Information Technology
Trimble Acquires Flashtract to Streamline Payments on its Platform
The payments provider's software will become Trimble Pay
Flashtract's construction payments platform helps general contractors handle compliance and payments for subcontractors and suppliers. Screenshot courtesy of Trimble, Inc.
Trimble has acquired Flashtract—a construction payment and compliance platform provider that handles payments between general contractors and subcontractors. Financial terms of the May 8 deal are not available.
Trimble plans to immediately integrate Flashtract into the capabilities of its Trimble Viewpoint Vista ERP platform and into its Trimble Construction platform by the end of year. The integration into Trimble Viewpoint Vista will be shown at the CFMA National Conference, May 18-22.
Flashtract is used to manage payment applications, lien waivers and other compliance and billing documentation between contractors and their trade subcontractors.
"One of the things that we've been doing really looking at capabilities that contractors need to have," says Lawrence Smith, vice president of construction management solutions at Trimble. "We try to serve those up within our own solutions, but we're also quite comfortable helping contractors that are not necessarily using our ERP, they may be using somebody else's.
"We're taking very much a stance of an open ecosystem," Smith adds.
Construction payments in the U.S. are often more complex than other financial transactions, with lien waivers, compliance requirements and established banking relationships but the sector has drawn the interest of major financial technology providers in recent years. Industry tech firms, such as Autodesk, Procore and Trimble, have also moved in, now offering their own dedicated payments processing platforms, following Autodesk's acquisition of PayApps earlier this year and Procore's acquisition of LevelSet in 2021.
Procore has gone a step further, partnering with Goldman-Sachs to oversee some of the banking responsibilities of construction payments.
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Smith says Trimble would not pursue a similar banking relationship and did not envisage getting further into the banking side of payments with this acquisition. He also said Flashtract had been heavily used in Trimble's app exchange marketplace and good feedback from customers pushed the Littleton, Colo.-based technology provider to pursue the acquisition.
“Adding the ability to manage these workflows with subs electronically through Trimble Pay helps contractors improve compliance and keep projects on schedule and budget by reducing the two to three days of manual work per month by project managers or accountants," Smith says.
Blair Chenault, co-founder and CEO of Flashtract, adds: "Joining Trimble will allow our teams to advance these [payment] capabilities and help contractors make payments on time and keep management of financial and compliance documents from hampering project delivery."
Trimble Pay will be available later in 2024 as part of the Trimble Construction One software suite, the company says.
