Ops Stack for Commercial Roofers

Ops Stack for Commercial Roofers

This page gives you a simple, realistic software stack for commercial roofing companies.

The goal is not to collect a bunch of apps. The goal is to help your crews, your office, and your numbers stay on the same page so jobs run smoother and profit is easier to see.

Who This Stack Is For

This stack is built for companies that:

  • Focus on commercial roofing projects
  • Have multiple crews in the field most days
  • Are tired of paper, spreadsheets, and generic “one size fits all” tools

Roughly, it fits roofers in the 10 to 100 employee range. Small enough that the owner still feels everything. Big enough that mistakes and rework really hurt.

The Core Stack: What You Actually Need

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

  1. Time tracking for crews
  2. Scheduling and job details
  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 drops.

1. Time Tracking for Crews

This is the foundation. If time is wrong, everything that touches money is wrong.

Your time tracking tool should:

  • Let foremen clock in their crew by job and cost code
  • Work on phones or tablets in the field
  • Capture basic notes and photos when needed
  • Sync cleanly into payroll and job costing

Good signs you picked the right one:

  • Foremen actually use it without you nagging them every day
  • Office staff spends less time chasing corrections
  • You can see hours by job and crew without exporting three spreadsheets

2. Scheduling and Job Details

You need a simple way to answer “Who is where and doing what today?”

Your scheduling tool should:

  • Show jobs on a calendar or board view
  • Assign crews, trucks, and key equipment
  • Store addresses, scope notes, and special requirements
  • Be easy enough to update when plans change at 7:00 a.m.

For some companies, time tracking and scheduling live inside the same app. For others, they are separate tools that sync. Either is fine as long as your office and field see the same plan.

3. Payroll and Basic HR

Roofing payroll has its own headaches. Overtime, different job sites, weather delays, and sometimes prevailing wage or union rules.

Your payroll and HR tools should:

  • Pull approved hours directly from your time tracking system
  • Handle multi-state taxes and different pay types
  • Make it easy to add and terminate employees
  • Store basic HR records, forms, and documents in one place

The key is that payroll stops being a weekly fire drill. Your office should be reviewing numbers, not retyping them.

4. Job Costing and Accounting

If you cannot see what you made or lost on a job, you are guessing.

Your accounting and job costing setup should:

  • Track labor, materials, subs, equipment, and overhead by job
  • Connect to your invoicing and change order process
  • Let you see estimated vs actual cost for each project
  • Give simple reports the owner actually reads

Sometimes this is handled inside a construction accounting package. Sometimes you use standard accounting software plus a clean job coding system. What matters is that your job numbers are trusted and easy to pull.

5. Project Management and Documentation

Commercial owners and property managers care about proof.

Your project management and documentation tools should:

  • Store signed proposals, contracts, and specs
  • Keep photo and video records of inspections and progress
  • Track change orders and approvals
  • Make it easy to share clean updates with clients when needed

This can be a dedicated construction project management tool, a well organized system inside your CRM, or a mix that fits how your team thinks. The key is that nothing important lives only in someone’s text messages.

6. CRM and Pipeline Tracking

This is where your future work lives.

Your CRM should:

  • Track property managers, owners, and repeat clients
  • Store notes from calls, site visits, and inspections
  • Show where each opportunity sits in your pipeline
  • Connect in some way to your estimating and proposal process

It does not have to be fancy. It does have to be updated. Your sales and operations conversations are much easier when everyone is looking at the same list of jobs and statuses.

How These Pieces Work Together

The best stack is the one that moves information without you retyping it. A simple flow for a commercial roofer looks like this:

  1. CRM and estimating create the job and basic details.
  2. Scheduling assigns the crew and dates.
  3. Time tracking records hours by job and cost code.
  4. Payroll pulls approved hours with minimal edits.
  5. Accounting and job costing receive labor and other costs.
  6. Project management stores all the documents and photos that prove what was done.

If a tool does not plug into this flow, it should have a very good reason to exist.

Small, Mid, and Larger Roofing Companies

You do not need the same stack at every size.

Small crews (10 to 25 people)

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

Growing companies (25 to 60 people)

  • Stronger time tracking and scheduling with better reporting
  • Payroll that handles more complex rules and multiple states
  • Clear job costing with regular job review meetings
  • CRM tied more tightly to estimating and follow up
  • Simple project management with standard checklists

Larger commercial players (60 to 100 people)

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

You can grow into this. You do not have to buy it all on day one.

How to Use This Page

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

  • Start by circling what you already use.
  • Mark the gaps that cause the most pain each week.
  • Fix one layer at a time, starting with time tracking and payroll.

As you look at tools, come back to one simple 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 the maybes from the mistakes.