From Bookkeeper to Construction CFO: Krystal Madonia on ERP Migrations, WIP, SOPs & Translating Finance to the Field

Rishi Srivastava (00:42)
Today our guest is Krystal Madonia. Krystal, welcome.

Krystal Madonia (00:46)
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Rishi.

Rishi Srivastava (00:48)
The first section here is on your career journey, non-traditional path to construction CFO.

You didn’t go high school to college to career. Take us into the moment you realized quote unquote, I’m going to build a real finance career anyway. What job were you in and what did you do next?

Krystal Madonia (01:06)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I, like you said, I took about six years in between high school and college, which is definitely not traditional. I took accounting classes in high school and was advised that I should go into accounting, but was resistant to that idea. And also for financial reasons, didn’t go straight to college. So I did a little bit of community college here and there, but

about four or five years after I graduated high school, I was basically doing, you know, a full bookkeeping kind of light accounting position. I was working for a propane company of all things, doing AR and collections and a lot of other accounting related items. And I was.

barely making above minimum wage and was not going anywhere and could see that I was just going to hit this wall of not being able to get any further unless I went back to college. so finally took the plunge, finished my associates and then transferred to Western Washington University and finished my college career. And then from there, it kind of got a little bit more traditional. I went from college to public accounting and

public accounting to private and then back to public and then back to private.

Rishi Srivastava (02:31)
Yeah, it’s totally unusual to have that much a gap in the six years that you talked about.

Krystal Madonia (02:36)
Yeah, it was nice because when I did go to college, then I was really focused on what I wanted to do since I was, you know, further along in life, a little bit more mature, I guess I would say, not in the party mode of many college students. So really was able to just put my head into focusing on getting my degree and where I wanted to go with my career.

Rishi Srivastava (02:43)
Mm.

From receptionist slash bookkeeper energy to controller level thinking. Tell a story about the first time you were trusted with something quote unquote above your pay grade. What happened and why did they pick you?

Krystal Madonia (03:20)
So one of the companies in that kind of bookkeeping era before I fully committed to going back to college, it was a trucking company that worked both in construction and the agricultural space. And they were growing pretty rapidly. And when I came in, I had taken some accounting classes in college above what I had taken in high school.

and had some things I wanted to try. And a lot of the things were process and policy-based, trying to build up some of those things that a small mom and pop business that was growing didn’t have. And so they really kind of said, take the reins and run with it. So we went from a growing fleet of equipment to actually going through and properly numbering, IDing all of our equipment.

inventorying our equipment and then starting to do accounting for that equipment. And then that segued into, you know, doing being the head for the DOT audit that we did. And a lot of those things were, you know, looking back, I was very young and very inexperienced, but it was great exposure because it segued into a lot of the work that I did later in my career.

Rishi Srivastava (04:35)
Equipment accounting is not easy.

Krystal Madonia (04:37)
Yeah, it’s a beast.

Rishi Srivastava (04:40)
I had Yvette as one of the guests, Yvette Aubin She talked about it, equipment accounting in full length, what all goes in there.

Krystal Madonia (04:48)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Rishi Srivastava (04:51)
Public accounting audit to industry and back. What’s one fieldwork moment from your audit days that permanently changed how you run accounting inside a contractor today? Your profile shows deep audit leadership experience, including assurance leadership roles.

Krystal Madonia (05:10)
I think, so one of my favorite, I guess, audit memories that I look back on that I think shaped me the most was my first audit, which I can tell you, you know, who the client was, who the audit team was, where we were, you know, what I was wearing. It’s burned into my brain in a good way. I was very, very fortunate. It was a construction client. It was a very clean construction client, which

as auditors know, there’s good, clean clients, and then there’s some that are messier. And so it was a very clean client. And I had a very great team that brought me up in my infancy in public accounting and taught me many, many soft skills, surprisingly, in that, that first audit week. The senior on that job at the time who I

still stay connected with. He did so much coaching in that period of how to talk to clients, how to talk to non-accountants, you know, as auditors, we’re going in to try and find the mistakes, but how to broach the conversation of mistakes with folks instead of going in and saying, hey, this is wrong, posing it as a, you walk me through what is happening here? And

making it not be a defensive conversation, but an open conversation. And the partner that was on that job, you know, taught me a ton about getting to know people, making a connection with people before asking for, you know, whatever specific question or answer you need. And then just observing the whole team and how they would have communications with the client of

you know, really listening to what they were saying, picking out the little tidbits that they wanted to expand on that would get them the actual answers that they needed.

