A PlanGrid and FMI study found construction professionals spend only 35 % of their time on optimal activities and lose more than 14 hours per week to searching for information, resolving conflict and handling mistakes and rework. In fleet operations, much of that lost time is in phone calls to the field, asking crews to report on work the office should already be able to see.
After the job, the most expensive consequence shows up in the billing cycle, where every upstream gap comes due at once. Payroll tries to decipher timecards without the job context to validate them. Billing reconstructs the story from fragmented job packets, paper tickets and whatever the foreman can remember.
That game of telephone produces a watered-down version of what actually happened. Then, the billing team is armed with less than they need to fight for the full value of the work performed because unit quantities get missed and line items get conceded. And those problems never surface cleanly enough to prevent the same mistake the next time.
Rabbet estimated that slow payments cost the U. S. construction industry more than $ 200 billion in a single year, and that 37 % of contractors reported work delayed or stopped because of payment delays. In fleet operations, every day of closeout lag is working capital sitting in a glovebox or on a clipboard, and every unbilled hour is revenue the company earned and then gave away.
Bigger Goal This is why going paperless, by itself, is not the goal. A utility or construction fleet operator can eliminate paper and still lose money. Replacing paper with a dozen disconnected apps compounds the problem because each login is another silo and each vendor learns a slice of the operation and forces a process that fits its product instead of the work.
10 • 800-247-2000 • August 2026