Behind every successful ERP implementation, every go-live celebration, and every client relationship that lasts a decade — there are people. Real people who chose this work because they believe in it.

This is the first post in a new series we're calling People Behind the Build. It's our way of pulling back the curtain on who we are at Alliance Solutions Group — not just what we sell, but who shows up every day, why they stay, and what makes this team different from any other place they've worked.

We've spent twenty years helping construction and real estate companies build stronger operations. It's time we told you about the people who make that possible — and why they're the real reason our clients trust us.

Why This Series Exists

Alliance Solutions Group has been a Sage partner since 2005. We've grown into Sage's #1 Intacct partner in North America. We serve electrical contractors, general contractors, real estate developers, mechanical and plumbing contractors, home builders, and fire & life safety firms across the country. Those are facts you can find on our website.

What you won't find — at least not until now — is what it actually feels like to work here. What our Monday mornings look like. Why someone who joined as a junior consultant six years ago is now leading an entire practice. How a team of roughly one hundred people manages to feel tight-knit even as we grow at a pace that would break most companies.

This series is going to change that.

We're Not a Tech Company That Happens to Have People. We're a People Company That Happens to Deliver Tech.

There's a difference, and it shows up in everything we do.

When a client calls Alliance, they don't get routed to a queue. They get a consultant who already knows their chart of accounts, their job cost structure, and their reporting headaches. That kind of service doesn't come from a playbook — it comes from people who are deeply invested in the outcome.

Our 4.9 client satisfaction score isn't a vanity metric. It's a reflection of a culture where people feel ownership over their work, trust in their leadership, and genuine connection to the mission. We protect that culture the same way we protect our client relationships — deliberately, and without compromise.

The Values That Actually Mean Something Here

A lot of companies list values on a wall and never mention them again. At Alliance, our values are operational. They shape how we hire, how we promote, how we handle conflict, and how we celebrate wins. Here's what they look like in practice — not in theory.

Velocity: Move with Purpose

We don't confuse speed with recklessness. Velocity at Alliance means we prioritize progress, cut through bureaucracy, and make decisions quickly so our clients aren't left waiting. When Sage releases a new feature, our team is already testing it. When a client hits a wall during implementation, we don't schedule a meeting about the meeting — we solve it.

Collaboration: Win Together

This is a team sport, and everyone here knows it. Our consultants share knowledge across practice areas. Our operations team anticipates what delivery needs before they ask. We break down silos because our clients' problems don't fit neatly into one department — and neither do our solutions.

Innovation: Lead, Don't Follow

We are Sage's top partner for a reason. Our clients trust us to stay ahead of the technology curve — whether that's AI-powered financial tools like Sage Copilot, new integrations through Alliance Connects, or workflow optimizations nobody else has thought of yet. Innovation here isn't a buzzword. It's an expectation.

Extreme Ownership: Own the Outcome

No finger-pointing. No passing the buck. When something goes wrong — and in complex ERP implementations, things do go wrong — our team steps up, takes responsibility, and fixes it. That accountability runs from the newest hire to the CEO. It's the standard, not the exception.

Client-Centric: Clients First, Always

We're building lifetime relationships, not closing transactions. Some of our client partnerships are approaching two decades. That doesn't happen because of a contract — it happens because every person at Alliance treats their clients' business like their own.

What You'll See in This Series

In the posts ahead, we're going to introduce you to the people who live these values every day. You'll hear from consultants who've helped contractors modernize decades-old financial workflows. From project managers who've guided multi-entity real estate firms through complex implementations without a single missed deadline. From the team members behind the scenes — in operations, in support, in people and culture — who make the engine run.

You'll get honest stories about what it's like to grow your career here, what we look for when we hire, and why people who join Alliance tend to stay.

If You're Reading This and It Resonates

We're growing. Fast. And we're selective about who joins this team — not because we're looking for perfect resumes, but because we're looking for people who care about the work as much as we do.

If you're a construction or real estate technology professional — or someone who's ready to become one — and you want to be part of something that's scaling without losing its soul, we'd love to hear from you.

Explore Career Opportunities in or Get to Know Us

This is the first installment of People Behind the Build, a series from Alliance Solutions Group exploring the culture, careers, and people that power construction and real estate technology. Follow along as we introduce the team behind the partnership.

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Why Specialty Contractors Lose Money on Work They've Already Done

A specialty contractor wraps up a long week. Two service calls. Three install jobs. One maintenance route across a dozen accounts. The crews did the work. The materials were used. The hours were logged on phones, on paper, in a foreman's truck. By the time the office team gets to billing on Monday, two service tickets are missing parts, one install job has materials assigned to the wrong phase, and the maintenance route has 14 hours that no one can definitively tie back to a contract.

The work was done. It was done well. But somewhere between the field and the invoice, between Friday and Monday, money slipped out.

This is the specialty contractor's quiet margin problem. Not bad jobs. Not bad bids. Just gaps in the system. The gaps live in the seams between modes of work, where the standard P&L does not show them and most contractors do not look.

