went to the conference and I also joined a peer group two years ago. And that was majorly pivotal in expanding me looking into the future and acting more of a CFO than just a controller.

Rishi Srivastava (05:01)
Yeah. You know, the field to office gap is huge usually in construction and you started in field and now you are in office and you know both sides very well. Am I thinking about it right? In some way?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (05:14)
My brothers worked in the field. They both were signatory to the union. So I would say they really bridged the gap from the field to the office. And I was always very close to all of our carpenters. They’d come in the office on a regular basis. I think pretty much all of our employees were invited to my wedding. Just they watched me grow from being a little girl and always being with my dad. And so they always had the utmost respect for the office.

Rishi Srivastava (05:23)
Mm-hmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (05:38)
⁓ They never really felt that gap. As we grew though, we noticed the gap and became bigger and the more people we had. So it was really important for us to make sure that they knew we care about them. It’s important for them to be a partner in the whole cycle of a project.

Rishi Srivastava (05:54)
Beeler is now a three generation family business with your nephews as third generation and your own kids working in the company. How do you keep the family legacy alive while still making tough data-driven financial decisions?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (05:58)
Yes.

Good question. One thing that when my parents raised my brothers and I and I’m very pleased that my nephews are in the same realm and I’m hoping that my children are. It’s hard to rate your own children but…

Just you always have to work twice as hard and you’re not going to get any recognition for being family. And the Beeler name is so important to all of us. we try to keep legacy speaking. ⁓ Some of our employees worked with my dad. And we try to keep my dad’s jokes alive. Both my parents have passed.

My brothers are both retired and a lot of our new employees have never even met my brothers. Every once in a while they’ll pop in, but my brothers are definitely not around as much as what my dad and my mom were. And think that was being my dad was the founder. This was really, really important to be close, just to be involved and still be here and present. My brother’s not so much, which is interesting, but…

So yeah, my brothers were gonna retire and then all of a sudden one of our largest clients, which was a big part of our work, went bankrupt. I’m sure many people are part of the Bonton group. And my brothers had noticed that my nephews and I were kind of going in a different direction in terms of modernization and things really getting more data and technically advanced and they didn’t want to hold us back. So they retired. And I was…

super nervous because obviously my two nephews, which I still saw them as me changing their diapers, and it was me. But they both were just like their dads, hardworking, the same type of personalities, and it was great. I was very pleased. My one nephew his sales ability is amazing, and he hit the pavement hard and it returned quickly. Shortly thereafter, you know, COVID hit and

They were great, the three of us put our heads together and were able to get through any kind of tough situation. My children, 29 and 27, are in the company now, working, not ownership. And one is in project management and one is in marketing. And the key is they do not report to me. We think that’s really important for them to get that experience and have that disconnect.

Obviously, the overall, I try to meet with them and have them understand the overall meaning of different things and decisions that we’re making.

But yeah, just, you know, hard work, work twice as hard. You’re not going to get any recognition, so don’t expect it. you know, an employee can do one thing and you can do the same thing and you’re the one that’s going to get blamed for it harder, just the way it is. It was no different than it was for my brothers and I as it is my kids. They’re not owners right now and we will ⁓ go through the process as if they are going to be the right fit, then they’ll have that opportunity soon.

Rishi Srivastava (08:40)
Yeah.

I was working at Bank of America and one thing that they did was never had like a supervisor and employee have personal relationship, whether it’s dating or family, you know, they were very strict about that. So I’m glad that you’re sort of doing the same thing here at Wheeler.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (09:04)
Yes.

Rishi Srivastava (09:05)
You mentioned that as the company grew from roughly 11 to 17 million dollars up to 50 to 60 million dollars in revenue, your role evolved from owner operator to a true CFO. What did you have to let go of personally to make that transition work?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (09:23)
So a couple years ago we had made the decision about three years ago that we were going to have a formal HR position in the company. And that was probably my first let go of something that I just handled. And it was tough. And she would get frustrated in the beginning because I’d keep my fingers on things. And I learned I was holding her back by not letting her and trusting her to do what she was going to do.

shortly thereafter we had put the search for actually more of a true controller and she came with a lot of experience and I am very lucky because she’s just amazing. She thinks the exact same way as I do. But it’s tough. It’s really tough to let go of some of that highly sensitive information that you normally don’t let go of. And so we’re still in the process of it. She’s only been here about five months.

but I’ve had to let go of that. And then the third piece is the operations. We actually hired two project directors and so I’m not going to know about.

single project and I’m not going to understand what’s all going on. I try to ask good questions so they know that I care just to be involved but I don’t have eyes on that and it’s tough. It’s been like a five-year journey and but I can’t be my CFO role looking into the future if I’m constantly looking in the past and sticking my nose into areas that I shouldn’t be so.