Rishi Srivastava (07:03)
One thing I think about audit is who’s paying for the audit. Is in construction, the client who you’re auditing, are they the one paying, or is it like somebody else? OK.

Krystal Madonia (07:14)
Yes. Yep. So

our, so when you’re in public accounting, the construction, I mean, you’re independent, but the construction company is the one who is engaging you. They’re the one who have hired you, who have chosen you. And it’s good to have a great long-term relationship with them. You’re going to, in the, in hope you would be working with them year after year after year. So you want to maintain that good relationship. So you don’t want to be going in and.

ruffling feathers and trying to make them feel like they don’t know what they’re doing or that they made mistakes. People are human, people make mistakes. And a lot of the times the mistakes that you find in public accounting are just mistakes. It’s human error, thankfully. But really building those relationships and construction’s a small world as are other industries. So it’s always good to have solid

relationships with your clients or anybody that you come into contact with because you never know where you’re gonna cross paths later in life if you change careers.

Rishi Srivastava (08:19)
And what is the reason for auditing a construction company? A lot of times, you don’t even need to audit construction companies.

Krystal Madonia (08:26)
Yeah, so I did audits and financial statement reviews and compilations. So I kind of did across the board in my time in public accounting. But it’s usually driven off of either, you know, bank or bonding or both. So, you know, the constructions bonding company wants it, the constructions bank for their line of credit or for, you know, if they have long term financing, that’s usually what’s going to be driving their need for

some kind financial statement, engagement.

Rishi Srivastava (08:53)
Fast forward to today. You became CFO at Haley Construction in 2025 and moved up quickly there. What did your first 30 to 60 days look like? What did you walk into?

Krystal Madonia (09:12)
Yeah. So, uh, I walked into a fantastic company. I actually, when, when I interviewed the position they had posted was our kind of accounting staff position, if you will. I had moved to Arizona in 2023. There was no contractors hiring at the time that I moved here. So I actually worked for a law firm for a couple of years, who ironically is

one of the law firms that our construction company uses. But they posted this position and it, I was overqualified for the position they were posting for, but I could see from their website and their LinkedIn page that their CFO had his tagline at the time was happily working in my golden years. So he was wanting to retire. So

I applied on the whim that, you know, maybe they would want somebody to step into that CFO role down the road, which they did, thankfully. So when I hired, we did the interview knowing that I would do that position until the current CFO was ready to retire, which at the time he was saying he wanted to stay another year or two. And then

I came in in May and by August he was ready to retire. So he ended up stepping down at the end of September. But he was a fantastic CFO, had a similar background. He had worked in public accounting and then worked a number of years for different construction contractors in Arizona, had a wealth of knowledge, had built a super strong accounting department, super strong.

processes and procedures. And so now, you know, I’m coming into a very clean accounting department, which is fantastic in a company that’s wanting to grow. So I’m getting the opportunity to give some of my experience with just process and policy procedure implementation to operations, if you will, and how they all

cohesively tie into finance.

Rishi Srivastava (11:19)
I guess as soon as he found the right successor, he was ready to retire.

Krystal Madonia (11:25)
Yeah, yeah, he expedited that quite quickly, but it was great that I did get to do the lower level role here at our company. Because the person that we ended up hiring to step into that role when I moved up was somebody who only had a year of experience. She’s fantastic. I absolutely love her. But she had, only a year of accounting experience under her belt. It wasn’t in construction. And so

knowing, having the firsthand knowledge of doing the processes for this company, because, the processes are all similar, but each company has their own nuances. So knowing firsthand, here’s how we do it here, was good for me to be able to train her in how she was going to execute on those because she wasn’t coming in with experience.

Rishi Srivastava (12:14)
The next section here, Krystal, is on Haley Construction, 70 years, third generation, mixed project types. Paint the picture of Haley Construction. Tell a drive around town story. What’s one project in Prescott that makes you proud because it shows what the company stands for?

