How You Handle Receiving Materials and Equipment on Job Sites Will Impact Your Bottom Line
A busy construction site has a constant flow of materials and equipment being delivered, often multiple times per day. How these deliveries are received and documented directly impacts your profit margins. Let’s have a closer look at the reasons why.
How receiving orders on job sites works today
Foremen or superintendents are responsible for receiving materials ordered for the job. When deliveries arrive, the vendor’s delivery crew hands over physical packing slips or delivery tickets that confirm what was received. If there are any issues with the order (wrong quantity delivered, damaged materials, etc.), foremen handwrite these issues directly on the slips.
ISSUE: It is easy to misplace or lose paper slips on a busy construction site. Foremen put them in their back pockets and they can fall off while they are on the go around the site. Or foremen leave them in the trailer and someone accidentally spills some coffee and throws them in the garbage bin. With the current process some physical slips are bound to be lost.
How does the field staff keep the office informed of what was received on the job site?
The 2024 industry survey conducted by Field Materials and New Horizons Foundation shows that about half of contractors collect packing slips on the job site and then physically deliver the paper stacks to the office. Only about a third of foremen take pictures of the packing slips and email them to the office staff. A staggering 11% of contractors don’t collect packing slips at all!
ISSUE: There is a disconnect between the field and the office. For those companies that don’t collect packing slips, there is no way for the PMs to track what was delivered against what was ordered for the AP team to verify what was ordered, received, and invoiced.
For those contractors that receive physical slips in the office, these oftentimes arrive after the invoices for those deliveries were paid. This often leads to double paying for backordered items or missing any delivery issues that would impact the invoice amount.
For contractors that email packing slips, it is difficult and time-consuming to find the right delivery slip for the corresponding invoice, especially when a PO has multiple deliveries and invoices.
This is why it is common today for contractors to not verify invoices against packing slips. This means that billing errors and vendor credits are being missed, which impacts profit margins.
What can be improved?
- Always Track Deliveries
Always keep track of what materials or equipment your team received on the job site. Keep track of and report any delivery issues to the vendor for remediation. - Digitize Documentation in the FIeld
Use a construction focused mobile app instead of email to take photos of delivery slips on the spot and make them instantly available to the office staff. - Automate verification with AI
Use AI construction procurement software to automate the matching of packing slips to corresponding purchase orders and invoices. This will empower PMs and AP teams to easily identify and resolve issues with invoices, helping to improve accuracy and efficiency.
Field Materials AI streamlines this entire process. The mobile app makes it fast and easy for foremen to capture packing slips the moment the materials are received. The AI copilot then reads the slips, automatically matches them to the corresponding purchase orders, and records received items and quantities while flagging any backordered items.