I base my information more on KPIs and looking at, know, once in a while I’ll fish around in a few files, try to look at different reports and different things just to keep my head in the game, not having involvement in the day-to-day.

Rishi Srivastava (10:56)
Do you have a CEO or president role in the company as well?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (10:59)
So my nephew Dave is our president. We do not have a CEO at the time.

Rishi Srivastava (11:02)
Okay, ⁓

and that role is probably focused on sales and operations.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (11:08)
Yes.

Rishi Srivastava (11:09)
The next section here comes on project financial health and PM acumen. You talked about quote unquote ping ponging work between accounting and project management as Beeler grew. Where do you draw the ideal line today between what lives in accounting and what must live with the PMs and their support teams?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (11:31)
So this is still another work in progress right now. As we grew, we realized we needed PM support. So years ago, with all my other roles that I did, I also basically was the PC APM position, along with our office manager. And so they were used to having us draw up the purchase orders and subcontracts. So we started with letting them do, so they do all the purchase orders and all the subcontracts, and us in accounting.

We’ll just audit it when we get invoices in. there’s not a subcontract, then we’ll push back and making sure that they’re issuing all those committed cost documents. We had to stop with the change orders. So our project management teams are managing all the change orders and they’re communicating to the clients and to the vendors.

but the actual paperwork right now is happening in accounting and we’re trying to get that off of our plate because what’s happening is, is too many fingers touching it and in terms of efficiency, it just doesn’t make sense. Why they have to, you know, create the email of all the information where they could just go into a portal and enter it. Sage 100 is not very user friendly on that front and the reporting is not on like a one dashboard.

So we decided late last year to invest in Autodesk. And so right now we’re doing the onboarding of that. And our goal is to have the project management teams do all of that on their end and accounting is more of an audit.

Rishi Srivastava (12:57)
Hmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (12:57)
So,

accounting is way too heavily involved. And what’s frustrating is when the project managers have the time to put the documents of their quest together, accounting usually takes a day or two to finish up what they’re working on to dive into it. Well, by that time the project managers are onto the next job, then they have to dive back in. And then when they’re ready to talk about it, accounting’s onto the next job. So we’re realizing that it’s slowing things down and it’s frustrating both sides.

So we’re working really hard at what’s going to live in each function and it seems like every month we’re getting a little bit and a little bit more and delegating that.

Rishi Srivastava (13:34)
That makes sense. you have any plans to move out of Sage 100 at some point?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (13:38)
So we at first were going to move out of Sage 100 and Acumatica was one of the leading ⁓ ERPs that we were going to look at. And we realized that when we interviewed a bunch of other fellow CFOs in my peer groups.

that most project managers work out of a project management software like Procore or like ACC, not necessarily the accounting software. And let the accounting do the ERP and let project management do the project management software. So instead of us learning two new platforms, we’re starting with ACC, which we’ve been told can easily roll into Acumatica or potentially another ERP. So for right now, we’re hanging tight.

But I can’t say never will we move because I think we’re going to have to look at other platforms.

Rishi Srivastava (14:22)
Yeah, think Sage may be setting it here too in the next 5 to 10 years, Sage 100.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (14:28)
Yeah, it’s funny, we’ve heard that often, but yet when we’ve actually asked them, and we did talk to one of the, I’m trying to think of what their title was, whoever’s in charge of deciding that. And he said, no, no, it’s not sun setting, but we’re it more often than not. So we know we need to prepare for it.

