Brian Cancian - Navigating Payment Pinch Points - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Brian Cancian from Foundation Software. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips, the podcast that takes you on a thrilling journey across the world of roofing. From fascinating interviews with roofing experts to on-the-road adventures, we'll uncover the stories, innovations and challenges that shape the rooftops over our heads. So fasten your seat belts and join us as we embark on this exciting roofing road trip.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to Roofing Road Trips from RoofersCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and we are here again to talk about information you need for your business to grow. And what is more important than cash? Cash flow, payments, incoming, outgoing. How are you managing that? How are you making sure that everything is running smoothly, automated in a way that really can help grow your business? So of course, we had to get with the experts from Foundation to talk about how this can work for your business. We are so happy to have Brian Cancian here with us today. Hello, Brian.

Brian Cancian: Hi, how are you?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hey, I'm great. Thank you so much for coming and talking about this. What an important topic.

Brian Cancian: It is. It's very important. It's just cash flow. Cash is king.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Cash is king. That is it. Well, let's start with an introduction. If you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Foundation.

Brian Cancian: Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Brian Cancian. I have been here with Foundation since, oh wow, mid '97, it's been a little while. Been a little while. Done a lot of things from implementations and support through consulting for a significant portion of those years and project management and now sitting here in the chair of the business development management role. So that's a little bit about me, experience here with our software, our company, our products and of course the industry. So that's me. Foundation itself, I founded in the mid-eighties and was labeled as the number one accounting software for the labor-intensive contractor.

We have a huge strength in our payroll system, union, non-union, multi-state, various tax handling capabilities, very complex and also the ability to handle all of the complexities around certified payroll, Davis-Bacon permitting wage, things like that. With that in mind, we also, about 16, maybe 17 years ago, rolled out a payroll service for construction. It's payroll for construction, handling the payroll processing needs of contractors across the nation, whether they use our main accounting platform or if they use QuickBooks or another accounting application, they can still take advantage of the power of our payroll processing system, which is great.

So they have access to all the union reports, certified payroll reports, workers' comp, things like that. And then they just feed that financial information right into their accounting system. So it's a great option for them as well. We have acquired a few companies in the last several years, Estimating Edge for the roofers, the interior build, drop ceilings, ceilings, drywall, metal studs, things like that. Acoustic, that's what I'm looking. We have McCormick Estimating out in Arizona as well for the mechanical, electrical, plumbing area. We acquired WorkMax about time technologies as well. So we have mobile timekeeping and field data capture capabilities, and we have another product that we acquired called Harness Safety that has been rolled into our HQ suite of products for safety tracking and certification tracking and things like that out in the field, toolbox talks, etc. So a whole suite of products for managing the back office operations of startup company.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Foundation has really come into the roofing space in such a great way. I mean, obviously Estimating Edge, Harness, both companies really well known that are now part of your suite. But as I'm looking at it too, there are a lot of large roofing contractors who are using WorkMax, who are using foundation. So it's really something, for all the contractors listening to this it's something you should be looking at from an accounting base, from payroll, from all of this to really bring everything together. And like you said, especially on those large commercial projects, union, non-union I think is awesome. But one of the things that companies have the biggest challenges with our payments and cash flow and how that works. So what are some of the common payment challenges that you're seeing amongst your contractors?

Brian Cancian: Sure. I mean, collections are one of the big things. You can bill as much as you want as often as you want. Try and inflate those billings as much as possible based off of your percentage complete and so on. But if you're not getting paid, it doesn't matter. You can only work with the cash that you have coming in. So collecting those dollars is one thing. So making it as easy as possible to accept those payments is certainly very important. Also, fraud. Fraud is a huge issue these days. I've talked to many contractors over the last year or so, and they're saying either checks that have been mailed out to them, just never show up. Our mail system is not the mail system that it used to be, right? Used to be able to count on I'm [inaudible 00:05:17] going to go to the post office and mail my tax payment into the IRS and it's just done. I assume they're going to get it. Nowadays, no-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Who knows?

Brian Cancian: ... [inaudible 00:05:25] letter in the mail. Hey, you've not filed your taxes. So our mail system is definitely a very big blocker in this system. So those are really challenges, how to collect, how to make it more efficient for people to pay security, how to make sure that those payments actually reach the intended person.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There's so many. And when you think about the challenges of cash flow overall for businesses today, I mean, along with the collections, but just the whole automation, the whole technology of cashflow, what are you seeing from that from a Foundation level?