Krystal Madonia (12:38)
Yeah, we are quite literally the drive around town, um, construction company. So Haley construction was founded in 1960 and globe Arizona. And then in 1965, it was relocated to Prescott and it started as a residential housing developer. So Jillian, our current owner, her grandparents, um, the tagline is her grandfather said, I had a borrowed thousand dollars.

and a pickup truck and so began Haley Construction. And so the location of our main office is actually the original location from when they relocated to Prescott. It was an old dairy. bought the house. We have a separate building from the house that our offices are in, but the neighborhood, it’s a residential neighborhood that we’re grandfathered into. The residential neighborhood our offices are in.

every house except for the house here on this property and the one across the street were built by Haley. And if you drive up the street, most of the houses are built by Haley. And if you drive down the street, most of the houses are built by Haley. So they, they built, you know, a good number of the houses in the area. And then I went back through our job list the other day, just in preparation for this. it kind of about 1990,

was when they started dabbling in construction. And then the early 2000s is when the commercial construction really started ramping up. But I think we’re definitely much more on the commercial side now. So I’d say we’re about 80 % commercial and 20 % high-end custom residential builds. I mean, I’m so proud to work here and proud of what we do, but I think right now the project I’m

most proud of is we just completed a Center for Learning and Innovation at Yavapai College, which is, you know, the big college here in one of the big colleges here in town. And it’s a state of the art technology facility. They took their existing library, gutted the whole thing, and they have a 360 degree immersive cube

room where you go in and video is projected on the ceiling and the floor and all the walls and all sorts of technology. it’s just great to see, you know, it’s one of the biggest projects we’ve done and one that we’re very, very proud of. we’re right in the thick of grand open. they had their soft opening and then we’re about to do the grand opening. So it’s we’re right in the middle of

that process. But just driving around town, you know, we can point out anywhere, know, municipal buildings, medical buildings, retail spaces, higher education houses, you know, we can go have lunch in a restaurant that we built. have company parties there often. So it’s just fun to be able to point out so many different things that we’ve done.

Rishi Srivastava (15:42)
Yeah. Actually – – who is Haley.

Krystal Madonia (15:45)
So Haley is the last name. So Jillian Haley is our current owner. Her grandparents started it. And one of the things she’s very proud of is her grandmother and grandfather were 50 % owners. So having her grandmother as a 50 % owner in the 60s was not common to have female ownership in that time. And then it passed down to her father and her uncle.

And then her and her stepbrother were involved and then her and her stepbrother took over. And then a couple of years ago, her stepbrother wanted to kind of take a step back. he’s still involved, but he’s not an owner anymore. And so now it’s Jillian. So we’re a hundred percent women owned.

Rishi Srivastava (16:29)
nice. I’m originally from India and my mom’s generation didn’t have property rights actually. So when her dad died, she didn’t get any property. But now my sister, she has property rights. So the laws changed in like 2010, whereby women now have property rights on dad and mom’s property. It’s kind of interesting how that helps women’s empowerment now in India, property rights.

Krystal Madonia (16:53)
Yeah,

yeah, no, it’s crazy to think about, you know, the timelines of some of those things of, wow, it feels like it was a long time ago, but it really wasn’t that long ago, especially in some of the other areas.

Rishi Srivastava (17:08)
Yeah, actually my sister-in-law, she was telling my sister, don’t come to my dad’s or mom’s house, you know, because you don’t belong here. You married, go to your, you know. But like I told my sister, you have property rights now. You own a piece of this property when my mom and dad dies. You know.

Krystal Madonia (17:18)
gosh, no, my gosh.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I’m glad for your sister that she has that.

Rishi Srivastava (17:32)
Yeah.

Residential roots to commercial scale. What was the inflection point where the business truly shifted toward commercial? What changed operationally and financially?

Krystal Madonia (17:45)
Um, so I’d say 2005 to 2010 for Haley construction is definitely kind of the turning point. Um, there’s two very large colleges in town, Yavapai college and Emory Riddle aeronautical university. And that was about the time that Haley started really getting in on projects for those. They obviously had other commercial projects as well, but, um, that was definitely kind of the turning point for the commercial shift.

And I think it just changes. I mean, it changes everything about a company, but you go from. having a large number of jobs to having a smaller number of jobs that are much larger generally. So just, changing the game in. The size and scope and quantity of what you’re doing.

but also it just opens the door with houses other than you’ve got.

your average size house or you have a custom house, you know.

I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s a lot more opportunities in the commercial space as far as you’ve got higher education, you’ve got municipal, you’ve got restoration work, which we love to do, you’ve got retail, you’ve got just so many different things that are so nuanced and so different. And so it just opens up the doors for so many opportunities in different spaces. And then financially, I think it’s just kind of the turning point of where things started getting bigger.

since Jillian’s taken over as owner and even when Alan and Jillian were involved, know, going after more of this higher education work, you know, trying to grow the company, the company’s grown substantially in the last three to five years. So just having that growth, the commercial brings those opportunities and makes those opportunities, I think, a little bit easier to get into.

Rishi Srivastava (19:37)
Yeah, and commercial, when you have these long jobs, the work in progress report becomes very important. So what do you use for your accounting to do work in progress?