Rishi Srivastava (14:44)
When there is like a critical mass ⁓ of customers left, that’s when they were like, okay, this is the investment and this doesn’t justify continued operation. So you see newer project managers struggling with budgeting and committed costs, almost like they’d never run a household budget. What are some of the most common financial mistakes you see PMs make on jobs and how do those show up in

gross Profit at Closeout.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (15:10)
So we had made a requirement that every project that’s not a T&M must have a budget uploaded. And we have some interim reports that show it black and white when they’re missing. And yet still the budgets are missing. They’re doing better. A lot of our work that we do is like GMP. So we might get like $100,000.

to get the project started. And change order one is when the plans are secured, all the bids are in, and then the actual schedule values are set. And we find that, I don’t wanna say it’s laziness, but it takes time to incorporate all that into one budget. So sometimes that happens that way. But we’re getting much, much better. The biggest piece that we’re noticing they’re not doing is the change orders. They’re entering them in like an Excel document,

but the way Sage is, you have to manually enter them in Sage. And it’s not an easy process. And right now, accounting is the only one that knows, and we just don’t have the capacity to being entered. So we usually do them when they’re approved, or we need to send out the committed cost to the subcontractors. So we’re working on getting that much more up to date and not so manual, so that that dashboard is visible.

The part that I’m frustrated with and I don’t understand is you will see where the initial budget, let’s say, is $10,000 and they’ll issue a subcontract for $12,000. Well, where’s that $2,000 coming from? well, we’ve got it. It’s, you know, over here in this other area. Well, my concern is there’s so many jobs that our project managers are managing. What if they forget about it?

So we do watch the, you know, interim committed costs. We’ve updated a lot of our, actually our work in progress report that you can clearly see. Here’s the budget, here’s the committed costs, here’s what’s left. But right now, Sage 100 doesn’t see labor as a committed cost. So if they don’t enter that into the change order, change to the budget, you’re not going to see it quickly. So…

It’s too manual right now and we need to get it more automated and that’s what we’re working out at ACC. It’s baffling to me that if you have a budget for 10 and you just gave us a contract for 12, that’s pretty basic math.

Rishi Srivastava (17:21)
Yeah, but like we in America, like to have debt, So credit card debt, mortgage, you know.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (17:24)
Yeah.

Rishi Srivastava (17:28)
If you had to design a quote unquote financial boot camp for new PMs, what are the three to five concepts you’d insist they master before you trust them with a two to five million dollar project?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (17:41)
I would just say, you know, from the initial budget to capturing the initial set of size to issuing the committed costs to then the interim financial. if it’s a three month job at minimum three times that month, they need to be taking a look at all the different factors. And then just being creative with the vendor negotiation to the communication to the field.

Basically just the lifestyle or the life cycle of a project. There’s probably five to seven high points that need to be addressed that they would have to understand. We just invested in Trainual, which is like an online portal for basically SLPs. And we are rolling them out like crazy and making them take a test.

And when we find that some of our newer project managers aren’t understanding a concept, we can then go into that trainual and basically reset that person’s permissions that they have to take it again and test on it. So we’re leaning on that as a resource.

So would say we had new PMs once that training was fully built out with every piece of that project life cycle. Our goal is to have them go through that before we would hand a project over to them.

Rishi Srivastava (18:57)
If I was one of your PMs, I would have a lot of troubles with you because I don’t like training.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (19:02)
It’s a fun platform. It’s not horrible. It’s if the person that’s writing it, if they put too much time into it and too many steps, you get bored.

Rishi Srivastava (19:11)
Yeah. Beeler does many small dollar jobs, but in high volume. How does that change your approach to job cost tracking and forecasting compared to a contractor that lives mostly in big multi-year projects?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (19:28)
That’s a great question. We invested in Power BI. And Power BI is linked to our ERP. And the neat thing about Sage 100 Contractor is that it runs a compute for each job. So every single job that gets entered into our system, and we have probably 475 that are open at any given time. Now, they’re not huge, but they can run from 10,000 up to about 10 million.

And those smaller jobs, we have different coding. For example, it’s a one contract amount. And this Power BI can take the raw costs and add a margin and get us close to where it should be. So that way, we know the triggers that, this job has been sitting open quite a long time. You need to really push down and get a purchase order.

There’s many different triggers that we have to keep track of all the different project sizes. But sage 100 has been a power BI. We would not be able to do it without those two tools.

