Custom Software Integrations with DASH for Next Gear Solutions

• Next Gear Solutions – Project Management Software for Contractors
• Accounting Program Integration with Project Management Software

Next Gear Solutions provides web-based restoration management software for disaster recovery construction companies. It’s core software offering is DASH, a platform Next Gear Solutions’ clients use to track their projects.

Next Gear Solutions’ clients use other software to track their financial information. About 85% of Next Gear Solutions’ customers track use QuickBooks and many others use Sage 100 Contractor (formerly Sage Master Builder), Sage 300 Construction (formerly Sage Timberline Office) and PSA Accounting. Because so many of Next Gear’s clients use Quickbooks, Next Gear software developers built an integration for DASH to aid in the exchange of data from Quickbooks to DASH.

The Problems

DASH doesn’t have accounting capabilities natively.

Before this Quickbooks integration existed, Next Gear clients were using multiple systems to track one project and wasting time on data double-entry.

With this integration, users can import new customers and jobs, then export accounting and payroll information from Quickbooks back into DASH.

After integrating with Quickbooks, Next Gear wanted to accommodate it’s Sage 300 and Sage 100 users by offering a solution that would integrate these Sage products DASH. However, the Sage integrations were a bit more complicated. Needing a Custom Sage Software Developer for the job, Next Gear contacted us.

The Goal

Our goal was to provide Next Gear with a solution it could offer to its clients who wanted an easier way to manage projects.

Since Next Gear already had customers entering their jobs in DASH, our solution needed to be imported into the existing software.

The Solution

We built the Sage 100 integration for DASH for all of Next Gear’s Sage 100 users.

“Pixis Software developed our Sage 100 Contractor and Sage 300 Construction integrations with our core product. If anyone can figure out a solution, they can.” Kim Slizak Principal Consultant Next Gear Solutions

Seeing how well The Pixis Sage integration worked with DASH, Next Gear expanded the project to include thorough testing and eventual redesign of the Quickbooks integration. 100 customers at the time got to use the benefits of the updated Quickbooks integration.

Around the same time, we started a project to the Sage 300 Integration with DASH. Since Sage 300 is a more high-end accounting software, it had to be highly customized for each Sage 300 using customer. Our Pixis software developers built and tested the Sage 300 integration, then worked with Next Gear’s internal IT department so it could configure the integration for each client, internally. Later, we added on the PSA accounting software integration for a data export to DASH as well.

The Benefits

All in all, we worked with Next Gear Solutions for seven years to improve DASH’s functionality for its users.

To ensure Next Gear was providing its DASH clients with the best solution, we performed focus groups with many end-users over those seven years. After each, we continued to tweak our custom software solutions and get it back in the hands of Next Gear clients to perfect it.

BENEFIT 1: DASHBOARD FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND FINANCES

Now DASH users have a business dashboard of project information and billing at a glance, including:

• Invoices
• Job costs
• Payments

PLUS: All of DASH’s project management features:

• Who is going where
• What materials were shipped
• Daily time tracking
• Upload photos directly from their Android device
• Manage jobs assigned to them
• Input Job Notes
• Manage Action Items, Manage Contacts
• Navigate from job to job or marketing contact to marketing contact
• Document Signature
• Create new jobs
• And more…

BENEFIT 2: DAILY TIME TRACKING

Daily time tracking does not exist in Quickbooks out of the box, so we created it right in our new integration so DASH users could cut the most accurate paychecks possible.

With this up-to-date time tracking, DASH users can also create better informed and more accurate project estimates.

BENEFIT 3: MORE ACCURATE PROJECT ESTIMATES

By using the new daily time tracking tool, DASH users can also create project estimates based on who is assigned to a job.

Now they know how many hours each contractor spent on a job and what their cost per hour of work is. Estimated job costs can be more accurately determined pre-paycheck; and actual (not estimated) job costs can be used for billing.

DASH users love these features for budgeting and staffing.