Cash flow forecasting for contractors.
Progress billing, retainage and a general contractor who pays when the owner pays him. Arclite reads your QuickBooks Online books and shows you thirteen weeks of real cash, then helps you collect the money already owed to you.
You spend on the job. You bill on a calendar.
Construction is the only business where you can be busy, profitable and broke in the same month. The money goes out when the work happens. The money comes in when a schedule nobody in your office wrote says it can.
Five things time your cash, and none of them is the invoice due date.
Every one of these is normal. Together they are why a contractor with a full backlog still checks the bank on Thursday night.
- Progress billingYou bill on a schedule that has nothing to do with when you spent the money. The pour was in week two. The draw goes in at the end of the month.
- RetainageFive to ten percent of every job is held until closeout, sometimes a year out. You earned it. You cannot spend it.
- Pay when paidThe GC pays you when the owner pays him. A slow owner two levels up becomes your payroll problem.
- Money out goes firstMaterial deposits and crew payroll leave the account before the draw for that work ever gets submitted.
- Change ordersThe work gets done before it is approved, and billed long after that. Your costs move first. Your billing catches up later, if it catches up.
None of that is fixable by billing faster. It is fixable by knowing which week goes tight and which draw to push. That is the job of the 13-week cash flow forecast, and if you want the numbers behind it, we keep the data on how late construction pays.
Built around how contractors actually get paid.
- Draws timed to that GCEvery draw and invoice lands on the week that general contractor has actually paid you before.
- Retainage held separateEarned, held, and not spendable. It stays visible without inflating the cash you can use.
- Costs against billingsSee the week a job's costs outrun what it has billed, while you can still do something about it.
- Draws that are sittingArclite drafts the follow-up on the draws and invoices nobody has moved. You approve before anything sends.
- Payroll and deposits stay putCrew pay, material deposits and equipment notes are fixed. The rest of the forecast gets built around them.
- Ask about a jobBeans answers from your own ledger. Can I cover payroll if the Henderson draw slips two weeks.
Connected before the crew breaks for lunch.
1. Connect QuickBooks
One connection. About five minutes, no data entry.
2. Arclite reads the ledger
Open invoices and draws, bills, balances, and how each general contractor has actually paid you.
3. Thirteen weeks appear
Week by week, with the tight week marked and the draws causing it named.
4. Chase the right draw
Approve the follow-ups on the money already earned. Time the bills that do not have to go today.
The money is already earned. Go get it.
Somebody has to follow up on the draws that are sitting.
On most jobs the cash you need this month is already sitting in someone's approval queue. Arclite finds the draws and invoices that have gone quiet, ranks them by what they do to your tight week, and writes the follow-up for you.
- Ranked by impactNot just oldest first. The ones that move your low week get chased first.
- Written in your voiceA short note to the PM or the AP clerk, with the draw number and the amount in it.
- You approve every oneNothing sends without you. Nothing posts to QuickBooks without your approval, and no payment moves on its own.
More on how the follow-ups get written and approved in reminders for overdue invoices. It is $50 a month, 7-day trial, nothing charged until day 7, or you can see it work in four minutes first.
Questions from contractors.
It keeps it visible and keeps it out of your spendable cash. Retainage is money you have earned and cannot touch, sometimes until a year after you finish the work. Showing it as a receivable next to next week's payroll is how contractors talk themselves into a bad Friday. Arclite keeps the held amount on the page as earned and unavailable, so the thirteen weeks only counts cash you can actually use.
Yes. Every customer gets a payment profile built from your own history with them. If that general contractor has taken 58 days on the last nine draws, Arclite times the next draw to 58 days, not to the term printed on the contract. The GCs who pay fast are modeled fast. Nothing is timed to a due date you both know is fiction.
Yes, as long as your costs and billings are coded to the job in QuickBooks Online. Arclite reads the ledger you already keep. If labor, material and sub costs carry the job or the sub-customer, Arclite can line those costs up against what has been billed on that job and show you the week the two cross.
They are not in the forecast, on purpose. Unapproved work is not money, and forecasting it is how contractors get surprised twice. What you will see is the effect of it: the week the job's costs run ahead of its billings is usually the week your crew did change order work nobody has signed yet. That is a useful thing to look at on a Monday.
No. Arclite integrates directly with QuickBooks Online. It does not do job costing, estimating or AIA billing, and it does not replace your project management system. It does one thing those tools do not: it tells you what your cash looks like thirteen weeks out and what to chase to change it.
See the week before the crew does.
Connect QuickBooks Online and Arclite builds thirteen weeks from your own draws, bills and payment history.
$50/month. 7-day trial. Cancel in one click.
$50 a month, 7-day trialsee it work in four minutes
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