The Margin Problem That Doesn't Show Up on the P&L

Specialty contractor revenue slips through revenue that should have been billed but wasn't, billed slowly enough to lose the contractual window, or billed with the wrong cost basis attached. None of that shows up in a standard P&L. The job shows as complete. The revenue shows as billed. The actual gap between earned revenue and captured revenue stays invisible until someone goes looking for it.

Most contractors don't go looking. The crews are busy. The customers are happy. The office is moving fast enough to keep up with the inbound. As long as the books close and the bills get paid, the loss stays hidden in the seams.

Why Specialty Contractors Leak Differently

Specialty contractors run more operating modes in parallel than other construction businesses. A single firm might run service calls, install jobs, and recurring maintenance contracts at the same time, often with the same crews moving between modes mid-week.

The three modes run on different billing structures, different cost flows, and different customer expectations:

• Service work runs on per-call billing, time and materials, or flat-rate billing depending on the customer.
• Install work runs on progress billing, draw schedules, change orders, and retainage.
• Recurring maintenance runs on contract billing, scheduled service routes, and parts replacement against entitlements.

On top of that, inventory moves between trucks, warehouses, and job sites every day. Field crews move between modes in the same week, sometimes in the same day.

A general contractor running pure project work has fewer modes, fewer billing models, and fewer paths for revenue to slip. A specialty contractor at $20 million in revenue can have the operational complexity of a $50 million GC, and the standard accounting tools were built for the simpler picture. That mismatch is where most of the leakage starts.

The Five Places Specialty Contractor Revenue Disappears

Five specific gaps absorb most of the lost margin. None are unusual. Every specialty contractor has dealt with all five at some point. The contractors that close them outperform.

1. Field hours that never get billed. Hours captured on paper, on phones, or in a foreman's truck that don't make it back to the right ticket or job before the billing cycle closes. A technician finishes a service call at 4 p.m., enters the time three days later, and the customer is billed for two hours instead of three. The hour is gone. Multiply across a year of service work and the lost revenue is real money.

2. Materials assigned to the wrong job. Pulled from a truck or warehouse without a clean record of where they ended up. The cost of the goods is recorded against inventory. The job that consumed them is not. The job runs over budget on margin reporting that looks fine. The customer is billed correctly, or under-billed, depending on which side of the gap the materials landed.

3. Service tickets billed in the wrong period. Work performed at the end of a month that does not make it onto a customer invoice until two cycles later. Revenue recognition lags. Billing windows close. Customer disputes get harder to win because the supporting documentation has aged.

4. Change orders that fall outside the billing window. Work performed on verbal authorization, never formally documented, and discovered too late. In service and install work, change orders often start as verbal approvals in the field. By the time they are documented, approved, and billed, the window to collect can be gone. For specialty contractors running service plus install plus maintenance, the rate of change inside any single customer relationship often runs higher than that project-level average.
   

Maintenance work that doesn't tie back to a contract. Hours and parts logged against a customer but not against the specific service contract they are entitled to. Either over-billed and disputed, or under-billed and absorbed. Either way, margin lost.The Cost of Already-Done Work

The financial impact of these gaps is bigger than most contractors realize because it compounds across hundreds of small transactions instead of showing up in one obvious place.

Accenture estimates that up to 80 percent of transactional finance work is automatable. The gaps above are mostly transactional, which means almost all of them are addressable. Industry research shows that 52 percent of accounts payable teams still spend more than 10 hours a week processing invoices manually, with 60 percent of teams re-keying invoice data into the accounting system by hand. The same manual reality drives the AR side, where billing accuracy and timing depend on how cleanly field data lands in the office.

Translate the macro numbers into a contractor-level picture. A specialty contractor at $20 million in revenue, leaking 1.5 to 3 percent of revenue through the gaps above, is losing $300,000 to $600,000 of margin annually on work that was already done. The contractor that closes the gap is not earning new revenue. The work is done. The revenue just never makes it to the invoice.

Where Already-Done Work Falls Out of Billing

Most of these gaps trace back to one issue: how field activity becomes billable data.

Mobile time capture in real time is not the same as paper or end-of-week batch entry. Inventory tracking by truck and job is not the same as inventory tracking by warehouse only. A service ticket captured at the point of work, with photos and signatures, is a different document than a ticket retyped from a clipboard three days later. Change order documentation captured in the field with a customer signature is enforceable in a way that an email thread is not. Approvals routed automatically by dollar threshold and project move faster and document better than approvals routed by email.

The field-to-office gap is where specialty contractor margin lives or dies. The contractors that close it earn back the leakage as net margin. The ones that don't keep paying the same hidden tax every cycle.

What Modern Specialty Contractor Software Actually Does

The right financial system for a specialty contractor does a few specific things. It does not just record transactions. It connects the parts of the business that the standard accounting tools were not designed for.