Rishi Srivastava (20:30)
Yeah, lots of job cost tracking for you.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (20:33)
Yes, and we do do, even though we run our formal wip at the end of the month, we do a mid-month, we call it a PM report, project manager report, and it has all the dates, it has all the information, and again, with some different triggers, you know, if this is more than that, you need to take action. If this is under this, you need to take action. You know, same thing with AR aging, to make sure that we’re not losing track of some of these old jobs.

So we really, really have, I’m gonna say it’s been four years of putting more and more reports in Power BI and then having formal KPIs that are documented and measured so that we know if something’s off track that we need to dig into it.

Rishi Srivastava (21:12)
So you have written formal KPIs.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (21:15)
yes, we have too many KPIs. We just got yelled at by, we went through an accountability coach training with our leadership team and he saw I think we have, I don’t know, 30 KPIs and he said you should have five. Each department can have multiple but when you’re talking as a leadership team you should only have five.

Rishi Srivastava (21:33)
there is a quote by somebody like if you have more than like 10 priorities you have no priorities.

The next section is working in occupied healthcare, retail, and emergency work. Most of your work is commercial, union, and in occupied spaces, hospitals, retail, manufacturing, senior living. How does working in live facilities change the way you think about risk, contingency, and schedule from a financial standpoint?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (22:00)
⁓ Risk speaking, the training for all the field is very important. When you talk about certificates of insurance as well, we put a lot of overhead time into managing those certificates of insurance to make sure that if something happens, we’re fully covered.

an attorney as well because you’re working amongst all of our clients’ clients and so there’s obviously more risk involved there as well. In terms of contingency, many of our healthcare is GMPs so there’s basically a hundred percent open book and so we spend again a lot of time and energy into making sure that we’re crossing our T’s and dotting our I’s.

What are the things with contingency? Schedule, it’s a headache for our field operations. The superintendents and the project managers work very closely with field ops. And our field ops guy, he’s actually kind of a character. He walks around with his hands swaying all the time because our scheduling changes very, very rapidly. So basically, we’ve invested the overhead and the training. We have a lot of…

superintendents come in the office often talk about how important it is because we’re basically under the microscope anytime we’re in a facility. The health care facilities especially there’s a long line of competitors wait right behind us that are waiting to get in for any kind of hiccup that we might do so we just have to stay very proactive but we’ve been doing this I mean health care is probably newer but retail we’ve been doing since the 60s.

My dad had a different company before Beeler and that’s all that they did was working in occupied spaces. So it’s something that we’ve just learned over the years and are doing it really well.

Rishi Srivastava (23:37)
I’m actually very impressed by construction company owners like yourself because construction is a very tough and competitive business.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (23:44)
It is.

Rishi Srivastava (23:44)
The next question is, you mentioned picking up a million dollars of work overnight after the five-floor hospital flood. When that kind of emergency project hits, what does, quote unquote, good financial leadership in a crisis look like to you?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (24:01)
So making sure that all the job costs are recorded properly, all the documentation is going out, we find that there’s some vendors and our employees. Our employees get paid every week, so outside of them having to get up in the middle of the night to rush to those emergency jobs, we make sure that we keep track of that, spread that out amongst all of our employees, but that they’re taking good tracking when they enter their time.

so that when we get to the initial, I guess, the situation and analyze it, we need to make sure that we get them back in business, but also track all the costs and keep the client in communication of what it’s gonna cost. The other part too is most of them are reimbursed by insurance, so the insurance is not gonna take loose books. Everything has to be very detail-oriented. And some of our vendors, we end up having to pay before we even,

Rishi Srivastava (24:46)
Yeah, yeah.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (24:51)
know the scope of the project because otherwise they’re not going to react. So it’s just pretty much putting a really good team together, making sure that we don’t overwhelm any one team or any one group, and making sure that we have all the financial information tracked and ready to go because the insurance and the clients want to know where they’re at financially.

The other thing what happens too is once an event like that happens, a lot of the facilities will, hey, let’s refresh, change the color scheme, whatever it might be, which they know will come out of their pocket. But then we have to keep separate books on what’s going to be reimbursed from insurance and what might be reimbursed from the client while they already have so many things being disrupted.

Rishi Srivastava (25:26)
Hmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (25:31)
I know this not financially speaking, we really pride ourselves on, we had invested and put a lot of money into HEPA filters. They call it negative airspace. So they’re basically these hard walls that we’ve invested in and our employees can step into this area, the air is exchanged and then they step into the construction area. So we can do our work next to where a surgery is happening.

