How a High-Volume Disaster Restoration Company Manages 20-30 Jobs Per Week Without Drowning in Manual Updates
Industry: Disaster Restoration
Location: Massachusetts & Rhode Island
Service Area: Bristol, Western Norfolk, Worcester, and Providence Counties
Workforce: IICRC-certified technicians
Payroll Platform: ADP
Job Volume: 20-30 new jobs per week (80-120 jobs per month)
Services: Water damage restoration, fire and smoke damage restoration, mold remediation, emergency disaster response
The Challenge: High-Volume Emergency Work Demands Real-Time Job Costing
ServiceMaster Dynamic Cleaning is a family-owned disaster restoration company that has been serving Massachusetts and Rhode Island since 1998. Operating 24/7/365, the company responds to emergency water damage, fire damage, and mold remediation calls across multiple counties.
In the disaster restoration business, speed is everything. When a customer calls with a flooded basement or fire damage, ServiceMaster Dynamic Cleaning's team mobilizes immediately—often within hours. The company handles 20 to 30 new jobs every week, with work ranging from small residential water extractions to large commercial fire restoration projects.
Each job is unique:
- Different scope and duration
- Different labor requirements
- Different equipment and materials
- Different insurance carriers and claim requirements
- Different project managers and crew assignments
With 80-120 active jobs per month, the challenge wasn't just completing the work—it was tracking costs accurately across every single job in real-time.
Before Dapt, job costing meant:
- Manually allocating labor hours to individual jobs after each payroll
- Updating job costs in spreadsheets
- Reconciling time tracking data with payroll and accounting
- Calculating true job profitability weeks after work was completed
- Struggling to know which jobs were profitable while still in progress
At this volume, manual job cost updates weren't just time-consuming—they were impossible to maintain. The accounting team was constantly behind, chasing down which employees worked on which jobs, and trying to allocate payroll costs before starting the next wave of new jobs.
The company needed a solution that could automatically handle the volume without requiring constant manual intervention.
The Solution: Automated Job Costing That Scales with Volume
ServiceMaster Dynamic Cleaning selected Dapt to automate the connection between time tracking, payroll, and job costing across their high-volume operation.
The Core Problem: Volume Breaks Manual Processes
With 20-30 new jobs starting each week and multiple jobs running concurrently, the traditional payroll-to-job-costing workflow collapsed under the volume:
Manual Process (Before Dapt):
- Technicians complete time sheets for multiple jobs per day
- Time data goes to payroll
- Payroll processes and pays employees
- Accounting team receives payroll summary
- Accounting manually allocates labor costs to each job
- Job costs updated in spreadsheets or accounting system
- Job profitability calculated (2-4 weeks after work completed)
At 100+ active jobs per month, this meant:
- Hundreds of manual allocations per pay period
- Constant risk of errors (wrong job, wrong cost, wrong allocation)
- No real-time visibility into job profitability
- Unable to make pricing or resource decisions based on current data
Automated Process (With Dapt):
- Technicians track time by job in time tracking system
- Dapt pulls time data and applies correct pay rates
- Dapt prepares payroll inputs for ADP
- ADP processes payroll
- Dapt automatically allocates all labor costs (wages + burden) to correct jobs
- Job costs update automatically in real-time
- Job profitability visible immediately
How It Works: From Emergency Call to Job Profitability
Job Creation and Setup
When a new emergency call comes in, the job is created in ServiceMaster Dynamic Cleaning's system. Dapt automatically begins tracking all costs associated with that job from day one.
Time Tracking by Job
Technicians track time daily by job. Whether working on one job or splitting time across multiple jobs in a single day, Dapt captures and allocates time automatically.
For example, a typical day might involve:
- 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Water extraction at Job #2401
- 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Equipment pickup and delivery at Job #2398
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Mold remediation at Job #2405
Dapt tracks each segment separately and allocates costs to the correct job.