Krystal Madonia (19:45)
Mm-hmm.

So we are on a little bit of an antiquated ERP. So we’re on a program called Construction Partner. It does the job, but it’s definitely not as fancy as some of the things that you hear people on right now. It’s not an Acumatica. It’s not even a Sage 300. It’s definitely very basic. But it’s working for now, but we definitely have on the horizon to be

searching for a new ERP in the next year or two. I probably opened the door for every single sales rep to reach out to me now, but we use, so as far as our financial side of things, we are on that program and it does a fine job. We’re able to do all of the job costing we need to do, but it doesn’t obviously doesn’t integrate directly with our operation system, which is

Procore we use for project management. So we are going to be looking for something that has more of an integration with Procore in the future.

Rishi Srivastava (20:53)
A lot of systems, they are moving towards the web and in the cloud-based systems, are very important in nowadays.

Krystal Madonia (20:58)
Mm hmm.

Mm hmm. Yeah. So Procore is, you know, all web based. We have a scheduling program that we’re just rolling out right now that’s web based called outbuild, which integrates with Procore. So yeah, we’re seeing definitely a huge shift towards the web based.

Rishi Srivastava (21:19)
And one of the big pain point is like transitioning these accounting system’s hard. It takes a long time to move from one system to another. There is just so much chaos.

Krystal Madonia (21:23)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that’s why I have it on my agenda for 2027.

Rishi Srivastava (21:31)
Yeah, yeah. I have a friend here who was telling, I don’t want to any ERP migration projects. It’s you know, it’s pain in the a.

Krystal Madonia (21:40)
Yeah, yeah. So this year we’re focusing on, we brought on a new IT consultant that’s helping us make sure we have really strong foundations in all of our IT systems before we start shopping for this ERP system. Because, you

We’re growing, we wanna make sure everything’s super solid. So we’re working with a IT company that works specifically with construction contractors so that they can kind of come in and evaluate where we’re at with just our baseline IT structure before we start going and exploring those options.

Rishi Srivastava (22:18)
Based on what you’re seeing in the market, what do you think is the top three ERPs – for you?

Krystal Madonia (22:24)
gosh, you know, I haven’t really even had a chance to start digging into it yet. I mean, I hear, you know, intaact is obviously popular. Acumatica is really popular. And there’s a third one that the name is escaping me right now that I see talked about the CFMA forums. If folks aren’t members of CFMA, definitely go join CFMA. Because I mean, even just for the

Rishi Srivastava (22:26)
Do.

Krystal Madonia (22:51)
Connection Cafe, which is the online forum where you can post a question, people answer. I mean, it’s worth it just from that standpoint, but I see, you know, this topic is basically always going in some form or another as people talking about ERPs, which ERP integrations with ERPs. So I’ll be definitely digging into that more this summer.

Rishi Srivastava (23:14)
Good luck to you.

Krystal Madonia (23:14)
Thank you.

Rishi Srivastava (23:15)
At $10-20 million revenue, what’s the one finance slash ops discipline that matters most at this size, but most contractors still under invest in?

Krystal Madonia (23:27)
think if you don’t already have a solid WIP schedule, obviously a solid WIP schedule that you’re updating very regularly from a finance standpoint and financials, think those kind of are given, but I would stay standard operating procedures. your SOPs, that’s one of our main focuses in 2026 is recognizing that as we’re growing a lot of our knowledge,

is institutional knowledge. And so as we’re bringing new folks on, getting that institutional knowledge, having it in a way that we can hand somebody a guidebook of this is how Haley does things. this is how we deliver the quality that Haley delivers. We really need to have that better documented. So we have a really solid accounting SOP

And we’re starting to build out our SOPs for the operations side of things to make sure that as new people are coming in, they’re getting consistent instruction, consistent training. Everybody’s doing things consistently across all the Haley projects.

Rishi Srivastava (24:36)
Institutional knowledge transfer is such a big problem.

Krystal Madonia (24:40)
Yeah, we had a superintendent that had been here for 40 years that retired last year. then right now one of our project engineers, she’s been here for 15 years. Our COO has been here for 15 years. Our owner obviously was born and raised in the company. So we have a lot of people with a ton of that institutional knowledge, but making sure that we make that accessible to everybody, whether they

know, have been here for 15 years or whether they started last week.

Rishi Srivastava (25:10)
The next section is translating finance to field. Your quote unquote non-accountant speak superpower. You said you learned how to translate accounting into field language. Give us a real example. What was the quote unquote annoying ask you made of a PM slash super? And how did you explain the why so they actually bought it?