So that’s not really financially, but that’s one of our fortes of why we get more and more work because we have all those tools and training and the ability to allow those surgeries to keep happening or retail wise too. They still have shoppers that are coming in at Thanksgiving. They need to get these clothes in an area that the shoppers can shop.

Rishi Srivastava (26:14)
Yeah, you know when your clients are in such a big trouble, you may as well feel that trouble.

The next section is on people, roles, and organizational structure. Early on, accounting at Beeler behaved almost like a project coordinator function. As you have formalized HR, ERP, and project accounting, how have you redesigned roles so that everyone is quote unquote sitting in the right seat?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (26:42)
Yeah, good question. That’s been a tough one because, you know, handing that off to the project managers makes accounting very nervous that they’re going to lose that site on the audit piece. But those reports I had mentioned before, the PM report and our WIP report really helps to make sure that we’re reconciling that they’re keeping up financially speaking.

Another thing is we cross train our PCs in our APMs because some of the smaller projects don’t need both a PC and an APM. So some of the APMs have to do PC work, which ends up working out really well because then if someone’s on vacation or we get a plethora of work in one team, they can cross train and help each other.

those PM reports and WIP really keep us on track like I had mentioned. Dates and triggers have to be maintained by everyone. the PMs can’t, or the PCs can’t blame accounting and accounting can’t blame PC. It’s all basically black and white.

The other thing is we hired that formal talent and culture role, the HR role, as I had mentioned before. She’s been extremely impactful. We built out the job descriptions. We built out how can a project coordinator get to a project APM, then get to a project manager. We had an APM that ended up doing really well with numbers. Actually interviewed her for a project accounting position, and I said she didn’t have enough experience.

So I recommended her to the project management and they ended up hiring her as a PC. She elevated to an APM, but then she hit her ceiling. She just didn’t have that natural knowledge of the construction job site, but she was fantastic with numbers. So we brought her back into our accounting department and she’s just absolutely doing amazing. So our HR has helped us with those cross roles.

to help them grow through the process. Or determine if they should be in accounting or should be into project management.

Rishi Srivastava (28:32)
Once you have somebody working for you, they’re almost your responsibility.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (28:36)
And when you’re thinking about the right seat, you know, it’s really important for us to have, you can have a really, really good person. And if they’re in the wrong seat, they’re not enjoying coming to work and we’re not enjoying working with them. So let’s find the right seat for them before we part ways.

Rishi Srivastava (28:49)
There is this quote, you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will always think that it’s the worst animal on the planet.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (29:00)
That’s true. That’s very true. One thing too, we’ve had, I know this is off the subject of what you’re asking, but we’ve had field employees that have gotten injured to a point where they really shouldn’t be swinging a hammer anymore. And we brought them into the office, probably not as a PC, but like as an APM to grow into a PM. And they’re excellent, excellent employees because they have that field experience.

Rishi Srivastava (29:12)
Hmm.

Mmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (29:25)
So, and I guess we never really did it formally, it just kinda happened. And this director of talent and culture is really measuring everyone’s ability and making sure they’re in the right seat.

Rishi Srivastava (29:37)
makes complete sense. The name of this podcast is Financed at the Job Site. So you’re actually marrying the two. I love it.

You’ve lead heavily on your CPA, CFMA peers, and even classes to grow into the CFO role. For someone coming up a similar experience first path, what support network or habits would you say are non-negotiable?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (30:00)
I would say depending on the size of the company, many of the smaller companies don’t need a controller and a CFO. I mean, you can be in both of those roles, but when you get to a point where whether you’re applying for one or the other, understanding the difference between what a controller does and should do and a CFO does and should do, that’s really, really important. Hands down, joining the CFMA is absolutely non-negotiable.

The CCIFP designation that the CFMA puts on, or just the experience. But ⁓ the CCIFP I think is almost, I I had that as a non-negotiable when I hired our controller. I wanted that person to have that designation because construction accounting is so different than any other kind of accounting.

