It is extremely easy to get new teams and organizations up and running on Rho. I can set and enforce a single standard for the entire finance organization using a system that our field teams love – and all without adding any new people. That is the definition of scale.
What is Northpoint Roofing Systems?
Founded in 2019, Northpoint Roofing Systems is a Georgia-based company specializing in asphalt, metal roofing, gutters, and revolutionary solar shingles. Recently honored as an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company, Northpoint Roofing has made a name for itself thanks to its customer service and innovative use of AI Drone detection roofing reports.
Their Free Drone Inspections assess if there is roofing damage to a customer's home and help provide homeowners information on whether their roof is covered by insurance or if the extent of the damage is not storm-related affordable options to keep their home protected.
Challenge
Driven by robust year-over-year expansion, Northpoint Roofing Systems recently became a subsidiary of a private equity firm that specializes in acquiring and supporting world-class operating companies.
The PE firm's investment strategy hinges on investing in market-leading companies that demonstrate excellence in people, processes, and technology – like Northpoint – and using them as the blueprint for future acquired companies.
The holding company has since acquired and integrated three other roofing brands using this model: Rising Star Roofing, Cardinal Roofing and Restoration, and Master Roofing.
Kathleen Lloyd, corporate controller at Northpoint Roofing Holdings, oversees the finance organization for the holding company and its subsidiaries. Each entity has either a controller or accounting manager that reports to Kathleen. For example, Jennie Jernigan is the controller for Northpoint Roofing Systems.
As the company grew through acquisition, Lloyd quickly realized that their pre-existing finance systems couldn't support scale. That's when she began working with Rho to solve the problem.
Solution
With Rho, Northpoint Roofing Systems unlocked three key capabilities:
- PE-friendly corporate cards with spend controls: Rho's corporate credit card solution eliminated the undesired need for personal guarantees and provided spend controls that have helped the firm control costs across each portfolio company.
- Real-time expense reporting: Every time a field team member spends on the job, they can upload an expense receipt in real-time and code expenses to the right GL, transforming transaction reconciliation from a post-close checklist item to a pre-close exercise.
- Robust multi-entity support: Lloyd can understand how project spend is progressing across multiple entities and onboard newly acquired businesses to Rho quickly, supporting future M&A success.
Results
Before Rho, Northpoint Roofing Systems used corporate cards from Capital One and an expense management solution called Fyle. While they helped the business run, they quickly encountered a few roadblocks.
Best-in-class credit and expense management under one roof.
First, the company’s Capital One card required a personal guarantee – a challenging requirement for PE-backed businesses.
“We wanted to work with a partner like Rho that understood our business and had a compelling underwriting model that could provide credit solutions that our business needed to operate,” Lloyd said. With Rho’s underwriting model, Lloyd could access Rho Cards without the business requiring a personal guarantee.
They also lacked the ability to sync coded transactions with their ERP automatically. “We would have to wait until 15 days after the end of the month to code expenses because that’s when we would receive our credit card statement,” Lloyd said.
“It’s a challenge for anyone to manage individual expense receipts when you have to wait that long to submit them, but that challenge is amplified when you have mobile teams going from project to project each week.”
For example, if a field team reached a particular job site and discovered plywood damage under a customer's home’s roofing, that would require them to go to a local hardware store to purchase plywood. The company’s previous legacy expense management system (Fyle) helped automate the process to a certain extent.
However, Lloyd’s team still had to wait for the credit card statement to be available. The individual who purchased the lumber could have to wait as long as 45 days to submit the receipt, assuming they still had it!
With Rho Cards, Northpoint could generate unlimited physical and virtual corporate cards with spend controls to help Lloyd and her team enforce spend policies and support faster reconciliation.
Whenever contractors use a Rho Card, they receive a text receipt or notification in the Rho mobile app to upload their receipt. In seconds, they can take a picture of the receipt, upload it with the right coding, and the transaction gets synced immediately.
Cementing a growth foundation with multi-entity support
The next challenge they faced was that the legacy expense management solution Northpoint used didn’t have robust multi-entity support and didn’t integrate with QuickBooks, requiring Lloyd’s finance team to spend hours every month coding every single credit card transaction in the GL.
With Rho, field teams had an easy way to upload their receipts the same day they incurred expenses, and all information would get coded accurately in the Rho platform.
In the past, the finance team had also experienced challenges getting teams to submit their receipts on time. “We would spend hours each month chasing people for receipts that took away from time we could be using to support the business,” Lloyd said.
Now, Lloyd and the team could use Rho's notification system to nudge field teams via text and in-app notifications to submit receipts promptly, remedying their issue of lost receipts and delays.
The best part: All the finance team has to do today to ensure a smooth reconciliation of transaction data in QuickBooks is click “Sync” in Rho, and all data will appear instantly in the right GL – without needing an hours-long coding process after the close.
“Rho has effectively turned what used to be a painful, post-close activity into a part of our pre-close checklist,” Lloyd said. “I cannot tell you how valuable that is to our business, especially as we look to scale.”
Future acquisitions made easy
Thanks to Rho, Northpoint can scale faster, bringing in newly acquired businesses with ease.
“It is extremely easy to get new teams and organizations up and running on Rho,” Lloyd said. “I can set and enforce a single standard for the entire finance organization using a system that our field teams love – and all without adding any new people. That is the definition of scale.”
Testimonials reflect individual customer experiences and opinions and are provided for illustrative purposes. There is no guarantee that your Rho experience will be the same and results may vary.
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