Krystal Madonia (25:37)
Yeah, so I think having the experience of being the lower level employee before going college to public accounting gave me that understanding of what it’s like when you’re working in a position and somebody’s asking you to do something that’s just adding to your day and you don’t understand why, which has helped when I’m interacting with my peers to say like, hey, I really need this.

And here’s why, because the why is always more helpful for folks. you know, just today, one of our PMs, I was asking her if, you know, the client had executed all of their change orders and then elaborated that, hey, you know, in our executive meeting this week, we want to be reviewing the budget for this job. So I want to make sure I can be factoring those in, you know, just giving the context for the why I’m asking for those things. And I think recently,

Some of the recent challenges we’ve had is, know, we let Prescott’s growing area, but it’s still a smaller area. So you end up with subcontractors that are, very mom and pop, you know, they’re great at their operations, but their administrative side usually is, them doing their own accounting or, maybe one person helping them in their office, but they’re not

a sophisticated national general contractor level of accounting. So getting them to understand AIA’s pay apps and the information we need to get them set up properly, that’s been kind of a work in process of, know, a lot of times the contact point is our project manager. So the project manager is the one making

the initial setup with these subcontractors when we’re starting these projects and helping them understand like why I need a W9, why I need their certificate of insurance, why I need, all these things. And instead of just saying, I need you to get this from them, helping give them the tools of here’s a welcome guide that we’ve made, which, you know, we had one and then we’re just continually updating it. So

Here’s a welcome guide you can send to the subcontractors of what’s needed from Haley to work with us. And then more recently, there’s a great video we found online of how to fill out a pay application. So there’s a two-part video, one for the G702 and one for the G703. And I just made up an email template and gave it to all of the folks on our team that…

may need to ask for that from a sub and said, here, you can copy and paste this in. has links to the videos. It has an Excel template version of it that they can fill out. So instead of us just pushing back and saying, you need to submit the correct documentation, we’re sending them an email that says, we need you to send the correct documentation. Here’s a template if your system doesn’t create this template for you. And here’s videos that walk you through how to fill it out.

Rishi Srivastava (28:37)
But they did an experiment in psychology. So some people were copying pages in front of a copier. And this one person, she wants to cut across and get her copy fast. So in one setup, this person went and just said, hey, can I cut you across and get that copy done quickly? So she got about 30 % compliance. In another setup, what

Krystal Madonia (28:57)
Mm-hmm.

Rishi Srivastava (29:02)
they did was she went to the people and said, I need to get this copied because these copies are important. Just framing because the compliance rate went up from 30 to 70%. So just giving even a random reason, people start agreeing to you.

Krystal Madonia (29:14)
Mm-hmm.

absolutely.

Yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

Rishi Srivastava (29:25)
Tell a story about the worst disconnect you’ve seen between field ops and accounting at a prior company. What was the cost of that disconnect? Time, margin, stress, rework.

Krystal Madonia (29:37)
well, I mean, I think we’ve all seen a ton of examples, especially those of us on the audit, you know, in the public side and the audit field, you know, you get lots of experiences where you’re looking through a WIP schedule and you have to go through an interview, you know, like the profit margin on this job isn’t great, what happened. And so most of the times it’s a lack of communication somewhere, just a giant lack of communication, whether it was, the plans weren’t correct.

and we didn’t catch it, was, you know, there was a specific material that needed to be ordered. And so we had to reorder the materials and we had rework and we had time delays. You know, most of these things always go back to a lack of communication. when I worked for Interwest Construction, it was kind of funny because one of my main roles was doing the accounting for all of the equipment.

They’re a heavy civil dirt work company. So they have lots and lots of yellow iron. And my husband was the low boy driver at the time. And low boy drivers are the ones that are hauling all the equipment. And there was numerous times where I would get a phone call from him that said, Hey, did you know we were buying X piece of equipment today? And I would say, no, that’s, I was not aware. Let me go talk to the owner. And he, I would.

basically my husband would be ratting out the owner on spending equipment that we hadn’t budgeted for. So it always just goes back to a lack of communication, I think. So the more you can be communicating, you know, and as the companies get bigger, that’s harder and harder to do. But the more you can be communicating, you know, I pay attention to where fortunately our team is small. We’re in an office where we’re all kind of close together and we can hear what’s going on. And so.

I pay attention when I hear things that the PMs are saying on phone calls or in conversation in the office because, you know, it’s important for me to know what’s going on with these jobs just as much as them because I need to be able to help us budget before we get to the end of the job, not.