Rishi Srivastava (30:37)
Hmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (30:45)
The CFMA peer group, huge, huge value. That would be another non-negotiable. And you have to be in a good group that participates. I’ve been in one that was highly interactive, best value I ever got. I’ve been in one with no interaction. I switched from that group. And then I was in one that was kind of interactive and kind of not. And I think I’ve just decided that I’ve maybe grown out of what the peer group is speaking of.

and now I’ve retained a CFO consultant. And he and I meet probably once, twice a month, and both of us have grown so much almost together in just learning and what’s important to measure, what reports are important for forecasting. So having a mentor is huge for a consultant.

Rishi Srivastava (31:14)
Hmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (31:30)
The other thing that I think is a non-negotiable is having this role is the ERP consultant that you have. If they are also your IT consultant, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of SYSCON, but they are an amazing partner. We could not do all the reporting, tracking, custom reports without them.

And so when you have someone that understands what you need in order to do your reporting and be the best in your role as a controller or CFO, having someone that understands your software and what you can or cannot do is priceless. And they actually put together a peer group that we’re members of. So dealing with other construction CFOs and controllers that use Sage 100 Contractor.

we get together about once a month and talk about different reports or things that we need to prepare for our groups.

Rishi Srivastava (32:23)
You just gave me an idea. I run a construction accounts payable software company. I may actually organize a group for my customers to be able to interact with each other. Yeah, that could be valuable.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (32:26)
Morning.

Rishi Srivastava (32:36)
When you look at your best project managers and accountants, what are the behaviors or mindsets that make them great partners to each other rather than adversaries?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (32:47)
I would say they don’t place blame on each other. That’s the biggest piece, that they work together to come to the greater good. The information that each of them provide for the other, having it more proactive than reactive. I remember if anyone else out there has to prepare GMPs for the open book projects.

If the project accountant can be prepared when the project manager sits down almost with recommendations, it is absolutely amazing how fast those meetings and painless those meetings can be. And if the PMs can keep their files updated instead of waiting for a month of activity to be posted the day the billing is supposed to go out.

Rishi Srivastava (33:14)
Mmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (33:30)
you know, it frustrates. both parties being proactive versus reactive. And that they bring solutions, not problems. So if you can put two really positive mindsets together, you can solve anything. You really can.

Rishi Srivastava (33:35)
Hmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (33:45)
And then just knowledge of each other’s roles and just to understand that, you know, the project managers are dealing with a lot more than just numbers. The accountants think that their numbers are the only thing that matters.

They’re dealing with, I mean, job site frustrations, vendor frustrations, material frustrations, and the numbers, if the accountants can try to keep the information succinct and easy to understand, so they’re just basically yes, no, yes, no, versus trying to develop the response, that helps a lot. And just working collaboratively. The best success, I think, is just being a team together.

Rishi Srivastava (34:23)
I’ve talked to several project managers in this show and there is like this tough job which is sitting in between the field and the office you know both sides don’t understand them in some ways.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (34:33)
For sure. And you know what? That HR that put the job descriptions together, sometimes when I hear someone that’s frustrated, I will take the job description and I will show them all the things that they are responsible for and just mention, hey, give them a break. They’ve got a lot going on right now. And try to understand where they’re coming from and not on anywhere on here. What you’re having a frustration with this is actually in their job description.

Rishi Srivastava (34:47)
Mmm.

I love it.

The last session here comes on ERPs, Autodesk, and AI and Construction Finance. You’re running Sage 100 Contractor today, layering Autodesk on top with an Agave connector so PMs can see a job on one dashboard instead of five different ERP screens. What are you hoping Autodesk will fix in that PM versus accounting experience? And what worries you about adding another system?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (35:25)
The first thing is that better dashboard so that the project like you had mentioned with Sage 100 you have to go into multiple reports and basically have a spreadsheet on the side to put all the information together where the demo of ACC is all in one dashboard. The other thing is that we’re not entering the budget changes into the ERP real-time. We’re doing it more when we have to execute the changes whether it’s to the client or to the

the vendor. And so having that real time will give us that dashboard and the ability to let the client know where we are in a job within minutes. The preparation for air invoicing, all of that will be done in ACC versus us trying to do it in Sage. So I think that the project managers will have a better appreciation for that schedule of values that has to be developed on the front end. And then we…

have heard that GC pay can be added to ACC. So one other thing that we’re doing manually is our compliance and lien waiver tracking. And having those vendor portals, they can’t enter an invoice unless they have the compliance and lien waivers they agreed to in the subcontract. So we’re really, really hoping for increasing efficiency and being able to take more volume without having to add more people.