Specifically, it:

• Runs service work, install work, and maintenance contracts in one financial system, not three
• Supports real-time job costing tied to field activity instead of month-end batch posting
• Tracks inventory across job sites, trucks, and warehouses, with cost following the materials
• Supports multiple billing models in one system: progress, time and materials, per-call, flat-rate, and contract
• Is cloud-native with open APIs so the rest of the technology stack can integrate without custom builds
• Produces role-based dashboards so owners, controllers, service managers, and project managers see what they need without exporting to spreadsheets
• Uses AI-assisted automation in accounts payable, approvals, and routine billing

Where Sage Intacct Construction Fits

Specialty contractors need a system built for service, install, and maintenance running side by side. With Sage Intacct Construction, field activity flows into real-time job costing as the work happens. Inventory follows the materials across trucks, warehouses, and job sites. The billing models specialty contractors actually use, including per-call, time and materials, flat-rate, progress, and contract billing, all run inside the same system without the manual reconciliation that produces the gaps above.

For specialty contractors specifically, AI-assisted automation in accounts payable and approvals removes the manual layers that absorb staff hours every week, and role-based dashboards put service managers, controllers, and owners on the same page.

Alliance Solutions Group makes the platform fit. As Sage's number one Intacct partner in North America, with over 20 years of construction-only focus, the team configures Sage Intacct Construction around how specialty contractors actually run, not around how generic accounting software thinks they should.

A Five-Minute Self-Check for Specialty Contractors

Run this checklist with the leadership team. Each statement is either true today or it isn't. Count the false answers.

1. Field hours from yesterday are visible in the billing system today.
2. Service work, install work, and maintenance contracts all post to the same financial system.
3. The team can name the dollar value of work performed but not yet billed across active service customers within five minutes.
4. Materials moving from a truck to a job carry their cost with them automatically.
5. Most service tickets are billed within seven days of the work being performed.

Two or more false answers means the field-to-office gap is open wide enough to cost real margin. Three or more means the recapture work pays for itself almost immediately.

Find the Path That Fits Your Trade

Specialty contractor financial complexity looks different by trade. The right next step depends on which work the firm spends the most time on and which gaps cost the most.

Electrical Contractors 

Mechanical Contractors 

Plumbing Contractors 

Fire & Life Safety Contractors

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do specialty contractors lose the most revenue? Specialty contractors most often lose revenue in five places: field hours that don't get billed, materials assigned to the wrong job, service tickets billed in the wrong period, change orders that fall outside the contractual billing window, and maintenance work that doesn't tie back to a service contract. All five are gaps in the data flow between the field and the financial system. Closing those gaps recaptures margin the contractor already earned.

Why is specialty contractor accounting different from general contractor accounting? Specialty contractors run service work, install work, and recurring maintenance in parallel, often with the same crews moving between modes mid-week. They use multiple billing models, including per-call, time and materials, flat-rate, progress, and contract billing. They track inventory across trucks, warehouses, and job sites. General contractors typically run pure project work with fewer billing models and a more concentrated inventory pattern. The financial system has to support that complexity natively, not through workarounds.

How does Sage Intacct Construction handle service work, install work, and maintenance contracts in one system? Sage Intacct Construction unifies the financial picture across service, install, and maintenance work in one system rather than three. Real-time job costing ties to field activity. Inventory follows the materials across trucks, warehouses, and job sites. Multiple billing models, including progress, time and materials, per-call, flat-rate, and contract, run in the same system. Role-based dashboards put service managers, controllers, and owners on the same page. The result is one financial view across all three modes of work.

What is the 90-day billing rule and why does it matter for specialty contractors? Many construction contracts include a clause stating that if a change is not billed within 90 days of being identified, the customer is not legally obligated to pay it. For specialty contractors running on manual or partially manual change documentation, that window can close before the change ever gets formally captured. The contractual exposure is the reason change documentation needs to live inside the financial system, not in email threads or spreadsheets.

How long does a typical Sage Intacct Construction implementation take with Alliance? Implementation timelines vary by the size of the contractor, the number of entities or service routes, the trades served, and the complexity of the existing financial environment. Alliance Solutions Group runs a proven go-live discipline that focuses on faster implementations, cleaner data migration, and stronger ROI from day one. The conversation about timeline is best had with an Alliance expert who can scope the specific situation.

What does Alliance Solutions do for specialty contractors? Alliance Solutions Group helps specialty contractors run service work, install work, and recurring maintenance in one financial view. The team configures Sage Intacct Construction to match how field, service, and finance teams actually work. Alliance is Sage's number one Intacct partner in North America, with over 20 years dedicated to construction and real estate. Real people, real expertise, support that knows you by name.

The Move That Pays for Itself This Quarter

Closing the field-to-office gap is not a transformation project. It is a sequence of specific moves a specialty contractor can start this quarter:

• Capture field hours and service tickets at the point of work, not in batch
• Tie inventory cost to the job that consumed the materials
• Bill service tickets inside seven days of the work
• Document change orders inside the financial system, not in email
• Match maintenance work to the contract entitlement before invoicing

Each move recaptures a slice of margin that the contractor already earned. Done together, they close the gap that absorbs most specialty contractor margin loss.

Take a self-guided product tour to explore Sage Intacct Construction on your own time, or book a product demo to see what a real-time financial stack looks like for a contractor your size.