Brian Cancian: Yeah, I think what the big movement now is just moving from checks and paper and mail to electronic payments. That's it. The movement of money is so easy these days. The ability to bypass our mail system, to bypass the cost of paper, checks, of postage, of envelopes and the process of printing checks and mailing them and getting them signed, stuffing, all of those processes around what is going to get paid or what needs to come in. And again, we're talking primarily on the receiving side, but the other companies that are making these payments have to go through all this and that's what takes time. That's what takes effort and that's what slows down payments.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah, it really does. So even coming down to the sub-trades, right? So you have the GCs and you have all of that goes along with the general contractors. So then as you come down to sub-contractors in particular, we're on Roofing Road Trips, so talking about roofers, what are you seeing problematic with payment pinch points on those, more on the sub-trade levels?

Brian Cancian: Sure. On the sub-trades, once an invoice goes out the door, let's talk on the receivable side, right? Once a payment or an invoice goes out the door, I'm a roofing subcontractor, I've sent my GC, the owner of the project, whomever the invoice, it's out of my hands. There's nothing I can do to expedite that payment to make them pay sooner. On the GC side, sometimes it's pay when paid. And again, there's nothing you can do to expedite that particular process. I know that there are systems out there. There are companies that offer, let's call it approved payment draw funding. So they'll kind of front you the money as long as you have an approved application that's sent out. And that's one thing you can do of course, to expedite those incoming dollars. But more so once I've got that invoice out there and in the hands of the contractor and they are now ready to make payment, I can expedite that cash flow by sometimes up to close to two weeks.

If I give them an electronic option to send money directly to me and I can get it today versus waiting for them to select things to be paid and then printing checks and handing it off for signature and waiting a couple of days because the owner's not in the office or the signer's not there. And they come back, they sign it since the mail and it sits. The days of it going out in being their next day, unless you're the next city over, those are gone and it can sometimes take a long time. So again, just giving the ability to make payments electronically can really expedite that cash. I would much rather have that money today than maybe in two weeks.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I can tell you it's been phenomenal for our business, the shift from checks to electronic, it has made such a big difference. But again, and I just had some of these things happen yesterday and you mentioned it earlier, there's still areas of fraud, whether that's in mail or phishing emails, everything like that. So what are you seeing around fraud and how is the electronic actually helping that to lessen the fraud?

Brian Cancian: Sure, sure. Absolutely. So again, on the receiving side, we have an option for a payment link to be sent out to someone's email or included as a URL or a QR code on an invoice where that link can be scanned and it takes a user, payor directly to a payment portal. And they have to log in with certain bits of information that identifies who they are. Think of your doctor's bill. You get a doctor's bill in the mail. You go out to their link and it verifies who you are and all of a sudden you can make a payment on invoices that are listed out there. There's no question of who you're paying and that you're paying the wrong thing. At that point, the payment portal is then secure. So they say, I want to pay this invoice. They're entering their payment information into a best in breed payment processor's portal that manages all their PCI information.

There's nothing really to do with the invoice service system. It's not our accounting system that's taking this payment. It is a payment processing portal, so it's completely secured. So there's no question. On top of that, the information's not stored. It's not like, hey, let's save this information to store it later. Now, this is a one-time payment, so there's no recurring charges, things like that. On the payer's side, from a security standpoint, I'm not putting a paper check in the mail. It's not going to get ripped out of the mail. It's not going to get whitewashed, name change, dollars change, et cetera, there is fraud protection in those checks. You can contact your bank, they're going to go through an investigation and if it is truly fraudulently edited, cashed, et cetera, you will eventually get those funds back into your account. But it could be six months, right?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Brian Cancian: I got a $250,000 check and those funds are drawn on my account while the investigation is happening, I need to then float another $250,000 to cover those bills that I now need to pay again. So it's huge when you're talking from, again, cashflow perspective. And it's unavoidable, it has happening more and more and more. And it's literally, from what it sounds like, checks just are missing, not from the mailbox that they're delivered to, they're going missing at post office.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's crazy.

Brian Cancian: It's insane. It really is. So that side of it in being able to expect the payments coming in through a secure portal or being able to eliminate the need for checks to be printed and eliminate the possibility of them being stolen. And again, there is issues in that case because what if I get an email that says, "Our account number has changed. Please now send all payments to this account number routing." Okay.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Don't do it.

Brian Cancian: This happened locally at a church near where I lived. They were having a huge addition put on the general contractor, sent them the paid app. They received an email saying that their account has been changed, please now send all payments to this new account and the bookkeeper just did it. That's a process problem within the walls of company that's making those payments, right? I mean, you don't just change things like that. How about a phone call to the company to say, "Hey, I received this email about changing where we're sending payments. Is this valid?"

