How A.L. Helmcamp, Inc. Tripled Its Workforce And Kept Every Jobsite Accountable
A.L. Helmcamp, Inc., a Central Texas-based highway contractor, manages dozens of companies across the state. A long-time FOUNDATION® user since 2020, the company initially operated on an on-premise system that served them well in their early years.
But as the business expanded rapidly — from 200 to 600 employees across Texas — they recognized the need for a more scalable solution that could support remote access and reduce internal IT efforts.
Life Before FOUNDATION
Before implementing FOUNDATION, A.L. Helmcamp, Inc.’s accounting software utilized internal servers which required additional time, oversight and infrastructure as the company grew.
As multiple team members worked across payroll, accounts payable and reporting, the data each team member worked with wasn’t connected in real-time.
Working across these areas of the business, Kelly Gallagher, CPA, would have to manually consolidate the data at the end of the week to make sure everyone was working with the latest information.
“So, if our accounts payable person was working on AP or she was doing payroll, I would have to actually physically roll the week,” Gallagher explained.
This process added extra steps to ensure data was fully updated across the system, making it more difficult to maintain real-time visibility as the company scaled.
We process payroll for hundreds of employees with one person — without this system, that wouldn’t be possible.
Vickie Daniel
Payroll Lead
A.L. Helmcamp, Inc.
Efficiency Through Integration and Real-Time Data
By transitioning to FOUNDATION Hosted — a cloud-based version of FOUNDATION that removes the need for internal servers while providing automatic backups, system updates and enhanced security — along with adding hrHQ (human resources management) and SafetyHQ (safety and compliance management), A.L. Helmcamp, Inc. transitioned to a scalable, fully integrated ecosystem.
All three solutions — FOUNDATION, hrHQ and SafetyHQ — are part of the Foundation Software platform, allowing data to flow between accounting, payroll, HR and safety without the need for separate systems or manual data consolidation.
Payroll processing also became significantly more efficient as a result.
Vickie Daniel, Payroll Lead, runs payroll for all 600 employees by herself. Every week, she has from Monday morning to Wednesday afternoon to collect and approve timecards, catch errors, run reports and finalize checks.
FOUNDATION’s pre-check registers and error-reporting tools are central to how she pulls it off.
“If it wasn’t for FOUNDATION and the different reports I could run, the correction list would be through the roof. The unpaid employee report is my favorite — it shows who didn’t have time this week that had it last week, so we start investigating at that point. It saves a lot of time not having to do makeup checks at the end of the week,” Daniel noted.
Without FOUNDATION, she estimates the process would need to start over the weekend just to hit the same Wednesday deadline.
“If the program didn’t run the way it did, you couldn’t do payroll as fast as I do now,” Daniel said. “It’d be really hard and painful without it.”
On the accounts payable side, automation and workflow tools streamlined approvals and reduced errors.
“We’ve gotten to where we can input invoices very, very fast,” said Kimberly Allen, AP Manager. “Our project managers go through and approve or do their revisions, and we can process those very quickly too — it’s a very efficient system in the way revisions and routing work.”
A Scalable, Unified Platform
Before hrHQ, onboarding new employees was an entirely paper-based process — a significant challenge for a company operating across the state of Texas. Applications, I-9s and other documents had to travel physically between job sites and the office, and it wasn’t uncommon for someone to start work before their paperwork had made it through the system.
“We had paper applications, paper onboarding, and we’re statewide in Texas,” Gallagher said. “If you can imagine someone getting hired and the paperwork’s not here, but yet they have time — or this guy’s been working for a week but never got to payroll.”
Integrations between hrHQ and SafetyHQ solved this. Employee information entered in hrHQ flows automatically into FOUNDATION and is then shared with SafetyHQ, where training records and certifications are tracked. Data only needs to be entered once, and it follows the employee through the system from hire to job site.
“hrHQ puts the information into FOUNDATION and then FOUNDATION talks to SafetyHQ,” Gallagher said. “So, it’s kind of a flow through.”
The platform’s usability has also simplified financial oversight across A.L. Helmcamp, Inc.’s multiple companies. Teams can hop between databases without logging out, making it easy to check balances across entities and confirm that intercompany transactions reconcile correctly.
“It is very easy to go between the different databases because we have multiple databases for the multiple companies,” Allen noted.
With FOUNDATION Hosted, the company no longer manages internal servers, software updates or data backups. Foundation Software’s IT team handles system maintenance and cybersecurity, giving A.L. Helmcamp, Inc. a more secure and reliable environment without added internal effort or cost.
“Now that it’s hosted, it’s even better… we don’t have to worry about our data being there, it’s always there,” Gallagher said.
As A.L. Helmcamp, Inc. has grown, FOUNDATION and its integrated solutions have scaled alongside the business with no ceiling to be found.
“I think from where we were and now on FOUNDATION, even with as big as we are, we haven’t seen that there’s a limit to it,” Gallagher said.
Ultimately, the integrated system supports better output from a lean team.
“We have a very small staff — so even though we have more people it’s just easier. You get more work done,” Daniel added.
As A.L. Helmcamp, Inc. continues to expand, their integrated software systems ensure they can grow confidently, efficiently and securely.
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