Rishi Srivastava (31:43)
so important those budgets.

What’s your personal playbook for getting info from the field without becoming quote unquote that person? Walk us through your actual approach, timing, tone, context, and what you do when someone ghost you.

Krystal Madonia (31:52)
You

Well, I think I’m in the unique position with Haley that I started in a lower role than I’m in currently. So I was able to make really close relationships with our laborers and our superintendents because that position is kind of a key point of contact for some of the day-to-day administrative type tasks. building up

Rishi Srivastava (32:07)
Mm-hmm.

Krystal Madonia (32:29)
close relationships with our folks as much as possible, just so that they feel comfortable talking to me about whatever they want to talk about. And then just every time they’re in, making sure I’m trying to have a conversation with them. You know, I might not need to talk to a superintendent that walks into the office, but they’re the ones out on the job. So I want to know what’s going on. So I’m going to make a point to go say hi and ask them how things are going and see if I can get anything out of them that I didn’t already know about the jobs.

And then that way when I’m coming to them with questions, they’re not caught off guard. They feel comfortable talking, hopefully feel comfortable talking to me. Also just trying to not be mad at them when they have bad news because a lot of the time they’re just the messenger of the bad news. So making them feel comfortable to come to me with bad news if they have it.

Rishi Srivastava (33:22)
Field’s job is very tough. There’s so many variables they’re playing with, weather, client demands, material quality inspections. There’s just so much chaos in the field.

Krystal Madonia (33:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and just trying to be a resource that they feel comfortable coming to for anything. So, you know, if they’re trying to get a hold of the project manager for their job, you know, they can feel comfortable calling me. And even if it’s not really my job, I’ll try and help them as best I can. So it’s not uncommon for laborers to be calling me to be asking if they should be buying, tools for our company or.

you know what they should be doing about their pickup or whatnot. And like we had a superintendent on a job, the PM for the job, she was in a meeting. So he couldn’t get ahold of her, couldn’t get ahold of our COO. So he called me and he’s like, one of those subs on this job is, you know, really pushing back on me about following our safety protocols. And he’s saying that he didn’t sign anything that said, so I was able to go pull up their subcontract and email him a copy and say, just pull this up on.

on your phone, show them like this is the subcontract they signed with the safety requirements that they acknowledged and they agreed to. So they need to be adhering to that. So it gave him the leverage to go back to them and say, well, this came from the office. So he wasn’t the bad guy and he got to enforce what needed to be done.

Rishi Srivastava (34:43)
Mm-hmm.

Hats off to you for keeping the site safe.

Krystal Madonia (34:51)
Yeah, well, more for our superintendent, but yeah, I was glad I could just help him get the resource he needed in that moment to be able to make sure we were following the protocols.

Rishi Srivastava (35:02)
The next section is systems and ERP reality from quote unquote archaic tools to pro core first decisions. You are on a legacy ERP now and planning a conversion in 2027. Tell the story of the moment you knew. We can’t keep operating like this. What broke or what became impossible.

Krystal Madonia (35:29)
Yeah, so I mean, our ERP is functioning, but there’s definitely some major holes in it. One of the previous contractors I worked for, they were on what they would have considered an archaic ERP system at the time. And this was, you know, almost 10 years ago. And their system at least allowed for accounting to put an invoice into the system.

and shoot it to the project manager and the project manager would have access to code it to the correct cost code and approve it in the system. Our ERP doesn’t even have that. So for us to get a project manager to review code and approve an invoice, we’re having to hand deliver them paper copies in the office, have them hand write it or email it to them and have them write it on on a PDF and email it back to us.

which just opens up the door for, you know, so many inefficiencies. And then we’re trying to track down invoices that haven’t been, you know, how do you keep track of invoices that haven’t been coded and approved? So that was the biggest glaring thing for me with our system. When I walked in the door was like, this is beyond outdated and antiquated. And this is a very broken system.

We’re a small enough company that we can make it work, but we want to grow this will, you know, it’s caused some minor problems and I know it would just continue to cause more problems if we didn’t address, but also we want it to integrate with, you know, pro core. Cause we’ve got our budgets and all of our change orders and all of our subcontracts and all of that is in pro core. And so having the real data feeding back and forth is important to us.

Rishi Srivastava (37:14)
Makes sense. Procore is your project management hub. What are the top three quote unquote non-negotiables for the next ERP so it truly plays well with Procore and avoids creating a second system of record?