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Brian Cancian: That's all it takes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I just did it yesterday. I have to tell you, I just did it yesterday. I had something come through. It did not look right. I picked up the phone and it actually was right, and they spelled my name wrong. So I was like, well, this is phishing and so you have to pick up the phone. And they're just like, "We're so sorry." Roofing companies, all companies, contractors, everybody, it's getting hit with this every single day.

Brian Cancian: Absolutely. So anything you can do to eliminate touch points where these payments are being made, take the human element out of it, right? Automate things, it's going to save time and it's going to reduce the fraud. Not to mention a lot of these companies that handle the outgoing payments, they will assume the fraud risk if you engage with one of these organizations. So again, there's a lot of options out there to modernize your payment process incoming and outgoing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It saves on labor costs and everything else like you have already said.

Brian Cancian: A hundred percent.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So let's talk about Foundation. And you have new software, new payment solutions, both incoming and outgoing you're working on. Talk to us a little bit about that and how contractors can start looking at this type of software and incorporating it.

Brian Cancian: Yeah, absolutely. So within Foundation, we've created a Foundation pay component. We partnered with one of the largest privately owned payment processors in the nation to create this payment portal that allows our customers to embed a URL that is custom for their organization. Like I mentioned before, a QR code on their invoices, however they want to communicate out to their customers, so they can now pay their bills electronically online. From there, the payor can simply go out to the URL, as I mentioned. They connect with a certain validation set of data. They're presented all of the open invoices that they owe. They can select what they want to pay and securely enter their payment information. And that gets pushed directly into the accounting system. End of story. Within about a day or so, those funds then are deposited directly into the receiver's bank accounts as set up with the payment process.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So one of the things we've talked about a lot over the last, actually couple of decades, definitely last 10 years, is how to not have this repetition of data entry. And that is where a lot of mistakes are made, numbers transposed, different things that are going on. I love this, what you're talking about is you have the payment program and then that automatically goes into your accounting, so there's no double entry. Talk a little bit about that.

Brian Cancian: Yeah, so one of the key things when and I was working with the development teams on both sides of this particular process to almost business analyst type thing to say, "Here's how this needs to work." We don't want a payer to have to go out to this portal and key in an invoice number that they're paying and the amount that they're paying and so on, because it is, it's so easy to transpose a number, just change one invoice number and the integration's going to break.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah.

Brian Cancian: Type in the wrong amount and you hit process and it's, oh no, I paid too much. Now I got to call this company and say, "Hey, I meant to pay you a thousand. I accidentally paid you 10,000. Can you refund me $9,000?" "Sure. Let me get right on that. I'll refund it. You'll have a check in the next 15 days."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Brian Cancian: No, let's make this as easy as possible. So if I can give you a portal that shows you everything that's owed, and you simply click which ones you want paid, the dollars are automatically calculated and now the only data entry is what card are you putting it on.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: [inaudible 00:16:52].

Brian Cancian: That's it. You know your name and address, all you got to do is look at your card and the expiration date, send it. And it's done. From a receiving standpoint right now in accounting, I don't need to get a check and look at the check stuff and see which invoices these payments are being applied to. And a lot of times like, well, wait a minute, they must have mis-keyed the invoice number as they were keying it into their software. So I'm going to guess that it's this based off the amount, but I don't know, is that amount right? It's not the amount less retention. All right, let me figure this out. It's easy. You sync these payments right in, the invoice numbers are applied, the dollars are applied. You can't overpay because it won't let you and it's done.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I love it. And you know what you said earlier about, it's like going to a doctor's portal and paying.

Brian Cancian: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There's so many things in what I call the real world that we live in every day, whether that's buying from Amazon going to your doctor and paying your bill, paying bills now, like you said, taxes and different things all online, so it makes sense. People are used to these processes. So as a company really offering these kinds of services, you aren't creating new behavior. You're really just tapping into what people are already doing.

Brian Cancian: Honestly, when you look at your personal life and how easy things have become, it makes going to work much easier when you can take those same modalities that you deal with in your daily life and apply them at the office.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Exactly.

Brian Cancian: I mean, when's the last time you wrote a check?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Not very often.

