Foundation Software

Yes, Field Materials supports connecting multiple companies within a single ERP instance. You can assign users to specific ERP companies, allowing each user to seamlessly switch between the companies they have access to when working in Field Materials.

Yes, everything exports to Excel or CSV formats so you can manipulate the data however you need. Many customers use our reports directly, but others pull the data into their own business intelligence tools or executive dashboards.

The integration with your ERP means financial data flows seamlessly into your existing month-end reporting processes. You're not creating a separate system that needs to be reconciled - everything ties back to your main accounting system.

We also provide an API which you can integrate with your internal systems to read and import data from our system programmatically.

Budget control is probably one of the biggest benefits customers see. Instead of finding out about budget overruns at month-end, you get real-time visibility into spending as it happens.

The system pulls budgets from your ERP broken by cost code and cost type and tracks committed costs against those budgets as soon as the purchase orders are created and expenses are logged (e.g., receipts). If you're hitting budget limits on a particular cost code due to a particular PO, you will get notified about it.

Project managers can see exactly where they stand financially at any point by accessing the Job Costs report that shows committed (ordered), received, invoiced, and paid costs for each project in real-time. Track these costs against either the budget synchronized from your ERP or against the uploaded bill of materials from your estimation software.

Field Materials offers a highly customizable, enterprise-grade access control to data and actions users can take:

• Assign specific roles to users (project manager, foreman, accountant, etc.)
• Assign users to projects to control their access to specific jobs (accountant, admin, purchasers have access to all jobs).
• Based on the assigned roles, control what users can do within each job:
  
  • Edit orders
  • Upload delivery slips and receive orders
  • Review invoices
  • See prices

The approval system is really flexible because every company operates differently. You can set up different approval levels based on dollar amount thresholds and job roles.

Orders

• Enable up to 3 role-based approvers (Owner, PM, Purchaser, etc.) before orders are submitted to vendors and exported to the ERP.
• Set up optional Order Amount Thresholds (e.g., >$1,000 requires PM approval, >$10,000 requires owner approval) before orders are submitted to vendors and exported into the ERP.

Invoices

• Enable role-based approvers (Owner, Accountant, PM, etc.) to control who can approve invoices before these are posted to the ERP.
• Set up optional invoice amount thresholds that will notify the designated roles to approve invoices.
• Set up optional maximum invoice amounts that the designated roles will be able to approve.

For both orders and invoices:

• Approvers receive real-time notifications (email, text, and in-app) about the need to approve a specific order or invoice.
• Field Materials keeps an audit trail of who requested orders and who approved orders and invoices.

Customers can update their approval settings at any time should their internal requirements change.

Flexible customization options are supported:

• We support writing custom PO names and descriptions into your ERP (e.g., “job number”-“PO number”-“notes”)
• We support custom PO numbering schemes
• We support writing custom invoice descriptions (e.g., “job number”-“PO number”-“invoice number”)
• In some ERPs (e.g., Viewpoint Vista), we can even read and write custom fields
• We support default PO formats: lump sump vs detailed (order in Field Materials can stay itemized but pushed as a lump sum PO into your ERP)
• We support both master (organization-level) phase/cost codes as well as project-specific phase/cost codes
• We support customized sales tax treatment (e.g., sales tax could be written as a separate line item posted against a specific cost code or GL account)
• We support customizing default payment terms for your invoices
• Customize whether invoices should be auto-exported upon approval

Data Field Materials pulls from your ERP:

• Projects (also called “jobs”)
• Vendors (also called “suppliers”)
• Cost codes (also called "phase codes" in some ERPs)
• Cost types
• Equipment and service codes
• Tax Codes (by county)
• Job budgets organized by Cost Code and Cost Type (optional)
• Existing POs created in the ERP before the customer started using Field Materials (optional)

Data Field Materials writes to your ERP:

• Purchase orders (POs) (itemized with cost codes and cost types)
• Invoices (can be posted against POs, as direct job costs, or as overhead expenses against GL accounts)
• Receipts (as AP payments or AP entries)