The Real-Time Financials Every GC Needs to Protect Margin in 2026

A general contractor closes the books on a strong quarter. The team posts the final journal entries on day 12. By day 14, the numbers are clean enough to share with leadership. Two jobs came in a full point of margin under plan. One that was projected for 8 percent landed flat. Nothing went obviously wrong. No big change order dispute, no sub default, no cost spike anyone could point to. The margin leaked across the quarter. Now those projects are 80 percent complete, and the outcome is locked in.

Nobody made a bad decision. The decisions were made on stale data.

Real-time financials are no longer a competitive advantage. They are the operating standard. The contractors holding margin in 2026 run finance on the same clock as their projects.

The 2010 Close Cycle in a 2026 Construction Market

Construction did not get more complicated by accident. Owners are running tighter capital plans. Sureties are scrutinizing portfolio risk on a rolling basis instead of an annual one. Lenders are asking for current data before every draw. Subcontractors and suppliers are bidding tighter and updating commitments faster. The buyers, the regulators, and the partners all expect a current view of every active job.

The finance function has not kept pace. A construction finance team closing in 10 to 15 days is reporting on a portfolio that has already moved on. WIP reports built on month-old commitment data overstate margin until the actual cost catches up. Change orders sitting in approval queues age out of contractual billing windows before they get billed. By the time the picture is clean enough to act on, the picture is no longer accurate.

The gap between the project clock and the finance clock is where margin leaks. Closing it is the work.

The Four Places Margin Leaks Between Closes

There are four places GC margin leaks. All of them trace back to one root cause: data that does not reach the financial picture in time to inform a decision.

Change orders that age in the workflow. The Construction Industry Institute has found that more than 35 percent of construction projects experience major changes during execution. Change orders are the most common cause and the most expensive when they age. Many construction contracts include a 90-day clause: if a change is not billed within 90 days of being identified, the owner is not legally obligated to pay it. A change order that takes 45 days to approve and 30 days to bill leaves a thin margin for anything else to slow it down.

For a deeper look at how undocumented change requests cost contractors, see (Internal link: Why Electrical Contractors Lose Money on Undocumented Change Requests).

WIP blind spots from disconnected sub and supplier data. Subs and suppliers update on different cycles. Some send commitments weekly. Some send them at month-end. Some send them when they remember. A WIP report built on outdated commitment data reads optimistic until the actual cost catches up, at which point the project is past the point where the team could have intervened. The finance team is not making bad WIP. The finance team is making accurate WIP from inaccurate inputs.

"Being able to go through that workflow in my ERP means that you don't have any delays in my data. You get real-time updates for all of my projects because you can manage my change order process right in the ERP."
- Lorianna Garza, Alliance Solutions Group

Manual consolidations that delay every decision. GCs with multiple entities often spend the first half of the month on consolidation. Intercompany eliminations, allocations, and entity-level adjustments stack up. Decisions wait. By the time the leadership team sees the full picture, the picture has aged a week or two. The GCs that stay ahead are the ones spotting overruns early, not consolidating faster after the fact.

Owner and surety transparency demands. Sureties want updated WIP weekly. Owners want job cost rollups on demand. A finance function that can only deliver on a monthly cadence creates friction at every check-in. It also produces a competitive disadvantage at bond renewal time, when underwriters compare a contractor running real-time reporting against one running monthly close. The contractor with current data wins the conversation.

"No owner or developer wants to know about a change order when we're a month away from completing a job and we think we're going to make a ton of money on this job, and now I have a $400,000 change order I had no idea about that was from 90 days ago and I'm just now hearing it."
- Spencer Doak, Alliance Solutions Group

These four leaks compound. They are not separate problems. They are four symptoms of one problem.

What Real-Time Financials Actually Means for GCs

Real-time is not a marketing term. For a general contractor, it has a specific operational definition:

• Job cost data posted within hours of the field activity, not at month-end
• Committed cost reconciled against actual cost continuously, not in a quarterly cleanup
• WIP and cash positions current as of the last business day, not the last close
• Change orders that update the project budget and the client contract in one action
• Consolidations across entities that run automatically

Bond-ready reporting available on demand, not pulled together when the underwriter calls

The shift is not about replacing accountants with software. It is about replacing the calendar that the accounting function operates on. Finance teams running real-time financials still close the books. They just stop using close as the only moment leadership can trust the numbers.

The Cost of Operating on a Monthly Cadence

The financial impact of operating on a delayed cadence is bigger than most contractors realize because it is distributed.

Industry research shows that 70 percent of construction firms experienced late owner payments in the past 12 months. Layered on top of slow internal cycles, that creates 60 to 90 day revenue gaps where the contractor is financing the project out of working capital. McKinsey research shows construction productivity has lagged the manufacturing sector by roughly nine times over the past 50 years. The drag is mostly in the spaces between systems, not in the work itself.

Translate those macro numbers into a portfolio picture. A GC running 30 active jobs at any given time, processing roughly 450 change orders annually, closing on a 12-day cycle, and consolidating five entities is operating with a built-in lag between work performed and decisions made. If 1.5 percent of revenue leaks across that lag, a $200 million firm leaves $3 million on the table every year. Closer to 3 percent and that number doubles. The math gets uncomfortable fast.