Automatic Payroll Integration
Dapt pulls time data and prepares it for ADP payroll processing. Once payroll runs, Dapt automatically:
- Captures wages for each employee
- Calculates and applies employer burden (taxes, workers' comp, benefits)
- Allocates fully-burdened labor costs to each job
- Updates accounting with complete job cost data
Real-Time Job Cost Visibility
With 80-120 jobs active at any time, managers can instantly see:
- Which jobs are profitable
- Which jobs are trending over budget
- Labor costs per job in real-time
- Fully-burdened costs (not just wages)
This visibility allows the team to:
- Make informed decisions about resource allocation
- Identify cost overruns while jobs are still active
- Price accurately based on actual historical costs
- Track profitability by job type, customer, or insurance carrier
The Volume Advantage: Handling 20-30 Jobs Per Week Effortlessly
What makes Dapt essential for ServiceMaster Dynamic Cleaning is its ability to scale automatically with volume.
Before Dapt: Manual Updates Couldn't Keep Up
At 25 jobs per week × 4 weeks = 100 jobs per month
With an average of 5-10 payroll allocations per job:
- 500-1,000 manual allocations per month
- 6,000-12,000 manual allocations per year
- Each allocation requiring lookup, calculation, and entry
- High risk of errors, delays, and incomplete data
The accounting team was drowning. No matter how many hours they worked, they couldn't keep job costs current.
After Dapt: Automation Handles the Volume
Same 100 jobs per month:
- Zero manual allocations
- Zero payroll-to-job-costing lag time
- Zero risk of allocation errors
- Complete, accurate job costs available immediately
Dapt doesn't care if there are 10 jobs or 100 jobs—the automation handles it the same way.
This means:
- New jobs start with automated cost tracking
- No backlog of job cost updates
- No month-end scramble to catch up
- No risk that high volume breaks the process
Scaling Without Adding Staff
As ServiceMaster Dynamic Cleaning continues to grow, the job volume will increase. With Dapt in place:
- 30 jobs per week? Handled automatically.
- 40 jobs per week? Handled automatically.
- 50 jobs per week? Handled automatically.
The accounting team isn't managing more volume—Dapt is. This frees staff to focus on analysis, customer service, and business growth rather than manual data entry.
Beyond Labor: Complete Job Cost Visibility
In addition to labor automation, Dapt provides ServiceMaster Dynamic Cleaning with:
Equipment Cost Tracking
- Track equipment deployed to each job
- Allocate equipment costs automatically
- Understand true total job costs (labor + equipment)
Multi-Dimensional Analysis
- Profitability by job type (water, fire, mold)
- Profitability by customer type (residential, commercial, insurance)
- Profitability by region or service area
- Crew performance and efficiency analysis
Insurance and Billing Support
- Accurate job costs for insurance claims
- Documentation of all labor and equipment
- Faster claim processing and payment
The Result
With Dapt in place, ServiceMaster Dynamic Cleaning now has:
✓ Effortless volume management – 20-30 new jobs per week processed automatically without manual intervention
✓ Real-time job profitability – Know which jobs are profitable immediately, not weeks later
✓ Fully-burdened cost accuracy – True labor costs (wages + burden) allocated to every job automatically
✓ Scalability without added overhead – Growth doesn't require proportional increase in accounting staff
✓ Zero allocation backlog – No more catching up on job costs or month-end scrambles
✓ Better decision-making – Resource allocation, pricing, and strategic decisions based on accurate, current data
✓ Freed accounting capacity – Team focuses on analysis and business support instead of manual data entry
What would have been an overwhelming volume of manual updates is now a streamlined, automated process. ServiceMaster Dynamic Cleaning can focus on what they do best—responding to emergencies and restoring properties—while Dapt handles the complexity of tracking costs across 100+ jobs every month.
The company now has the financial visibility and operational efficiency to continue growing without being constrained by administrative overhead. As volume increases, Dapt scales effortlessly, ensuring that job costing accuracy and real-time profitability remain consistent no matter how many emergency calls come in.
