INDUSTRY: CONSTRUCTION & BUILDING MATERIALS

Simplifying Financial Reporting for Construction & Building Materials

Automate reporting, budgeting, and forecasting without leaving Excel®.

Construction and building materials companies operate in margin-sensitive, multi-branch environments shaped by commodity volatility and inventory complexity. Vivid connects to your ERP and automates Excel reporting — delivering clear, refreshable insight across locations and product lines.

  • 60+ ERP Integrations
  • 20+ Years Supporting Finance Teams
  • 6.9/7 Rated Support
Book a Demo

See More Before A Demo ➜

Bloedorn Lumber Logo
Chinook Lumber Logo
idaho pacific lumber
nelson river construction
franklin building supply
delta building products
the cabin depot
simpson door company

Designed for Construction & Building Materials Finance Teams

Commodity prices shift. Margins stay tight. Inventory ties up capital. Vivid automates financial reporting in Excel so your team spends less time consolidating spreadsheets — and more time protecting profitability.

Lumber & Building Supply Dealers

Track product-line and branch profitability, monitor gross margins, and manage commodity price fluctuations — without manual consolidation.

Multi-Branch Operations

Consolidate financials across locations with consistent reporting logic. Compare branch performance, inventory turns, and margin trends — all from live ERP data inside Excel.

Inventory-Heavy Businesses

Analyze inventory valuation, turns, and working capital with centralized, drillable financial logic — directly in Excel.

Multi-Entity & Growing Companies

Unify financial reporting across divisions and entities — even across different ERPs — with consistent, refreshable reports.

Construction & Building Materials Reporting Is Operationally Complex

Finance teams in the construction and building materials industry manage:

  • Multi-branch consolidation

  • Commodity price volatility

  • Inventory-heavy balance sheets

  • Rebate and vendor program tracking

  • Job and contract profitability

  • High transaction volume

The challenge isn’t just complexity — it’s managing it manually.

Simplify Multi-Branch & Multi-Entity Consolidation

Regional branches often operate with different systems, cost structures, or reporting practices — making consolidation slow and inconsistent.

With Vivid, you can:

  • Automate roll-ups across branches and entities

  • Standardize reporting logic across locations

  • Refresh consolidated reports instantly inside Excel

Lumber and material pricing shifts quickly — static reports can’t keep up.

With Vivid, you can:

  • Drill into margin by product line, branch, or customer

  • Compare performance across periods with live ERP data

  • Analyze cost impacts without rebuilding spreadsheets

Inventory-heavy balance sheets demand clear insight into turnover, aging, and capital exposure.

With Vivid, you can:

  • Track inventory performance by branch or category

  • Monitor working capital trends in real time

  • Drill from summary reports to transaction-level detail

Rebates, vendor incentives, and purchasing programs add complexity to profitability analysis.

With Vivid, you can:

  • Consolidate rebate data across locations

  • Align vendor programs with financial performance

  • Ensure consistent reporting logic across entities

Heavy reliance on manual Excel processes slows month-end and increases risk.

With Vivid, you can:

  • Automate Excel reporting with live ERP data

  • Maintain centralized financial logic

  • Deliver accurate, refreshable reports without IT bottlenecks

How Vivid Works for Construction & Building Materials Finance

Construction and building materials companies don’t have time for disruptive implementations. Vivid works inside Excel — the tool your team already knows — allowing many customers to go live within two weeks. 

Step 1
Connect to Your ERP

Integrate directly with one or multiple accounting systems. Eliminate manual data pulls while maintaining full traceability to source transactions.

Step 2
Automate Excel Reports

Enhance the spreadsheets your team already trusts. Pull live ERP data into Excel automatically with one-click refresh.

Step 3
Drill Into Branch & Product Detail

Click any number to explore branch performance, product margins, inventory metrics, or job profitability.

Step 4
Standardize Reporting Across Locations

Create consistent financial views across branches while maintaining flexibility for local operations.