Krystal Madonia (37:31)
Yeah, so having, something that integrates for the budgets, having something that integrates for the costs will be huge for us because right now we don’t have that. So, you know, all of our budget changes are happening in Procore. And then I’m having to go and manually reconcile the two each month, you know, to make sure that our accounting system has the correct budget in it.

so that that’s a huge thing for us. And then just being able to see, you know, live budget to actuals, if they can talk to each other, then that all is just going to be so much more streamlined. So that’ll be nice. And then what I think I mentioned earlier, we’re implementing a scheduling, platform that integrates with Procore and what it allows for is, some financial forecasting. so, you know, getting

the three thing, having the information talking between the accounting system and Procore will then backfeed into that scheduling software for us to have better forecasting of our costs and our revenues for those projects, which will be great as we grow.

Rishi Srivastava (38:39)
Actually, who keeps the budget up to date in Procore? Let’s say there is a change order. Who’s responsible for that?

Krystal Madonia (38:45)
It’s a combination currently of our project managers and our project engineer who also does submittals. So, you know, combination of the people that are processing the submittals and then the project managers.

Rishi Srivastava (39:02)
So a change order does affect a budget, right?

Krystal Madonia (39:05)
Mm-hmm. Yep. So it can’t well depending on the nature of the change order. But yeah, so there’s a few different types. So we’ve got an owner change order, which is actually a change in the scope of what we’re doing. So we’re asking the client, the owner for more money. But then we also do change orders to the subcontractors. So if we have room in our budget, you know, to cover the cost of a change to a subcontractor, we’ll do change orders to the subcontractors.

And then we have budget transfers and our projects, you know, we always have a contingency built in. So some of our changes are coming from that contingency bucket.

Rishi Srivastava (39:41)
So some change orders don’t impact your budget.

Krystal Madonia (39:45)
Mm So they’ll all impact the budget just in different ways, I guess. So some of them affect the bottom line and some of them are just within the budget, if that makes sense.

Rishi Srivastava (39:55)
Your InnerVest slash InterVest implementation lessons. You mentioned doing too many things too fast. Tell the failure story. What did you roll out? What went wrong? And what you do differently next time? Your profile shows you were assistant controller at InterVest construction.

Krystal Madonia (40:18)
Mm hmm. Yeah. So when I joined Interwest Construction, they had started implementing an operational software that had a number of modules to it. So there was a time tracking component. There was a job management component. There was a fleet management component and an equipment.

management slash service, like repairs and maintenance type module to it. So they had purchased the software. They had only implemented one of the modules so far when I started. And then in that same time, so they had sort of implemented one module.

And then we’re wanting to implement more of the modules. And then we also implemented another separate software for small tools, like a small tool inventory tracking software. I wasn’t involved in the procurement of the software they had already started implementing, but was there and involved to some extent with the implementation. And I think

The biggest thing takeaways I had from those, which I know many of your guests on previous episodes have talked about is not having the field people involved when you’re picking these softwares, when you’re designing how they’re going to be used or vetting how they’re going to be used when you’re designing what your rollout is going to look like or really involving them. so much of the implementation that happened

with that specific software was just a, okay, we’re going to come up with this whole process internally with, a couple people and we’re a company of 400. And then we’re going to like push it out to a big group of people and just tell them how this is going to go. And so many of the challenges that came from those rollouts, I think came from that method of we’re going to make this decision internally and then we’re going to roll it out. So.

really just echoing what some of your previous guests have said of you need to have operations people involved when you’re picking the software when coming up with a rollout team when you’re doing the training when you’re doing all of these steps they need to be involved from the get go. And then yeah trying to do too many softwares at one time because you’re juggling like okay we’ve got this small tool.

inventory management software that again we picked and we had like maybe two field people involved with when we picked it and then we tried to roll it out and we’re rolling it out at the same time that we’re rolling out another software and it was like too much software coming at field people all at one time so just really being thoughtful about who’s in

you know, getting those folks involved that actually have to use it so they can poke holes at it from the beginning. And then, you know, making sure you’re not overwhelming people with too much new software all at one time.

Rishi Srivastava (43:30)
For field people, it’s very important to have a simple user interface.

Krystal Madonia (43:33)
Yeah, yeah, I think some companies or just some folks in general will lose sight of, yeah, this this tool might make your job in the office easier. But if it’s making the field people’s job harder, they’re the ones that are actually doing the thing. They’re they’re the ones doing what we’re doing for our business. So we should be trying to make

As much as we can still get the information we need, we need to try and do it in a way that’s easier for them and not adding to their day because they’re the ones doing the actual thing. Without them, we can’t do our job. So if we’re making the field teams life harder, then we’re making the entire company’s life harder. It doesn’t do any good to make accounting’s life easier if we’re not going to have field people available to actually do their job.