We’re going to protect our gross profit. We’re going to be able to give better communication to our clients as to where they are because we do so much that’s in occupied spaces. Anytime that you open a wall and the scope is less than what you expected, that gives you extra money that the client can use for something else. So just better visibility, better tracking, better financial success.

And to the last part you said about what worries us is that we’re going to invest all this time in ACC and Sage 100 and Sage 100 Sunsets. That’s our biggest concern. Or that with us on

Rishi Srivastava (37:12)
Yeah.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (37:15)
handing off that reconciliation on the front end that accounting does to project management, just hoping that they, that their math works. That’s what we always joke about here. The math has got to work. And you can’t hit save if the math doesn’t work, is what we’re hoping.

Rishi Srivastava (37:28)
If I’m a betting man, know, the Sage 100’s vulnerabilities are increasing as time goes. you know, if lots of people are moving out of it, eventually the people who are towards the tail end of the move, they’re going to be forced to move

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (37:43)
Yes. One thing we did find out is our IT consultant, SYSCON, they have taken on Acumatica. And so they will be putting together a program. If Sage 100 Contractor Sunsets, we’re going to not have as much change because we’d be using the same consultant to help us transfer to Acumatica if that’s what we choose.

Rishi Srivastava (38:03)
So I’m about to run an episode on ERP transitions. So, and I was talking to a consultant here who’s going to be on my show. It could take six months of work to get data from one ERP to another ERP. It’s just a very painful process. ⁓

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (38:17)
Yes.

The new controller that I just hired, she’s done two of them. So that gives me hope that I wouldn’t be sitting on an island by myself trying to drive it. She’d be, you know, she’d, could take team to drive it. So.

Rishi Srivastava (38:30)
Have you done any of the transitions yourself? No, Any of the ERP transitions?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (38:33)
No, we’ve

been on Master Builder which turned into 100 since 1996. Yeah, 40 years.

Rishi Srivastava (38:41)
wow, yeah.

Actually, your controller will be a good guess for that ERP transition show that I’m looking for. More guess.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (38:49)
Yeah,

feel free to reach out to her. She’d be a great one.

Rishi Srivastava (38:52)
Yeah. The last question here Kim’s on, you said AI has been freaking amazing, even helping you define what a CFO should do and writing job descriptions. How are you practically using AI today in your finance and operations work? And where do you see the biggest opportunity for construction companies to benefit from it over the next few years?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (39:17)
So AI ⁓ obviously has been something that a lot of people have struggled to wrap their heads around and other people jump in with two feet. I started with using it to understand contracts. Well, just like everyone else, you write an email or you write a response. Okay, everyone knows how to use AI for that.

But I still need to lean on our attorney. But at least before I talk to her, I can get the concept, the basic concept of what is in it. There’s also times when I’ve negotiated, you know, our attorney tells us what to negotiate. I go back to the client. They give me a clean version. I can upload both versions and AI can help me understand did they actually do the changes that they said they did.

Rishi Srivastava (40:01)
Mmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (40:01)
I use it a lot for basic. I still lean on our attorney for the nuts and bolts and the concepts, but at least just kind of the basics of eliminating all the obvious and just going to the few things that need to have legal advice.

The other thing too is Wisconsin is like the worst state that we’ve worked in for sales tax, sales and use tax. It’s not cut and dry. Their definition in Wisconsin of real property is very process oriented. And so years ago, I’d have to read the publication over and over and over.

and try to basically decide myself. Now, I use AI to type the question in, and it spits back if it’s taxable or not. Then I’ll go to the publication and verify it, but it’s been pretty dead on. And then also when we go into new states, just to ask AI what’s all the requirements. We had some issues with state portals. It helped you where to go.

Rishi Srivastava (40:43)
Hmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (40:58)
I had put that the portal wasn’t working like the instructions said, and it recognized that that was an issue, and it gave me the workaround. So just really trying to use it as an agent.