“Everything related to our budget process before was manual. Vivid not only streamlined it but also gave us confidence in the accuracy of our numbers.”
Libby Walters
Franklin Building Supply

Get A Closer Look: See How Vivid Works In Under 10 Minutes

Watch Now
“Our old system required vertical lookups, which made any change extremely complicated. Vivid eliminated that frustration and saved us hours each week.”
Joost Douwes
Chinook Lumber

Why Construction & Building Materials Companies Choose Vivid

Real-Time Margin Visibility

Commodity volatility and competitive pricing pressure margins daily. Vivid provides clear, drillable visibility into product, branch, and job-level profitability — without waiting on manual reports.

Scalable Multi-Branch Consolidation

As companies grow, reporting complexity increases. Vivid automates consolidation across entities and locations, reducing month-end effort and risk.

Excel — Automated, Not Replaced

Finance teams rely on Excel for flexibility. Vivid enhances it with centralized logic and ERP integration — without forcing a new reporting platform.

Inventory & Working Capital Insight

Inventory drives performance in construction and building materials industries. Vivid enhances Excel with live ERP data, making it easier to analyze turns, valuation, and trends.

Case Study

Reducing Reporting and Budgeting Time by 80%

Bloedorn Lumber needed more efficient financial reporting across locations without disrupting operations or replacing existing systems.

By implementing Vivid, they automated Excel reporting directly from their ERP, improving consistency across branches and reducing manual spreadsheet work.

The result: faster reporting cycles, clearer visibility into branch performance, and a finance team focused on analysis instead of data consolidation.

Download Case Study
Vivid Products

Whether you're building reports, managing budgets, or analyzing results, Vivid makes it simple.

excel-based budgeting software

Financial Data

Transform Excel into a powerful, secure workspace for financial reporting, budgeting, and analysis with Vivid Reports.

Learn More About VividCPM ➜

Operational Data

Get direct access to your data from within Excel, so you can build operational reports without the manual export.

Learn More About VividFlex ➜

With You Every Step of the Way

When you choose Vivid, you’re not just getting a product. You’re gaining a long-term partner who listens, responds, and evolves with you.

Rated 6.97 out of 7 for Support

Chat with real people. Vivid’s support team is fast, has deep product knowledge, and a genuine commitment to helping finance teams succeed.

Why Vivid ➜

Results That Speak For Themselves

Don’t just take our word for it. 
Read how controllers, CFOs, and analysts transformed their financial reporting and budgeting with Vivid. 

Explore Customer Stories ➜

Frequently Asked Questions

How is VividCPM different from traditional reporting tools?

Unlike traditional BI or static reporting tools, Vivid CPM works natively in Excel, combining the flexibility finance teams love with automated data integrity from your ERP, and scalability to handle exceedingly complex situations. It’s fast to deploy, easy to learn, and built specifically for finance professionals.

Vivid’s Corporate Performance Management software is also distinctive in the depth of Excel integration. Where other tools generate pages in Excel, export to Excel, or use complex cell formula to get data into Excel, Vivid is true native Excel where a user can build any format they wish.

Yes. Vivid integrates with leading systems such as Microsoft Dynamics (GP, NAV, BC, F&O, D365), Epicor, Sage (Intacct, 300,500, X3, PFW), Acumatica, NetSuite, SAP, SYSPRO – Vivid has well over 60 integrations in our VividSync Library.  Configuring and testing Vivid for a new customer typically takes about 2 hours – with Vivid located on-prem, in a private cloud or as a Vivid hosted cloud solution.

If your ERP is not already in VividSync we are constantly working with customers that have bespoke needs to get them the outcome they need. 

From customer quotes – the provable gains of Vivid are:
1. Faster Reporting and Close Cycles
Finance teams using Vivid consistently cut reporting and month-end close times by 50–80%. Automated updates and real-time ERP connections eliminate the need for manual data exports, copy-paste work, or multiple spreadsheet versions.  On average, 25% of the controller’s time is  freed as a result of Vivid.

2. Dramatic Time Savings in Budgeting
Organizations report reducing their budget cycles from six weeks to one week. Shared templates, centralized data, and built-in audit tools remove the inefficiencies of email-based spreadsheets.  With this dramatic reduction in time, Vivid enables companies to consider advanced or continuous forecasting where this would have been unapproachable before.