Brian Cancian: I mean, I know I go to my bank and I say, "Pay these bills." And I don't care how they get paid, whether it's a check, whether it's a virtual card, whether it's an ACH, I just know the bill's getting paid. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to worry about it. It's done. I'm not waiting for checks to clear out, you have to trace it down checks that are lost. I don't have my account number and routing number out in the world of the postal system.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Brian Cancian: It's easy. And so when I can do that same thing at the office that I do in my personal life, makes things way easier, way more efficient.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Oh, I love it. Okay. Roofing companies, I know there's roofing companies out there who are using Foundation. I know there's companies using WorkMax. What are some of the features of Foundation pay receivables that you see as the most beneficial to roofing companies in particular?

Brian Cancian: Sure. So roofing is interesting because there's a lot of commercial contractors, and we work mostly in the commercial contracting space. So it's commercial, industrial, very little on the residential side. But a lot of these commercial roofing contractors own the maintenance or the warranty contract for the roofs that they're installing. So at the time they're going out to bid these projects, they say, "Yeah, here's what we're going to do the job for, but while we're at it, here's what we're going to bid on the maintenance and warranty side of things," because it needs to be done professionally. They inspected and have these repairs done in order for the warranties to stay in effect, otherwise the roof is no longer covered. So a lot of times those bills are much more frequent, much smaller dollar amounts.

And again, just capturing those payments is much easier when you give them the option to pay them electronically online. And hey, you spend a monthly maintenance bill or an annual inspection bill, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's not like the main contract draws. You're going to get your billing on the AIA-type format. You're going to get the approvals and eventually you're going to cut a check or issue some sort of payment. But for these high-volume, lower-dollar invoices, this type of payment option is golden.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love that answer because just in thinking about this, so many of the property management companies, the large building owners, they expect that kind of automation and they want to be invoiced quickly. They want to pay quickly. And so to have this kind of automation in place really can make a big difference even in gaining that [inaudible 00:20:59].

Brian Cancian: And who wants to make a phone call and talk to somebody on the other end of the phone to say, "Hey, this is Brian. I'm with XYZ company. I have this invoice that I want to pay. Can I pay you with a credit card?" Sure. And now we eliminate the swivel chair accounting. So I'm over here on my accounting system, I take the phone call, I'm like, "Hey, wait a minute. Let me get over here to my credit card machine. Okay, give me the numbers. Okay, cool, thanks for your payment." And now I got to come back to accounting and I got to put that same information into my accounting system.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Duplicate entries again.

Brian Cancian: Right. Or now you just get online and I don't have to talk to anybody. You don't have to talk to anybody. You just go in, enter your card information, I get a notification that you paid and I go into my accounting system and I review it, post it. Done.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Time for all employees, especially skilled talent, you need to be able to reduce those kinds of phone calls. You need to be able to let them focus on things that no one else can do. When you can automate it, let it happen.

Brian Cancian: Correct. Exactly. When you look at the simple tasks, anybody... You can hire a temp to process incoming payments if you really want to. The person who's managing the receivables has way more knowledge about what they need to do. Let them work hard at getting more bills out the door quicker.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah.

Brian Cancian: Right?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Or debt collection.

Brian Cancian: The quicker you can bill, the quicker you can get paid.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Brian Cancian: Absolutely. And following up with people who aren't paying.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Now, the other thing too that it seems to me as you're looking at these programs and what you're doing is it would create better data and reporting and transparency for the company through the financials. Talk a little bit about that from an owner standpoint. What are some of the reporting that they might see, some of the benefits that way?

Brian Cancian: Just from pure cashflow, right? Let's talk transparency. I mean, again, if nobody's touching the payment, it's literally going directly from the person who is initiating the payment to the bank. End of story. There's nobody touching it in between. So again, you're eliminating the postal service, you're eliminating the person in your office. Now, obviously, if you can't trust that person in the office to make deposits, you've got a problem. But I've heard of check coming in and some low level employee at the office kind of just setting it aside and they do the whitewashing and they go deposit it elsewhere, and they just call and say, "Hey, no, we never got this check." I mean, who has more access to incoming payments than people in the accounting department? Now, that's few and far between. I think the vast majority of people working at these organizations are very clear conscience, very reputable, no problem. But it happens. So you don't have the option to do that when it's just there.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right, yeah.

Brian Cancian: Information entered, payment received in the accounting system, money hits the bank, nobody touches it. Done. Very easy.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And you're done. And you know where you stand, I think as an owner, that's so important to know that collections are coming in. You can see it as transparent and you know where you stand as a business because knowing your numbers, there's nothing more important.

Brian Cancian: Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely right. And from a reporting standpoint, it's a little bit more difficult because the cash flow doesn't so much affect the reporting, the earned revenue work in progress, et cetera, right?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Brian Cancian: It's whether you have an asset sitting out there to collect or cash in the bank. Would I rather see cash in the bank? Absolutely. 100%

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Every day.

