When highway contractors get their finances in order, it can be hard to square their operations with common accounting software. Seeing an unmet need, Sage is now partnering with start-up Tractics on integrating their respective software tools.

“Building an accounting tool versus an operations tool is two very different things,” explains Tyler VanWinkle, partner at Tractics, whose cloud-based operations platform targets highway and heavy civil contractors. While a lot of data can be captured on projects, asset values and other fine-grained details involved in running a heavy civil contractor, finance and accounting software often distills much of this useful information down to a few data points. “We got to where we have all this great data and some accounting platforms only take in like 10% of it,” he says.

This is where the integration with Sage’s Intacct system differs, explains VanWinkle. “With Intacct, there’s some amazing stuff in there that directly addresses the things we’ve watched contractors suffer from not having access to.”

Getting Tractics into Intacct took a bit of work but was worth it, says Dennis Stejskal, director of construction and real estate at Sage.

“We couldn’t find the right partner on the horizontal side of construction for a while and then [Tractics] came along,” says Stejskal. “There are lots of solutions out there trying to do the construction cost management for horizontal, but the big difference is operations. When we got introduced to Tractics it was obvious they were the ones we had to go with.” Stejskal adds that data captured in the field by Tractics directly informs the accounting software as data comes in, avoiding delays from manually updating spreadsheets or working across multiple point solutions.

And it’s the platform approach of Tractics, rather than a bouquet of point solutions, that makes it work, says Stejskal. “Tractic’s approach is holistic, and that’s been the missing link for highway contractors.”