I’ve to the emails or responses. I’ve even had some struggles with communication with some of our employees. And I put what my role is, and I put what their role is. And it actually coached me on how to understand their mindset and deliver it in such a fashion that it would be a positive conversation versus a negative conversation.

Co-pilot is linked to Microsoft 365, which we have all of the different features. And so what’s neat is you can actually ask it, hey, can you find that email that I had with our CPA? I think it was last year that we talked about the ERP credit and what they recommended I do for this and that. And it found the email and it extracted the information and helped me get my answer quickly.

I could go on and on and on. yeah, the other exercise that we did is us as owners went through our shareholder agreements, because they’re still the version that my father wrote in 1986. And the three of us put our notes and we asked AI to summarize what we were aligned on and what we weren’t aligned on.

Rishi Srivastava (42:08)
Mm-hmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (42:18)
Again, I can go on and on and on. Just long, long documents. If you’re trying to find one piece of information, it can help you find a section. And that’s all in finance. I could go on and on about other areas. Excel spreadsheets. I can go in and ask it, okay, the jobs that were completed 30 days ago that haven’t been invoiced, can you identify those jobs? And it gives me a report.

They can tell anything you could ask a spreadsheet, and it will organize it in a manner that you need it. It might be Excel, it might be a Word document, it might create an email. So I use that as well. Yeah, so no, love, and I don’t if you asked this question, part of the question, but opportunities-wise,

My son attended a lean construction and he’s been very very excited about it. He comes home and he says, Mom, you’re not going to believe this. One of our competitors replaced their AP person by AI completely. And obviously I told them, they’re a lot bigger than us, but we can strive to get there. We are in a professional peer group.

with all GCs our same size all over the country and they’re using it for estimating. Like full on, you know, taking it to a job site, putting in a few pieces of information and so we have that on our future wish list of having AI help us with estimating.

Rishi Srivastava (43:40)
Mmm.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (43:41)
And I’m hoping someday it can help me with project financials or bank statements so that I can create all the KPIs and I don’t have to.

Rishi Srivastava (43:48)
Yeah. So we have a billion dollar GC as a customer and they use this for AP and three out of the four AP people, they reassigned to some other roles because that job AI can do very well now. know, it’s like 80, 90%. Well, one more example I was going to give you. You know, Agave, right? They sunset their APIs for us. So we are software vendors. They’re They’re trying to only sell it to now construction companies.

a couple days ago, we got a call, hey, we’re going to sunset this. And six months, you guys got to get out and figure out how you’re going to support your own customers. So just so you know, the vendors are out there and they’re looking for whatever is the best thing for them. So I mean, we were trusting them to be able to kind of let us go for a long time. But now we have to find out an alternate way to replace their connector so that we can continue serving our customers. We’re using their connector to connect with these ERPs.

So the fascinating thing is, a couple days ago, I went to Opus and I just told them, like, Agave has given us deadline to get rid of their connector. Can you change everywhere in our code base, wherever we using Agave, can you give me a native SQL query? know, AI went through our million lines of codes, figured everything out, and changed everywhere Agave to native SQL. And we ran the

And that thing’s like 95 % right. And that’s like, we’re talking about three months worth of work, it dated in like 15 minutes for us. Software developers are in big trouble. The third world countries who’ve kind of taken a lot of jobs in some ways because they were cheaper. AI is going to bring all those jobs back here. Every gigawatt of, I think, data center installed, a million jobs get lost in a third world country.

Yeah, software engineers in big trouble.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (45:34)
Definitely.

Rishi Srivastava (45:35)
Yeah, so I think we are kind of moving ourselves and adapting really fast because the first thing that AI is automating is software.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (45:43)
Yes. ⁓

Rishi Srivastava (45:44)
So anything else you want to say, Kim?

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (45:46)
No, I have to say I’ve really enjoyed all of the podcasts. I’ve been listening to them from the beginning and they’re very interesting and I think really helps me keep sharp at things I may have started and didn’t finish or need to make sure I revisit or keep ahead of. So I really enjoyed your podcasts and I’m honored to have been on one of them.

Rishi Srivastava (46:07)
Yeah, and thank you for giving us this quality content, Kim, and your time. I loved talking to you. Thank you, Kim. Bye.

Kim (Beeler) Peterson (46:12)
Thank you very much. Thank you. Take care.

Bye.