Brian Cancian: So that's where the reporting comes in to be able to look at maybe your collection times, it's a little bit different to look back historically and say, "Hey, we used to be on a 45, 60, 75 day collection cycle and now that we're offering these electronic payments, we're generally being paid in 30 days or less." I mean, that's great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I'd say we've seen that. Yeah. It's just easier. It's easier for people to get it out, and it's just so streamlined. It makes such a difference.

Brian Cancian: It really is.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: For those who are integrating the Foundation Software overall, the accounting now with obviously the payment, pay receivables and everything else, just talk a little bit about what positive changes... I guess I kind of want to talk about overall as a roofing company, they're looking at 2025 right now and this is the time, winter time tends to be the time to make those changes. What are some of the things that you would talk about that looking at this kind of integrated system can really do for these roofing companies?

Brian Cancian: Sure. I mean, again, like we've been talking about the whole time, less touches, the fewer touches required the better, the more efficient. And I can't speak to a lot of the other payment processors, but I do know that our particular partner in this space has the most competitive, if not the lowest processing rates that our customers have seen in... So if you're using, let's not mention any names, but we're all familiar with the little shape name and the other thing you do just to swipe right, these companies make it very easy to implement, make it very easy to collect. And they don't have all, it's just like, Nope, we're going to do a straight four, 4.2, whatever percent and people just go with it. It's a commodity driven type service.

From our standpoint point, if I'm a merchant and I just want to accept card payments or even ACH payments, as long as the money hits my bank and it's easy for my people to pay, do I care who my provider is? No, not necessarily. I mean, unless I have a problem and I need service and I can't get a hold of somebody, that's definitely a problem. But as long as it's working, most people don't shop. And what I've found as I've been working with our chosen partner, the rates that they offer and the service that they provide is hands down the best service in the industry and the most competitive rates. And our clients are now saving, depending on their processing volume, a considerable amount of money just on their processing. It's great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's great.

Brian Cancian: It's great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. So efficiencies and saving money.

Brian Cancian: Efficiencies and money savings. If all else is equal, you don't have to touch it to get into your accounting system and it's going to cost you less.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Okay. How do I sign up?

Brian Cancian: Okay. Exactly. Where is the selling side of this happening? It's really not.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's not. So in all honesty, as people are listening to this and they're going, yeah, we got to do this. We need to make this change. How do they get in touch with you? How do they get started to work with Foundation?

Brian Cancian: Yeah, no, absolutely. If they're already Foundation users, right, it's just another product that it can be added on, they can go out to our website and inquire about it. They can call me directly, our 800 number, (800) 246-0800.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There you go.

Brian Cancian: My email is btc@foundationsoft.com. Those go in, they go directly to our sales reps. They'll go through, they'll do some analysis for you and kind of talk pricing and what you look like every month. And from there, you just get on board. It's really a pretty simple process.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it.

Brian Cancian: Pretty simple process. Now, on the other side of the house, I think we mentioned earlier, we're working with a best in breed payments company, not on the incoming side to accept payments, but also to initiate the outgoing payments. It's another product, but it's a construction specific payments company. And we are in the process now of finalizing an API integration so the Foundation users in the not too distant future will be able to simply select things to be paid exactly the way that they would've. You obviously still have to decide that, and once that information is compiled, they'll be able to push that directly out to this new payment provider. And just like your online bill pay, that company is going to do all of the work in trying to get vendors to accept their virtual card payments.

If not, they'll do some form of automated ACH, try and do expedited services if possible. And if not, if the vendors absolutely refuse, they just cut them a check. And even with the check, you as the payor are off the hook for all, any of the fraud liability. If their check gets pulled out of the mail and is now being cashed fraudulently, you're not going to be on the hook for it and it's not your money that's tied up.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's great.

Brian Cancian: Which is great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that is great.

Brian Cancian: That's a huge benefit.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow, Brian, congratulations. What a great service. What a great add-on. Wow.

Brian Cancian: That's great. It's going to be really exciting.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, congratulations and thank you so much for sharing all this with us and being on Roofing Road Trips.

Brian Cancian: Absolutely. Been a pleasure. Appreciate you having me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. And thank you all for listening. Please be sure to check out all of the Foundation directories. There's a number of them, check them out and you can get in touch with Foundation to find out how you can get started and really start incorporating these payment processing into 2025. So check it out. Check out all of our podcasts under the read list and watch navigation under Roofing Road Trips, or on your favorite podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe and set those notifications so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

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