The contractors that close the lag earn the leakage back as net margin. It is not a growth lever. It is a recapture lever. The revenue is already on the table.

What Real-Time Visibility Actually Produces

The change is not just faster reports. It is what the team can do with the time the reporting frees up.

EPX, an Alliance customer in El Paso, Texas, moved to a connected financial system and reorganized an accounting function that used to require more staff to operate with two people. Automation, AI, and integrated workflows eliminated the manual layers that used to absorb a full team's worth of effort. The team did not get smaller because the work shrank. The team got reorganized because the work changed. Real-time financials redirect finance attention from data assembly to decision support.

Read the EPX case study for the full picture.

Where Sage Intacct Construction Fits

Sage Intacct Construction is a cloud-native construction ERP built for the financial complexity contractors actually run. It is the AICPA's preferred accounting solution and a leader in midmarket finance. More than 50,000 construction businesses use Sage, and 48 percent of the ENR Top 400 contractors use Sage as their financial platform.

For general contractors, Sage Intacct Construction delivers real-time job costing tied to field activity, multi-entity consolidation that runs automatically, change order records tied directly to the project budget and the client contract, and audit-ready WIP available on demand. It replaces the disconnected layers that produce the leaks above with a single financial picture that updates in the same cadence as the work.

Alliance Solutions Group is Sage's number one Intacct partner in North America. Implementation, configuration, and ongoing support are built specifically for construction and real estate firms. See how Alliance helps GCs control margin and master change.

A Diagnostic GCs Can Run This Week

Most leadership teams overestimate how current their financials actually are. A five-minute self-assessment will surface the gap. The questions below are the ones a CFO, COO, or president can ask the team and get a clear answer to in under ten minutes.

If your team cannot answer these immediately, that's the gap.

Visibility cadence

• How long after a job's last field activity does updated job cost data show up in the financial system?
• How current is the WIP report that was last shared with leadership?

Decision speed

• Can the finance team produce an audit-ready WIP rollup for a surety call within one business day?
• Can a project manager price a change order with confidence the same day it comes in, using current cost data?

Consolidation overhead

• How many business days does month-end close take across all entities?
• What percentage of the close calendar is spent on consolidation work that could be automated?

If four or more answers are unclear, the visibility gap is your margin gap.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does real-time financial visibility mean for general contractors? For a GC, real-time financial visibility means job cost data posted within hours of the field activity, committed cost reconciled against actual cost continuously, WIP and cash positions current as of the last business day, change orders that update the project budget and client contract in one action, consolidations that run automatically across entities, and bond-ready reporting available on demand. It is the operational shift from publishing the truth once a month to running on it continuously.

Why are real-time financials becoming the standard in construction? Owners are running tighter capital plans, sureties are scrutinizing portfolio risk on a rolling basis, and lenders are asking for current data before every draw. The buyers, regulators, and partners around a construction project have all moved to a real-time clock. A finance function operating on a monthly cadence creates friction at every check-in and gives competitors with current reporting a clear advantage at bond renewal time.

How does Sage Intacct Construction support real-time job costing for general contractors? Sage Intacct Construction posts field activity, costs, and commitments to the financial system as the data is captured, not at month-end. Project budgets, change orders, and client contracts are tied to live records that update together. Multi-entity consolidations run automatically. Project managers, controllers, and leadership see the same data on the same cadence as the field, which closes the gap between what is happening on the job and what shows up in the books.

What is audit-ready WIP and why do sureties care about it? Audit-ready WIP is a work in progress report that is current, accurate, and supported by the underlying transaction data, available on demand without manual rework. Sureties care about it because they evaluate bonding capacity based on the contractor's portfolio risk, and a WIP report that takes weeks to assemble or that relies on month-old commitment data signals a finance function that may not catch problems early. Contractors with audit-ready WIP available on demand expand their bonding capacity faster.

How long does a typical implementation of Sage Intacct Construction take with Alliance? Implementation timelines vary by the size of the contractor, the number of entities, and the complexity of the existing financial environment. Alliance Solutions Group runs a proven go-live discipline that focuses on faster implementations, cleaner data migration, and stronger ROI from day one. The team configures Sage Intacct Construction to match how field and finance teams actually work. The conversation about timeline is best had with an Alliance expert who can scope the specific situation.

What does Alliance Solutions do for general contractors? Alliance Solutions Group helps general contractors streamline construction accounting by bringing every project, partner, and cost into one real-time financial view. The team configures Sage Intacct Construction to match how field and finance teams actually work: fast, transparent, and built for long-term growth. Alliance is Sage's number one Intacct partner in North America, with over 20 years dedicated to construction and real estate. Real people, real expertise, support that knows you by name.

The Standard Is Shifting Faster Than the Finance Calendar

The general contractors winning the next bid cycle, the next bond renewal, and the next round of margin pressure are the ones already operating on real-time financials. The contractors on a monthly cadence are not behind because they are doing the wrong things. They are behind because the standard moved.

