ControlQore: Replacing QuickBooks for Construction Companies

Layton, Utah, December 16, 2024

ControlQore, a SaaS (Software as a Service) company based in Layton, Utah, has created software that enables the construction industry to better manage its financials. The software specifically targets expense reporting, lien waivers, bill management, and general accounting. Aiming to replace QuickBooks in the industry, ControlQore simplifies back-end processes, giving unparalleled control and leading to better oversight and efficiency. 

CEO Bryant Solomon explained how the idea of ControlQore came to be through observations and proactive entrepreneurship.

“Our ownership team is made up of general contractors and folks who have had ties to construction their whole lives. My Brother-In-Law, JD, has managed his family’s construction firm, specifically its financials for quite a few years now. By working in the space, he and I became acutely aware of the need to overhaul the fintech landscape in construction.”

Solomon continues, “We observed that small and medium size contractors didn’t have a core platform that they could rely on to manage the back end of their business. They had to manually patch multiple apps, softwares, and Excel together. This creates numerous inefficiencies and opportunities for failure. To solve this issue, we began to put together what a small or medium-sized contractor would need in a financial or accounting ERP” (Enterprise Resource Planning).

“That is what ControlQore is, an ERP platform for small and medium-sized construction companies.”

Touching on competition, Solomon stated, “QuickBooks takes up 65% of the market; they are the elephant in the room. We are better than QuickBooks for construction because we have built a system for the specific workflows that exist only in our industry. We are also capable of generating reports that are specific to the construction industry. These reports are just as important as an income statement or a balance sheet but focus on the health of the portfolio of projects, which QuickBooks will never create. One of the crucial reports that are specific to construction is what we call a work-in-progress report, a critical report that displays important budget, contract, and to-date financial information at a project level.

“Traditionally, the contractor has to manually put this WIP together through Excel and a couple of siloed solutions, but with ControlQore, the process is much more streamlined.”

Solomon covered Usability as another key factor: "We created ControlQore, knowing that it's going to be used by the entire construction team. So it had to be usable for a controller who's used to very granular levels of control and access management and possesses deep accounting knowledge. But it also had to be simple enough to be used by guys out in the field who want to just get the technology out of the way so that they can keep building things. When it comes to the actual execution of the workflows, it's relatively simple, and it looks and feels relatively simple. We created it with both personas in mind.”

“Construction guys are busy, first of all, and two aren't interested in migrating technology that they don't necessarily have a ton of business acumen in any way. They don't get excited about talking about accounting. They know they should do it. They know they should do job costing, but they just don't want to, so by creating ease of use, we can remedy this problem as much as we can.”

Valuing transparency, Solomon discussed the pricing model, “Full disclosure on the pricing model, it is under review for whether or not it's effective, but we do not ever want to inhibit users. We will never have a per-user subscription model because we want the entire team to use the platform, regardless of their size. We like pricing it off of their revenue; we want to grow with our clients as best we can. We want to encourage our construction clients to grow and facilitate that growth with the help of our systems.”

Looking ahead, Solomon proudly highlights, “We’ve signed our first customers in 2024 we've got 170,000 worth of ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) on the books. About 75% of the product is already released. 2025 is going to have major milestones for us. We want to cross the million-dollar ARR threshold within the first half of the year, and then by the end of the year, we want to be somewhere in the $2 to $3 million ARR range. A 100% completed product should be done before midway through the year. It's a big year for us in terms of sales and completion.”

A General Ledger function is also nearing release in the coming weeks.

For more information about ControlQore, visit https://www.controlqore.com/