Live job costing and engineer scheduling on Business Central

Client Overview

Company Name

Halsall Electrical Contractors Ltd.

Company Address

Unit 4, Hickman Avenue Industrial Estate, Wolverhampton, WV1 2BX, England.

Industry Details

Commercial and industrial electrical installation, panel building, and planned maintenance contracting for manufacturing, logistics, and commercial property clients across the Midlands. NICEIC approved contractor, ISO 9001:2015 certified. Operates a mix of fixed-price installation contracts and day-rate maintenance agreements.

Entity Size

Around 95 employees including electricians, engineers, estimators, and administration.

Product/Solutions Implemented

Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Duration of Project

6 months.

Halsall Electrical Contractors logo

We replaced a paper-based job management system and a disconnected Sage accounts package at Halsall Electrical with a unified Dynamics 365 Business Central environment covering contract job costing, engineer time allocation, materials purchase order management, and compliance certification tracking. Jobs that had previously run over budget without warning now show live cost versus estimate from day one. Halsall Electrical Contractors Ltd. is a family-owned electrical engineering business founded in Wolverhampton in 1988, delivering commercial electrical installations, industrial panel builds, and planned maintenance contracts for manufacturing, logistics, and commercial property clients across the Midlands.

Halsall Electrical needed a single platform to connect estimating, project delivery, procurement, and finance. Disconnected processes delayed visibility into project costs and profitability. By implementing Dynamics 365 Business Central, the company gained real-time insight into job performance, resource utilization, and financial outcomes from day one.

Engineering - Electrical ContractingDynamics 365 Business Central
Dynamics 365 Business Central implementation for electrical contracting

A leading provider of mechanical and electrical engineering solutions, delivering reliable building services across commercial and industrial sectors nationwide.

The Challenge

  • Job costing ran in a separate spreadsheet maintained by the contracts manager. Labour and materials were posted weekly from engineer timesheets and delivery notes, never in real time during a job.
  • Materials procurement was handled informally by site electricians calling or texting preferred suppliers. There were no purchase orders, making invoice matching at month-end a manual exercise with frequent disputes.
  • Engineer scheduling was managed on a whiteboard in the depot. There was no visibility of engineer availability across multiple concurrent jobs and double-allocation occurred regularly.
  • Electrical certification records including EICR reports, commissioning records, and test results were stored in a mix of paper files and individual engineer laptops. Retrieving certificates for client audits was time-consuming and occasionally certificates could not be located.
  • Planned maintenance contract billing was raised manually by the accounts administrator from a calendar reminder. Contracts were occasionally billed late and one contract was not billed for three consecutive months without anyone noticing.
  • Month-end close took 12 working days and always required the contracts manager and accountant to spend two days reconciling job costs against invoices received.

Our Solution

Job Costing and Engineer Management

  • Business Central was deployed as the primary platform for all contract and maintenance activity. Each job is set up in BC with a budget, a scope breakdown, and an estimated labour and materials allocation drawn from the estimating system.
  • Engineer time is booked against jobs daily via mobile app on site. Labour costs post to the job in real time from BC HR rate cards, giving the contracts manager a live cost versus estimate position throughout every active job.
  • Engineer scheduling was built in BC using resource allocation against job programme dates. Available engineer capacity is visible to the planner across all active contracts before any new job commitment is made.
  • Materials purchase orders are raised in BC for all site procurement. Deliveries are confirmed by site electricians on mobile app, and three-way match against the purchase order and supplier invoice is enforced before payment is released.

Certification, Maintenance Billing, and Finance

  • Electrical certification records are stored in BC against the job record. EICR reports, commissioning records, and test certificates are uploaded to BC at job completion and are retrievable by job, site, and client instantly.
  • Planned maintenance contract billing is automated from BC recurring invoice schedules. Contracts bill on the correct date every month without administrator involvement, and the contracts manager receives a monthly exception report for any contract approaching renewal.
  • Month-end close is now automated from BC job ledger and purchase ledger data. The 12-day manual process has been replaced by a 2-day review and sign-off.

The Impact

Halsall Electrical moved job costing, engineer scheduling, materials purchasing, electrical certification, maintenance billing, and finance close into one Business Central environment.

$0K+

Invoice Dispute Savings

Estimated annual reduction in invoice discrepancies and supplier disputes.

0%

Materials Purchase Order Coverage

All materials procurement now runs through BC purchase orders. Invoice disputes are resolved before payment.

$0K+

Project Cost Visibility

Improved project profitability visibility across all active contracts through real-time job costing.


We always knew whether a job had made money eventually. The problem was eventually was three weeks after the job finished and we had already started the next one with the same estimating assumptions. Now we know during the job and we can do something about it.

Keith Halsall
Managing Director
Halsall Electrical Contractors Ltd.

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