3. Total Confidence in Data Accuracy
Every report in Vivid is connected directly to your accounting database – and – Vivid centrally manages the account definitions so numbers are always correct and traceable. Users gain a single version of the truth that eliminates reconciliation errors and manual refreshes – and – every spreadsheet across the customer shows the right information. Unlike other solutions, Vivid is first and foremost designed for bullet-proof period reporting of complex consolidated financial data.

4. Financial Self-Service
In a survey of Vivid customers, we found that 10% of the finance team’s time is consumed by answering questions that users could answer for themselves.  User self service through Vivid increases financial acumen across the company, reduces the load on finance teams, radically improves the budgeting process and makes financials a forward-looking management tool rather than a historical reporting function.

Vivid scales well from the single-person in finance at a school board or not-for-profit up to thousands of users or a dozen currencies without performance degradation.  For small teams – it’s about getting more done with less, automating rather than being reliant on only one person knowing how to do reports, and having simple, approachable tools to respond quickly to inquiries.

Mid-sized and large Vivid customers typically have multiple entities, or multiple currencies, or acquisitions, or multiple ERP, or large reporting trees, or a lot of change, or complexity in the segment analysis – something makes the manual effort of producing reports time consuming.  For these customers, the gains are 1) “speed!” – significant time savings in preparing financials as well as the time to close ; 2) Bullet-proof financials even in the face of severe complexity; 3) Decentralization, visibility and operational alignment – Vivid enables far more participation in using financial statements and participating in budgeting; and 4)  future-proofing financial operations – Vivid makes organizations far more adaptive to change. 

Stay confident in your numbers before, during, and after your ERP transition

Migrating to a new ERP system is one of the most disruptive projects a finance team can face. Reporting, consolidation, and budgeting often stall while systems are being reconfigured — but they don’t have to. Vivid is fully transferable, your first call should be to your Vivid team solutions consultant who can help you significantly reduce risk and stress through the systems change.

Remember: Vivid CPM keeps financial visibility intact through every stage of the transition.

1. Bridge Old and New Systems Seamlessly

Vivid CPM connects directly to multiple ERP databases, so you can report and consolidate from both your legacy and new systems in a single view. That means you can continue producing management reports, board packages, and budgets — even while data is being migrated or validated.

  • Combine financials from old and new ERPs during parallel runs

  • Validate balances and trial data between systems in real time

  • Maintain consistent chart-of-account structures across both environments

2. Accelerate ERP Implementation, Data Validation and Reconciliation

Migrating to Vivid prior to an ERP change requires very little time – however – it frees significant amounts of time for the finance team juggling monthly closing while also doing the work of an ERP migration.  This increase in availability not only significantly de-risks ERP implementation, it means the finance team is not learning both the new ERP and a new reporting platform simultaneously.

Additional gains – Vivid is part of your validation plans

Data migration errors are one of the top causes of ERP project delays. With Vivid CPM, finance teams can verify migrated data instantly by running side-by-side comparisons of GL accounts, entities, or periods — directly in Excel.

Detect missing or duplicated accounts, confirm that balances tie out, and sign off on migration accuracy faster and with full audit transparency.

3. Preserve Reporting Continuity

Most teams lose months rebuilding reports after a system change. Vivid eliminates that downtime. Your existing Vivid reports and templates remain usable — they simply point to the new ERP once its connection is established. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have remapping to do if the underlying chart of accounts changes – but the time to be live with comparative year-over-year reports is hours or days, not months.
This means your standard Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and department reports stay consistent before and after go-live, with no rework required on the base report layouts.

4. Enable Budgeting and Forecasting Mid-Migration

ERP changes don’t stop business planning. With Vivid’s centralized budgeting tools, you can continue your forecast and budget cycles without waiting for the new ERP to be live.
Budgets can even be mapped across old and new account structures, keeping your planning data consistent for year-over-year comparisons.

5. Reduce Risk and Dependence on IT

Because Vivid operates independently of the ERP’s native reporting tools, your finance team can keep working confidently while IT manages the migration.
No waiting for new cubes or reports to be built. No dependency on consultants. Vivid becomes your continuity layer for reporting and control.

