This post is sponsored by MakersHub. Financial Tech Lab only partners with tools we have personally tested and believe deliver real value for small business owners.
Construction and trade businesses have a unique challenge with accounts payable that other industries often don’t face. Bills arrive from dozens of vendors across multiple job sites. Purchase orders are issued weeks before invoices catch up. Field crews bring back receipts from supply runs. When the AP process falls behind, issues pile up quickly: duplicate payments, missed bills, inaccurate job costs, and cash flow gaps that are hard to trace.
MakersHub is an accounts payable automation software built specifically for businesses with complex AP environments. Construction is one of its strongest use cases. The platform connects to QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, and Xero. It sits on top of the existing accounting system to handle the parts of AP those tools cannot manage on their own.
This includes:
- Centralized bill capture
- AI-powered line-item extraction
- Flexible approval workflows
- Duplicate detection
- Purchase order matching
Watch MakersHub in action below, or read through the full breakdown here. Ready to try it? Start a free trial at financialtechlab.com/makershub.
What Is MakersHub?
MakersHub is an accounts payable automation platform designed for businesses that handle many detailed invoices. With MakersHub, companies gain better control over capturing, coding, approving, and matching bills to purchase orders. It isn’t a substitute for your accounting system. It links to the system you already use and takes care of the workflow steps that most accounting platforms leave to manual work.
The platform works well for:
- Construction companies
- Businesses with inventory
- Trade service businesses
- Manufacturers
- Restaurants
It suits any business where vendor bills include line-item details. These details need accurate coding to projects, departments, or cost codes before being recorded.
Construction Industry Use Case
Construction businesses deal with AP complexity that most industries don’t. Below are five areas where that complexity creates the biggest problems and how MakersHub addresses each one.
1. Bill Capture: Too Many Channels, No Central System
In a construction business, invoices arrive through different channels at different times. Some vendors email bills directly. Others send paper invoices that get scanned or photographed on-site. Field crews make supply runs and come back with receipts. Project managers have invoices sitting in personal inboxes. Without a centralized landing spot for all of it, bills get lost, and vendors do not get paid on time.
How MakersHub handles it
Every MakersHub account includes a dedicated AP inbox email address. Anyone on the team can forward a vendor’s email with an attached bill, and MakersHub pulls it into the system automatically. Field crews who pay with a credit card can photograph the receipt and send it to the expense inbox in the same way. The accounting team can also upload files directly or drag and drop from the desktop.
Every bill that enters the system is logged with a full audit trail: where it came from, which email address submitted it, and when it was received. You can easily access that history. This means you can trace a payment or check a discrepancy in seconds, not after searching through many inboxes and folders.
2. Duplicate Invoices: Overpaying Vendors Without Knowing It
When invoices arrive through multiple channels, the same bill can enter the system more than once. A vendor resends an invoice that already came in through email. Someone uploads a PDF that was already submitted by a field crew. Without automated duplicate detection, that bill can move through the approval process twice and result in a double payment.
How MakersHub handles it
MakersHub reads invoice numbers from incoming bills and compares them against existing records automatically. If it finds a potential duplicate, a red flag appears right away. This happens before the bill continues in the approval workflow. You can review the duplicate side by side with the existing record, merge the two, or delete the new entry.
Catching a duplicate at the door is a lot better than catching it after the check has been sent. For construction businesses with lots of vendor activity, this built-in safeguard protects cash flow. Manual reviews can’t keep up with that level of protection.
3. Job Costing: The Data Problem Nobody Talks About
Accurate job costing depends on the quality of data going into the accounting system. If expenses are posted to broad general ledger (GL) categories without being connected to specific projects, cost codes, or line items, you can’t tell if a job was profitable until long after it closes. And by then, the information is not useful for making decisions.
How MakersHub handles it
MakersHub extracts every line item from an incoming bill automatically: item numbers, descriptions, quantities, unit prices, and totals. All of that detail is pulled into the system and can be coded to the correct GL account and job before it syncs to the accounting platform.
Integration mapping rules make this faster over time. Rules can be set by vendor name, item number, item description, bill-to name, ship-to address, or PO number. For example, any bill line with ‘lumber’ will automatically map to the materials account or any bill with a “ship-to” address of 123 Main Street could be automatically mapped to the 123 Main Street project code. These rules can be customized in great detail.
For teams that want to automate more of the coding process, MakersHub includes an AI coding assistant that references the connected chart of accounts and assigns GL codes to each line item. It explains what it changed and why, so the reviewer can check the work before the bill moves forward. The end goal is simple: better data in means better job costing out.
Sales tax can be coded as its own line item, or spread evenly across all the items on the bill. Either way, the bill can be reset if something needs to change.
4. Approval Workflows: Built for Construction, Not Against It
Cost control in construction depends on the right people reviewing bills before they are paid. But most AP platforms keep it simple: one approver, or a dollar threshold at best. That does not work when a single project can have a site supervisor, a project manager, and a client. Each of these individuals may have a different budget and level of authority.
How MakersHub handles it
MakersHub approval workflows can be built around any combination of dollar amount, vendor, GL account, class, PO number, item description, or transaction type. Individual approvers or user groups can be assigned to each rule, and approvals can be set to run sequentially or in any order.
Here’s an example setup:
- Any bill over zero goes to the AP department.
- Bills over $5,000 also need the project manager’s approval.
- Bills linked to a specific vendor or cost code require extra review.
All of it is configurable within the platform.
One feature worth highlighting is that approvers can approve directly from email. The notification includes the full line-item detail of the bill, and the approver can click approve from their inbox without logging into the system. For a project manager on a job site, that removes a real friction point. Plus, every approval is logged with a timestamp, creating a clear record of who reviewed a bill and when.
5. Purchase Order Matching: Finally, a System That Can Handle the Complexity
PO matching is one of the most time-consuming parts of AP in construction. The combinations get complicated fast: one PO tied to multiple invoices, one invoice referencing multiple POs, and some line items from a PO already paid on a prior bill. Doing this manually is slow, error-prone, and often deferred until after a project closes.
MakersHub reads PO reference numbers from incoming bills and cross-references them against open purchase orders in the connected accounting system. Matching POs surface automatically. The platform shows which line items have already been matched on previous invoices and which are still open, so there is no guessing about what has been paid.
When a line item on the bill is priced differently than the original PO, MakersHub flags the discrepancy. You can then adjust the price to match or accept the billed amount. Either option is available, and items can be reset if needed.
Note: PO Matching is included in the AP Scaling plan and above. It is not available on the Bills Starter plan.
Who Is MakersHub a Good Fit For?
MakersHub was built for businesses with complex AP environments. Construction is the clearest use case, but the platform serves any business dealing with high invoice volume, detailed line items, or multi-stakeholder approval requirements. That includes:
- Construction and trade service businesses managing multiple projects and job sites
- Manufacturing companies with detailed supplier invoices and procurement workflows
- Restaurants and hospitality businesses processing frequent vendor bills
- E-commerce and inventory-based businesses with high bill volume
- Any business where the existing accounting system’s native AP is no longer keeping up
MakersHub adds a smarter workflow layer on top of the existing accounting system rather than replacing it.
Try MakersHub Free for 21 Days
MakersHub offers a 21-day free trial on all plans. To get started, visit financialtechlab.com/makershub. Questions about whether the platform is right for your business? Reach out at info@financialtechlab.com.
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Disclosure: This post is sponsored by MakersHub. Financial Tech Lab only partners with tools that have been tested and meet our standards for quality and usefulness to small business owners.