The work to catch up is not glamorous. It is system work, process work, and change management. It pays for itself in margin recaptured on jobs already underway, in faster bond renewals, in shorter close cycles, and in decisions made on data the team can trust.

The finance calendar that worked in 2010 is not coming back. The question is whether the finance function moves with the rest of the construction industry or stays behind.

Take a self-guided product tour to explore Sage Intacct Construction on your own time, or book a product demo to see what a real-time financial stack looks like for a contractor your size.

Why Electrical Contractors Lose Money on Undocumented Change Requests

A field crew is running high-voltage wiring when they hit a problem. The walls went up before electrical got in. The work scope needs to change, the schedule needs to shift, and someone is going to pay for it. The foreman flags the issue. The project manager says they will take care of it. Work continues.

A month later, the job is wrapping up. The electrical sub is waiting on a $200,000 change order that everyone agreed to verbally but nobody ever put in writing. The GC says they will look into it. The owner has no record of it. This is not a worst-case story. It is a predictable outcome of managing change requests outside a system built to track them.

The Problem With Managing Change Requests Through Email and Spreadsheets

Change requests are the documentation step that comes before a change order. They record what needs to change, why it needs to change, how much it will cost, and how it will affect the schedule. When that documentation exists in a structured system, it creates a paper trail that protects everyone involved.

When it exists only in email threads, handwritten notes, and spreadsheet tabs, it creates risk.

That risk compounds at every step of the job. A request gets buried in an inbox. A notebook gets left in a truck. A spreadsheet row gets overwritten. By the time billing comes around, the work has been done but the record does not exist in a form that can support a change order. The contractor either submits an invoice with no backup or walks away from the cost entirely.

The contractors who get paid are the ones with the best documentation. The ones who lose are the ones who treated change requests as informal conversations.

The 90-Day Problem

There is a financial consequence to undocumented changes that goes beyond a single bad invoice. Many construction contracts include a clause stating that if a change is not billed within 90 days of being identified, the owner is not legally obligated to pay it.

For electrical contractors running on manual processes, where a change order turnaround can take 60 to 90 days even when documentation exists, that window closes fast. Add undocumented or disorganized change requests into the mix, and work performed months ago can become work performed for free.

This is not about slow-paying owners or bad-faith disputes. It is about a process problem that creates a contractual outcome the contractor cannot fight. The 90-day clock started on the day the change was identified. If the documentation was not in place to support the change order before that window closed, there is nothing to argue with.

EXPERT INSIGHT
"On manual processes, you see change order turnarounds in the 60 to 90 day figure. With Sage Intacct, you would be getting change orders approved in 15 days or less. And it is a pretty common practice in construction: if you are not billed within 90 days of a change order being identified, the owner does not have to pay it."
- Spencer Doak, Account Executive, Alliance Solutions Group

Change Requests and Change Orders Inside Sage Intacct

Sage Intacct's change management module starts with the change request. Unlike a note in a spreadsheet or a thread in email, a change request in Intacct is a live record tied directly to the project. The moment it is entered, every stakeholder with access to the job can see it: the project manager, the accounting team, the operations director. Supporting documentation attaches directly to the record. Scope, cost impact, and schedule impact are captured in a structured format that can be searched, sorted, and audited without having to track anyone down.

When a change request is approved, Intacct converts it to a project change order in a single action inside the ERP. The project budget and the client contract update at the same time, not sequentially and not manually. Accounting sees the approved amount the moment it is signed off. No phone call. No email to follow up on. No risk of one system reflecting the approved change while another still shows the original contract value. The change order is a document of record in the system from the moment approval happens.

For contractors used to managing this workflow across email, Excel, and phone calls, the visibility shift is significant. Every open change request is a live line item in the system, and every approved change order has its supporting change documents attached directly to the project record, not filed in a separate folder or sent as email attachments.

That connected record closes the visibility gap. A project manager winding down a job can pull the change log in Intacct at any point and see exactly which changes are approved, which are still pending, and which need a signature before they can be billed.

Stop Letting Change Requests Slip Through the Cracks

Undocumented change requests are a revenue problem. They cost electrical contractors real margin on every job where a change slips through without proper documentation, and they compound over time because the habits that allow one change to go undocumented tend to allow others to follow.

[Link: How Change Management in Sage Intacct Keeps Electrical Projects on Budget] covers the full Intacct workflow from change request to project budget update. [Link: The Real Cost When Change Orders Take 60 Days to Approve] looks at what the approval cycle costs in terms of cash flow and billing risk.

If you want to see how Alliance Solutions helps electrical contractors get their change management process out of spreadsheets and into a system that protects the work they do, talk to an expert.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Sage Intacct's change management module handle change requests?

Sage Intacct's change management module creates change requests as live records tied directly to the project. When a change is identified, it is entered into the system with the scope of work, cost impact, and schedule impact captured in a structured format. Every stakeholder with access to the job can see the change request immediately: the project manager, the accounting team, and the operations director. Supporting documentation attaches to the record directly. The change request stays visible in the system until it is resolved, so nothing slips through the cracks between identification and billing.

