How AFT Construction – one of the top custom home builders in the country – gained financial control with Buildertrend

Four acres of real estate. A baseball field made to be a mini-Wrigley stadium, tennis court and lazy river. Twenty thousand square feet of dream living space.

What do all these have in common?

Together they create Brad Leavitt’s latest job, also known as “Project Blow Your Mind.”

And as the software program that helped the AFT Construction team build this dream home, Buildertrend was lucky enough to get an in-person tour of the sprawling estate – twice! We visited back in 2022 as part of our Behind-the-Business series to see the project in its infancy stages, and we went back earlier this year to see where it was at as it neared the finish line.

Brad took us through his two-year journey (which at the time of recording was just months away from completion) to share how our tools were the key to keeping projects like this on schedule and on budget – a huge feat for a job this size.

Check out the video tour below and read on to learn more about how running his entire business in Buildertrend helped grow his company and create an amazing dream home.

AFT Construction was already using Buildertrend, but then…

Two years ago, when Brad and his team started this enormous project, they were using Buildertrend – but not to its full extent.

They relied solely on the Schedule, Tasks, Daily Logs and the Customer Portal, which are all part of our basic project management features. But Brad quickly realized that wasn’t going to be enough to ensure the business stayed on track. To stand out in the competitive construction market, it’s no longer good enough to just hone in on your scheduling and project planning. AFT needed to get their entire operations and financial landscape in better shape. Buildertrend was there to help.

“When you’re working on a project of this magnitude, there’s no way you can do it without organization,” Brad said.

If they wanted to stick to the budget, protect their profits and provide transparency to their clients, they were going to need to bring their financials into Buildertrend.

They started linking our project management tools with our financial features, and now…

“Even though we had a different accounting software before [Buildertrend], it just wasn’t functioning and speaking to the rest of our project management,” Brad said. “It wasn’t speaking to the day-to-day operations. We had to make a big change.”

In order to make that change, they had to start using 100% of Buildertrend in order to get the automation they needed. Thanks to Onsite Consulting, one of our product experts helped get the team trained on our entire platform so they could begin using it to its full extent.

They began linking features like Lien Waivers and Change Orders to their jobs, and thanks to the mobile app, they could do this on the spot – saving much needed time and energy.

“Now we’re making huge progress,” said Brad. “It’s so much easier and efficient. And we can handle more projects with less staff.”

They can build 20-thousand square foot homes

“As a company we’ve grown immensely the last 11 years we’ve been in business,” said Brad.

After getting a first-hand look at this incredible home/theme park, we’d certainly say so, too! You don’t get to building projects of this size by running your business in multiple places. When bouncing between Buildertrend, Excel, QuickBooks, texts, emails, DocuSign, the list goes on … you simply can’t be efficient in a way that allows your team to build at its best.

“As you grow, you start to find out the bottlenecks of the company and where things are inhibiting growth or efficiency or incurring extra costs,” said Brad.

And you can’t find those things on your own. Reporting and data are how you identify the problems in your business – and you can’t easily gather that data when it’s spread across multiple platforms.

So, if you want to start building top of the line homes on schedule, on budget and with less stress, be like Brad. Work simpler in Buildertrend.

Schedule a free demo with our team to learn more about how you can go from a 6-figure to an 8-figure business with the help of our tech.

Part 1: How an industry leader continues to reach new highs

Part 2: Brad’s secret to winning the sale

Part 3: Leading the team through change

Part 4: Proving unstoppable against pandemic pitfalls

Part 5: AFT tours a 5-acre desert oasis #BuiltWithBuildertrend

Or, watch all the AFT Behind the Business videos here on YouTube.

About The Author

Julia Thompson Julia Thompson is a copywriter at Buildertrend.