Real-World Outcomes

  • Maintain uninterrupted monthly reporting throughout ERP transitions

  • Verify and reconcile migrated data in hours, not weeks

  • Eliminate report rebuild costs and delays

  • Preserve trusted KPIs and board reports from day one of go-live

Yes. Vivid CPM handles hundreds of entities, dozens of currencies, and even multiple fiscal years with ease. It automatically applies exchange rates and consolidates results.  Vivid can also:

  • easily manage complex nested reporting trees.
  • manage sophisticated segmentation and show 10 segments on a single report
  • use control panels on reports to easily flip between views of any of the the above in within the same report template.
What is Vivid Budgeting?

Vivid Budgeting is an add-on to Vivid CPM that lets you create, manage, and analyze budgets directly in Excel using your live financial data. It connects to your ERP data to populate budget templates with historical data, and let’s managers enter their budget data into the familiar excel templates they’ve always used.  Behind the scenes, Vivid manages version control, data validation, input consolidation, auditability, comments and assumption management, while also providing managers with powerful tools to support the budgeting process.

Yes. You can budget at any level — from summarized departmental totals to detailed account-by-account planning — or functional budgeting, or product-based, or project based, at any level of granularity you choose.  Vivid’s team will help you set up the filters and templates that align with your needs, and show you how to evolve toward increasingly sophisticated and accurate budgets.

Multiple users can work in parallel using controlled access and user-level security. Budget data is entered into Excel, Vivid collects and stores inputs into a central SQL database, and executives have consistency and auditability while eliminating spreadsheet version chaos. Version control, iteration locking and template distribution are all managed by Vivid.

Clients can have 1 person entering all budget details – or hundreds of participants in a fully distributed budgeting process… you are in control and decide the level of collaboration.

Absolutely. Actuals, budgets, and forecasts are all available side-by-side in Vivid CPM reports. Changes in your ERP or budget are reflected instantly when you refresh your report.

Yes. Vivid supports rolling forecasts, quarterly updates, and scenario modeling — allowing you to plan continuously throughout the year, not just at budget season.  Customers can have as many budgets, scenarios, plans or stored models as they wish.

Vivid is exceptional for dynamic forecasting – supplying the functionality Excel specifically needs to blend budget, actual, and dynamic planning data into a single spreadsheet that automatically updates. No more rebuilding spreadsheets each month – just push refresh to advance the month.

How secure is my financial data in Vivid CPM?

For our customers demanding the highest level of security – your data never leaves your environment.  Access is managed through SQL security, Windows authentication, and user-level role-based permissions — ensuring that users only see what they’re authorized to view.

For customers using Vivid cloud-based systems, Vivid’s hosted environment on Azure is secured using Microsoft’s enterprise-grade controls — including network isolation, encrypted data storage, and continuous security monitoring. Access is tightly governed through Vivid’s role-based access, and SOC 2–aligned operational practices.

Vivid has fine grained user access management to organize user access by any combination of: 

  • Segment / Dimension
  • Account
  • Drill-down rights

In this method a user could be restricted to only their divisional information, or not have drill-down rights on payroll accounts, or only see product related information or only their information on a function within a department within a company. 

Vivid’s secure access provides clients control over access to financial data.

Vivid can work in a number of ways:

  1. Access is controlled by your corporate file system access or Microsoft password files governance.
  2. Data access is controlled by Vivid.  A template might be generally available on a report server, but anyone looking at the file only sees the information they are allowed to see.
  3. File access is controlled by Vivid.  For board or other governance reports, Vivid has an additional layer of security to ensure core reports are centralized and secure.
  4. Multi-Divisional Management.  Larger clients look to Vivid to provide multi-dimensional management where certain account definitions and reporting remain standardized across the company or group of companies, while others are owned at the company level. MDM assures governance of standards alongside the flexibility of localization. 

Ready to simplify reporting?

Book a Demo

Try our 7-days free trial today

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit Ut et massa mi. Aliquam in hendrerit urna. Pellentesque sit amet sapien fringilla, mattis

Start Free Trial