Rishi Srivastava (44:25)
That’s so well said. The last section here is four jobs, real life. CFO plus advisor plus consulting plus tracking ops. You literally have four paid roles. CFO plus advisory plus side accounting plus husband’s trucking company. Tell us what a quote unquote normal crazy week looks like.

Krystal Madonia (44:48)
Alright,

yeah, go ahead.

Rishi Srivastava (44:52)
and how you

decide what gets your best energy.

Krystal Madonia (44:57)
Yeah, so I’m in the process of transitioning away from four roles because four roles is too many. Part of that came from I wasn’t anticipating taking the CFO role so quickly. so, yeah, my husband and I own his trucking company. We’ve owned it since twenty nineteen. So that’s just kind of an ongoing. I’ve gotten used to juggling that one because we’ve done that one for long enough.

But the advisor and the consulting came about from the last position I was in before Haley. So when I moved to Arizona, I worked for a law firm in town. They’re a law firm that actually helps Haley construction with various legal matters. And so when I was leaving to come to Haley,

you know, I wanted to help them with their transition, make sure everything went smoothly. And I, in my time there, I had also taken on doing all of the accounting work for two of their major clients. So I agreed to keep doing that accounting work. And so I’ve continued to do that. We did just transition the client’s accounting work to another accountant as of

two weeks ago, because it was getting to be a little bit too much. And the law firm’s kind of at the point where they don’t necessarily need me so much. the person that had taken over in my role was not an experienced bookkeeper by any stretch. And so they just really wanted to make sure that that was going to be a smooth transition. And since Haley and the law firm have such a strong long-term relationship,

you know, everybody was on board with me helping to support them long-term. But I’d say now I’m closer to just two jobs.

Rishi Srivastava (46:42)
Yeah. Nice. Congratulations on just having two jobs.

Krystal Madonia (46:47)
Yeah, thank you. But with four jobs with two young kids was a little bit too much because it was getting up, you know, people that have worked with me in the past know that I tend to work weird hours because my husband gets up at, you know, anywhere between midnight and two o’clock to go start his day for work. So a lot of times I would get up when he got up and do

you know, a couple hours of work in the morning and then my kids would wake up and then I, you know, we’d be getting ready and get them off to school. And then I’d come here and start my day here and do a full day here and then leave and go get my kids and do dinner and all that. And then sometimes be doing work in the evenings. Then we’re always doing the trucking company on the weekend. So sometimes that’s literally actually doing repair work on a truck, on a semi truck.

Rishi Srivastava (47:36)
Ha

ha ha.

The last question is, trucking plus construction plus audit perspective. What’s one lesson from transportation ops or Saturday truck maintenance with the kids that made you a better construction finance leader? Your profile reflects leadership in a trucking business and a long running consulting practice.

Krystal Madonia (47:59)
Yeah, I think troubleshooting was probably the best skill that I’ve learned from trucking. Cause if your truck’s not moving, you’re not making any money. So there’s many times where, you know, if it, if my husband’s truck breaks down, he’s calling me and we’re going through options of how to get him back moving on the road. you know, we do 95 % of

the repair work ourselves. The only things we aren’t doing are like transmissions and motors. Aside from that, it’s him and I, mostly him. But just learning how to troubleshoot with, you know, lots of times trying to use, maybe we don’t have the exact right part or trying to brainstorm a solution that isn’t, is just a temporary fix to get us by, but really learning how to pivot on the fly.

and come up with a different game plan is a big thing. And anybody that works in trucking can relate to that of just trying to come up with ways to keep yourself moving. having that ability to, this was my game plan for today. And now I have to pivot and go this other way. mean, anybody in accounting can relate to that of, you know, I came in with my mindset, I was going to do this today. And then

Some other thing happened and now my day is completely derailed. So having that ability to pivot and be willing to be flexible and willing to troubleshoot options for things.

Rishi Srivastava (49:27)
95 % of maintenance is done by

Krystal Madonia (49:31)
Yeah.

Rishi Srivastava (49:32)
Have you considered opening a truck maintenance company?

Krystal Madonia (49:37)
I actually pitched that idea to my husband recently and he said, yeah, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do more maintenance than I already have to do.

Rishi Srivastava (49:43)
huh.

Yeah.

Krystal thank you so much for your time. I had a great conversation with you.

Krystal Madonia (49:49)
Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thanks for this podcast. I’ve really enjoyed listening to it.

Rishi Srivastava (49:56)
Thanks