Map it, pick it, set it up, and make it work in the field.
DRC Digital does four kinds of work for trade contractors. Buy them together or one at a time. Each one starts from how your jobs and money move today, not from a product.
Process mapping and requirements blueprint
The problem
The process lives in people's heads. The office manager knows which POs are still open. The owner knows which builder pays short. When one of them is out, nobody else can tell.
How it is done
Mapping is read-only. Nothing in your systems is created, changed or deleted. Unknowns go on a list of open questions instead of being guessed.
What you get
- Answers to discovery questions you can finish in an afternoon: how many jobs, invoices and subs you run, what the current mess costs, whether your process is written down, who will look after the system, and what is driving the timing.
- A map of how jobs, POs, invoices and payments move between people, spreadsheets, inboxes and apps, including which handoffs are carried by a person or an inbox.
- A requirements blueprint. It fixes the spine first: one identity for every job (customer, community, lot, job), separate stages for authorized, completed, billed and paid, and a rule that every dollar is counted once.
- The rest of the blueprint, in delivery order: jobs and purchase orders; completed work, billing and quality checks; subcontractor onboarding and pay; purchasing and scheduling; vendor bills and owner reporting. It also states what is deferred, who sees prices, the audit trail, how your job numbers move over, a test environment and how the system is handed over.
Software selection
The problem
Every demo looks great. The vendor runs their clean example, not your job with three POs and a short-paid invoice.
What you get
- Acceptance tests written from your messy cases: three purchase orders and a short-paid invoice on one job, a partly finished job, one vendor bill split across several lots, a sub invoice with a backcharge.
- A coverage matrix. Each requirement is marked covered, partial, not covered or not confirmed, and the evidence level is stated. Every cell is a question for the demo, not a finding.
- Options as paths with plain trade-offs: an operations platform plus an accounting package, accounting plus a light custom field app, or a full custom build.
- Live demos scored against the tests. Where a product fails a test, that gap defines any custom work.
- The two answers that usually decide configure versus build: what your customers already send you electronically, and whether you would accept an accounting package behind the operations system.
We do not pick a brand in advance. You see the matrix and the reasons, so you can check the recommendation yourself.
As a field manager at a regional installed building-products company, our founder audited a commercial job-management app used by field crews. The issues were ranked by severity, what breaks was kept apart from what does not fit the field, and what works was written down so it would be kept.
Implementation and onboarding
The problem
Switching software can stop the business. Billing and pay day do not wait for a rollout.
What you get
- A staged rollout: configure, test in a sandbox, pilot on a few jobs, hold to verify, then roll out one team at a time.
- Old and new running side by side until the numbers agree. One change at a time. Every change reversible.
- Your existing job numbers kept, data cleaned before it moves, and totals reconciled after.
- A short manual for each role, written for the people who use it, not for developers.
- At handover: a plain-English operator guide, an index to every document, a change log and instructions to rebuild anything generated.
Every change to a live tool is compared against the live copy first and checked again after it ships.
Delivery with vetted implementation partners where a project needs them.
Field tools and integrations
The problem
The product fits the office but not the crew. Or two systems you already pay for do not talk, so someone types the same job into both.
What you get
- Phone-friendly forms and small web apps for field records, extra-work requests and approvals.
- Schedule workbooks with one tab per person, percent complete and a Gantt view.
- Request and approval flows with email notifications.
- Automated emails, like ticking one box to draft an email to each vendor on a job.
- Connections between spreadsheets, email, bank feeds and other systems, using scheduled jobs and small services rather than another platform to learn.
Tools are built for real use. They find columns by header name, so someone rearranging a sheet does not break them.
Field screens in Spanish on request. We work in English and Spanish.
Examples: the daily opportunity-search tool built for a client, and the tools our founder built as a field manager.
Also: websites
DRC Digital builds fast, plain websites that search engines can read in full: static pages, readable with JavaScript switched off, with a sitemap, canonical URLs, structured data and a real 404 page. It is the same standard we use for our own sites. If yours needs work, ask.
Questions about the services
Should a subcontractor buy software or build a custom system?
Buy first and build only the gap. A packaged platform is usually fastest to launch and easiest to keep running. A fully custom build fits exactly but costs the most, takes the longest and leaves you depending on whoever wrote it. The middle path is buying accounting and building a light field app.
How long does it take to switch a contractor to new software?
It depends on how clean your data is and how much has to be built, so be wary of any fixed promise. The safe path is staged: configure, test in a sandbox, pilot on a few jobs, hold to verify, then roll out one team at a time while the old system keeps running.
Can my crews use the system in Spanish?
Often yes, but check it rather than assume it. In the demo, ask to see the actual phone screens your crews will use, in Spanish, not only the office screens. Where a product falls short, a small custom field form can collect the same records in the crew's language and feed the main system.
Can Google Sheets run a subcontractor's operations?
Part of them, yes. Sheets handles schedule workbooks, request forms, trackers and simple automations well, and your team knows it. It is weaker as the record for money: it keeps version history, but not a per-record audit trail, and anyone who can open the file can see every cell, prices included. Use it on purpose, not by default.
How do I move from spreadsheets to new software without losing history?
Keep your existing job numbers, clean the data before moving it, and reconcile totals afterward: open purchase orders, billed amounts and unpaid invoices should match the old records exactly. Run old and new side by side until they agree. Only then retire the spreadsheets, and keep a read-only copy.
What should field crews see in the system compared with the office?
Crews need the job, the lot, the scope and what to record, on a phone, in a few taps. They usually should not see prices, costs or other crews' pay. Set permissions on the data itself, not only by hiding screens, so a field login cannot reach financial records.
Does DRC Digital favor particular software brands?
No. We do not pick a brand in advance. We score products against your written requirements and your own test cases in a live demo, and every score states how strong the evidence is. You see the matrix, the trade-offs of each path and our reasons, so you can check the recommendation instead of taking it on trust.
Not sure which one you need?
Tell us a few lines about how your jobs and money move today. That is enough to start.
[email protected] · (984) 273-8070