Construction materials usually hit the jobsite long before they ever hit your ERP. Parts get delivered, unloaded, and put to use immediately. However, if your inventory process runs through Accounts Payable, those materials don’t “exist” in the system until an invoice is processed, which is often weeks later. By then, job costs are already off, and the cleanup has begun.
In most firms, construction materials inventory only shows up once a paper invoice lands on an AP clerk’s desk three weeks late. By that point, the parts are already buried in a wall, and reconciling job costs can become a guessing game.
Using your AP team to manage your construction materials creates a built-in data delay. That delay makes it nearly impossible to know what you actually have on hand right now.
The Hidden Cost of Letting AP Manage Inventory
During this lag, you’re operating in the dark. Your ERP thinks you have zero inventory, so someone orders the same materials again for another jobsite. Now you’ve paid twice, blown the budget, and still can’t see where the original parts went. As a result, you end up with a yard full of specialized materials you already own but can’t find in the system. And even worse, you may be paying for items that never showed up in the first place.
If no one verifies the delivery against the PO when materials hit the ground, you’re trusting the vendor’s invoice without question. Short counts, missing items, and incorrect shipments slip through unnoticed, which can quietly eat into project margins and wreck your budgets.
How to Start Fixing the Problem Today
You don’t need new software to improve field data capture immediately. You just need to change how deliveries are handled.
Take a Photo Every Bill of Lading (BOL): Make it a rule: the delivery driver doesn’t leave until a foreman takes a clear photo of the BOL and sends it to the office. That single step tells accounting that materials are on-site now—not weeks from now.
Create a holding zone: Designate a specific area in your yard or warehouse for new deliveries. Nothing moves until a supervisor checks the count against the paperwork. This simple process stops parts from “walking off” to jobsites before anyone confirms what actually arrived. These steps help, however, manual processes only go so far.
Capture Inventory Where It Actually Happens
Jobsites get busy. Sometimes, photos don’t get taken. Paperwork gets dirty, lost, or left in a truck cab. That’s why manual inventory tracking breaks down over time.
The better approach is to capture inventory data the moment materials arrive.
Instead of chasing paper, your field team uses a mobile scanner to receive items on the spot. They scan the barcode on the packing slip (or the part itself) right when it hits the yard or jobsite. No delays or guesswork.
Real-Time Data Inside Vista
Nobious is the only inventory system built specifically for Viewpoint Vista and Spectrum users. We don’t sync data later. We operate as a real-time extension of your ERP.
The moment a barcode is scanned at the gate, the PO receipt batch is created instantly inside Vista or Spectrum. There’s no waiting on the office and no manual data entry for AP to clean up later.
Your inventory and job cost numbers stay accurate, your field team stays focused on the work, and your AP team can get back to doing what they do best.
Want to see how Nobious works inside your Vista environment to prevent construction materials data delays?