How does Sage Intacct convert a change request to a change order?

When a change request is reviewed and approved, Sage Intacct converts it to a project change order in a single action inside the ERP. The conversion simultaneously updates the project budget and the client contract, with no separate manual entry required on the accounting side. The approved amount is reflected across all relevant modules the moment the change order is created. There is no lag between the project management record and the financial record, and no risk of one system showing a different figure than the other.

Can multiple departments see the same change requests in Sage Intacct?

Yes. Because change requests live inside Sage Intacct's project module rather than in a separate field tool or spreadsheet, they are visible to every department with access to the project record. Project managers, accounting teams, and operations directors can all see the same change request at the same time, with the same status information. There is no need to email updates, chase down approvals, or reconcile different versions of the same record across departments.

How does Sage Intacct help electrical contractors meet the 90-day billing window?

Many construction contracts include a clause stating that if a change is not billed within 90 days of being identified, the owner is not legally required to pay it. Sage Intacct helps contractors stay inside that window by making every open change request visible and trackable from the moment it is entered. With manual processes, change order turnarounds commonly run 60 to 90 days, leaving almost no margin for anything to go wrong. Contractors using Sage Intacct's change management module typically bring that cycle down to 15 days or less.

Does Sage Intacct track change documents alongside change requests and change orders?

Yes. Supporting change documents attach directly to the change request and change order records inside Sage Intacct. Scope documentation, cost breakdowns, and approval records for each change are stored in context alongside the project, not in a separate filing system or email chain. When a project closes or a billing dispute arises, the complete documentation trail is in one place and accessible to anyone with access to the project record.

From 60 to 90 Days to 15: How Procore and Sage Intacct Eliminate the Change Order Documentation Gap

A change starts as a question.

Someone on a job site identifies something that does not line up: a condition in the field that does not match the drawings, a scope item that was not fully accounted for, a design decision that needs to be revisited before work can continue. That question needs an answer, and that answer carries a cost.

Getting from that initial question to an approved, documented, billable change order is a process. For electrical contractors running on disconnected systems, that process has a way of breaking down at almost every step.

How a Change Actually Moves Through the Chain

Understanding where documentation gaps happen requires understanding the full path a change takes from the field to the financial record. For most electrical jobs, that path runs through five distinct handoffs

1. RFI: A laborer or foreman on the electrical crew identifies a field condition that does not match the drawings. An RFI is logged in Procore: what the issue is, where it is, and what answer is needed before work can continue.
2. Internal Escalation: The RFI moves up through the sub's chain of command, from foreman to project manager to director of operations. The team evaluates whether the issue will require a change to the scope or cost of the work.
3. Change Request (CR): If the issue carries a cost, the sub formalizes it as a change request and routes it to the GC's project manager. The CR documents the proposed scope change, cost impact, and schedule impact.
4. Change Order (CO): The GC project manager reviews the change request. If it falls within their approval authority, it converts to a change order. Changes above that threshold escalate to the GC director of operations, and then to the owner or lender for cost analysis.
5. Change Document: Once all parties have signed off, the approved change order becomes a change document of record, formally captured in Sage Intacct with the project budget and client contract updated to reflect the final approved cost.=

At each handoff, a margin negotiation is built in. The sub prices the work at $50,000. The GC adds administrative burden and presents the owner with a $60,000 figure. The owner may push back and negotiate. Some changes get approved. Some stall. Some never get formally agreed to, even when the work gets done anyway.

Every one of those handoffs is also an opportunity for documentation to break down. An email thread gets lost. An approval gets given verbally on a site visit. A foreman's notes end up in a work truck and never make it back to the office. The information existed at some point. By the time billing comes around, it may not exist anywhere that matters.

Where Manual Processes Fail

Contractors who manage this workflow through a combination of pen and paper, email, and spreadsheets often end up with change order turnaround times in the range of 60 to 90 days. That is not just slow. For many electrical jobs, it is past the window that matters.

A large portion of construction contracts include a 90-day billing clause. If a change is not formally billed within 90 days of being identified, the owner is not legally required to pay it. A contractor running a 60-day manual approval process has very little margin for anything to go wrong before that window closes.

Beyond the timing risk, there is the visibility problem. A change tracked in a spreadsheet lives in a single file that accounting may not be able to access. A change tracked through email exists across dozens of inboxes that nobody can search in a useful way. When the project manager knows a change was agreed to and accounting has no record of it, the path to billing that work is much harder than it needs to be.

Contractors who already use Procore or another purpose-built field system often feel this gap most sharply. They have invested in a modern tool for field operations, but their accounting system cannot keep pace with what Procore knows. Prime contract change orders, the ones where the sub is billing the GC or the GC is billing the owner, do not flow automatically between Procore and QuickBooks. The contractor ends up managing those changes in a separate spreadsheet, which defeats a significant part of the value of having Procore in the first place.

KEY DISTINCTION: Prime contract change orders do not flow between Procore and QuickBooks, or between Procore and Sage 100/300. They do flow into Sage Intacct. For electrical contractors billing up the chain, that gap has direct revenue consequences.

