Ops Stack for Commercial Paving Contractors

Ops Stack for Commercial Paving Contractors

This page gives you a simple, realistic software stack for commercial paving and parking lot contractors.

The goal is not to stack up more apps. The goal is to help your crews, office, and numbers stay aligned so schedules are clear, jobs run smoother, and profit is easier to see.

Who This Stack Is For

This stack is built for companies that:

  • Focus on commercial paving, parking lots, road work, or site work
  • Run multiple crews, trucks, and pieces of equipment most days
  • Are tired of paper, radio calls, and generic tools that don’t match how paving really works

Roughly, it fits contractors in the 10 to 100 employee range. Big enough that mistakes are expensive, small enough that the owner still feels every problem.

The Core Stack: What You Actually Need

At a basic level, a commercial paving ops stack should cover:

  1. Time tracking for crews and operators
  2. Scheduling for crews, trucks, and equipment
  3. Payroll and basic HR
  4. Job costing and accounting
  5. Project management and documentation
  6. CRM and pipeline tracking

You can add extras later, but if you get these six working together, most of the chaos starts to calm down.

1. Time Tracking for Crews and Operators

In paving, labor and equipment time are two of your biggest levers. If those are wrong, your numbers are wrong.

Your time tracking tool should:

  • Let foremen clock in crew members and operators by job and phase
  • Record hours for key equipment when it matters for cost or billing
  • Work on phones or tablets in the field, even with spotty service
  • Sync cleanly into payroll and job costing

Good signs you picked the right one:

  • Foremen actually use it every day without constant reminders
  • Office staff spends less time chasing down missing hours
  • You can pull a simple report that shows hours by job, crew, and equipment

2. Scheduling for Crews, Trucks, and Equipment

Paving lives and dies on logistics. If crews, trucks, and equipment are out of sync, the whole day backs up.

Your scheduling tool should:

  • Show jobs on a calendar or board view with clear start dates and times
  • Assign crews, trucks, and key equipment to each job
  • Store addresses, specs, mix details, and job notes in one place
  • Be fast to update when weather or site issues force changes

For some companies, time tracking and scheduling live inside the same app. For others, they are separate tools that sync. The key is that your field and office are always looking at the same plan.

3. Payroll and Basic HR

Paving payroll can get messy with early pours, night work, overtime, and travel between sites.

Your payroll and HR tools should:

  • Pull approved hours directly from your time tracking system
  • Handle overtime rules, different pay types, and multiple sites
  • Make it easy to add and terminate employees cleanly
  • Store basic HR records and documents in one place

The goal is to move from “fixing payroll every week by hand” to reviewing clean numbers and handling exceptions, not rebuilding the whole thing from scratch.

4. Job Costing and Accounting

Fuel, mix, trucking, labor, equipment time—if you can’t see them by job, you’re guessing on margin.

Your accounting and job costing setup should:

  • Track labor, materials, trucking, and equipment by job or phase
  • Connect to your invoicing and change order process
  • Show estimated vs actual cost for each major project
  • Give simple job reports the owner will actually look at

This can live inside a construction-focused accounting system or in a standard accounting tool with a strong job and cost code structure. What matters is that job reports are trusted and easy to pull.

5. Project Management and Documentation

Commercial clients and municipalities care about proof, not just the finished surface.

Your project management and documentation tools should:

  • Store contracts, specs, and traffic control plans
  • Keep photo and video records before, during, and after work
  • Track change orders, approvals, and punch list items
  • Make it easy to share clean summaries with clients when needed

This might be a dedicated construction project management tool, a well-organized system inside your CRM, or a combination that matches how your team thinks. The key is that important information doesn’t live only in text threads and group chats.

6. CRM and Pipeline Tracking

This is where the next season’s work lives—property managers, GCs, municipalities, and repeat clients.

Your CRM should:

  • Track key contacts at properties, facilities, and agencies
  • Store notes from site walks, bids, and seasonal maintenance conversations
  • Show where each opportunity sits in your pipeline
  • Connect in some way to estimating and proposals

It doesn’t need to be complicated. It does need to be accurate enough that your team can see what’s coming without digging through email and texts.

How These Pieces Work Together

The best stack is the one that moves information with as little retyping as possible. A simple flow for a paving contractor looks like this:

  1. CRM and estimating create the job, basic details, and scope.
  2. Scheduling assigns crews, trucks, and equipment to dates and times.
  3. Time tracking records labor and, when needed, equipment hours by job.
  4. Payroll pulls approved hours with minimal edits.
  5. Accounting and job costing receive labor, materials, and equipment costs.
  6. Project management holds documents, photos, and approvals that prove what was done.

If a tool doesn’t support that flow or constantly forces workarounds, it should have a very strong reason to be in your stack.

Small, Mid, and Larger Paving Companies

You don’t need the same stack at every size.

Small crews (10 to 25 people)

  • One tool that handles time tracking and basic scheduling
  • Simple payroll that syncs with time tracking
  • Basic accounting with job numbers
  • Light CRM for key accounts and repeat work

Growing companies (25 to 60 people)

  • Stronger time tracking with better crew and job reporting
  • Scheduling that clearly assigns crews, trucks, and equipment
  • Payroll that can handle more complex rules and multiple pay types
  • Job costing with regular job review meetings
  • Simple project management with standard checklists and documentation

Larger commercial players (60 to 100 people)

  • Deeper integration between field tools, payroll, and accounting
  • More formal HR with onboarding, policies, and record-keeping
  • Project management that supports multi-crew, multi-phase work across sites
  • CRM and ops talking to each other so big accounts feel managed, not random

You can grow into this stack over time. You don’t have to buy everything on day one.

How to Use This Page

Treat this page like a blueprint, not a shopping list.

  • Start by marking what tools and systems you already use.
  • Highlight the gaps that cause the most pain each week.
  • Fix one layer at a time, starting where the pain is highest—usually time tracking and scheduling, or payroll.

As you look at tools, keep coming back to one question:

Will this make life easier for my crews, my office, and my numbers at the same time?

If the answer is no, keep looking. OpsForTrades is here to help you sort out which tools deserve a place in your paving stack and which ones don’t.