What Integration Actually Solves

The Procore-to-Intacct integration does not just move change data faster. It eliminates the manual handoff entirely.

An RFI is logged and managed in Procore through the information-gathering and escalation process. When it crosses into a cost commitment, it does not need to be re-entered in a second system. The change flows from Procore into Sage Intacct automatically: no manual data entry, no email to accounting, no risk of the two systems falling out of sync. The change order appears in Intacct at the moment it is approved in Procore, with the project budget and client contract updated simultaneously.

This is also where the gap with QuickBooks becomes most visible. The Procore-to-Intacct integration handles prime contract change orders, the ones where a subcontractor bills the GC or a GC bills the owner. That piece does not flow between Procore and QuickBooks, or between Procore and Sage 100/300. It does with Intacct, which means the full picture, both the commitment side and the prime contract side, moves into the financial system without anyone duplicating the work by hand.

The result is end-to-end visibility on a single change, from the moment it is identified as an RFI in Procore to the moment it is a documented change order in Intacct. The project manager can see the status of the change in Procore. The accounting team can see the same status in Intacct. The operations director can see which jobs have pending changes that have not yet cleared. Nobody is waiting on a call or a spreadsheet to find out where a change stands.

The Power of Choice

Not every electrical contractor needs the same setup, and Sage Intacct is built to accommodate that. There are two paths, and the outcome is the same either way.

OPTION 01: Manage the full change lifecycle inside Sage Intacct. Use Intacct's native change management module. Create change requests, route them for approval, and convert them to project change orders entirely inside the ERP. No external field tool required.

OPTION 02: Connect your field tool to Sage Intacct. Stay in Procore for field operations. RFIs and approved changes flow into Intacct automatically through the integration. The financial management layer stays in the ERP regardless of where the change originates.

A change that starts as a question on a job site ends up as a documented, visible, billable record in the financial system, with a clear audit trail connecting those two points. With integrated systems, change order approval cycles that run 60 to 90 days on manual workflows drop to 15 days or less. That is not just a faster process. It is a process that fits inside the billing windows most construction contracts require.

Close the Gap Between the Field and the Financial System

The documentation gap between field operations and accounting is not a problem unique to any one contractor. It is a structural problem that shows up whenever the tools on one side of the business cannot communicate automatically with the tools on the other.

For electrical contractors evaluating whether their current tech stack is doing the job, the question to ask is straightforward: when a change is identified on a job site today, how long does it take for that change to appear as a documented record in the financial system? And is that record visible to everyone who needs to see it before the billing window closes?

(Internal link: How Change Management in Sage Intacct Keeps Electrical Projects on Budget) walks through how the Intacct change management module works in practice. (Internal link: Field to Financials: Why Your Job Cost Data Is Always Two Weeks Behind) covers how the same integration gap affects time entries, cost data, and pay app preparation.

If you want to see how Alliance Solutions can help your business close the gap between field operations and financial reporting, talk to an expert.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the Procore and Sage Intacct integration handle change orders?

In a Procore and Sage Intacct integrated workflow, an RFI logged in Procore moves through the approval chain digitally. When the change is approved, it flows into Sage Intacct automatically, where it updates the project budget and the client contract simultaneously. There is no manual re-entry, no data lag, and no risk of the project management record and the financial record showing different figures. The entire lifecycle, from RFI in Procore to change order in Intacct, is documented in connected systems.

Why does the Procore and Sage Intacct integration matter for prime contract change orders?

The Procore-to-Intacct integration handles prime contract change orders, which are the change orders where a subcontractor bills the GC or a GC bills the owner. This is a critical gap in the Procore-to-QuickBooks integration, which does not support prime contract change orders. For electrical contractors managing both commitment-side and prime-side changes, the Intacct integration provides a complete picture that QuickBooks cannot deliver.

Can change orders be managed entirely within Sage Intacct without Procore?

Yes. Sage Intacct includes native change management functionality with change requests and project change orders built in. Electrical contractors can manage the full change lifecycle inside Intacct, from the initial change request through approval and budget update, without routing through a separate field tool. Contractors who use Procore for field operations can integrate it with Intacct and have change data flow automatically between the two platforms.

How long does a change order approval cycle typically take with manual processes compared to Procore and Sage Intacct?

With manual processes, paper-based systems, email, and spreadsheets, change order approval cycles commonly run 60 to 90 days. With Procore and Sage Intacct integrated, automated notifications and digital approval workflows bring that down to 15 days or less. For contracts that include a 90-day billing clause, the difference between those two timelines is the difference between revenue collected and revenue lost.

What is the power of choice when it comes to Sage Intacct and change management?

Sage Intacct is built to work with or without a separate field tool. Electrical contractors who prefer to manage changes natively inside Intacct can do that with the built-in change request and project change order module. Contractors who use Procore for field operations can integrate Procore with Intacct and have RFIs and change data flow automatically between the two platforms. Either way, the financial management and visibility capabilities of Intacct are available from the moment a change is identified to the moment it is billed.

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The Ai assistant your finance team has been waiting for

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Want to see what this looks like in your business?

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