Client

MLCO Construction

Industry

Construction and real estate development

Engagement focus

ERP implementation support, construction operations process design, job costing, reporting, forecasting, and AI-enabled planning.

Executive Summary

MLCO partnered with ShapeConnect to strengthen the systems and processes supporting its construction operations. The work centered on helping MLCO get more value from Acumatica, improve connected workflows across Procore, Builder, ADP, and reporting tools, and move toward a more integrated operating model for forecasting, job costing, payroll accounting, estimating, and executive decision-making.

ShapeConnect provided advisory and implementation support across several areas:

• Acumatica go-live and post-go-live stabilization
• Job cost and payroll accounting process design
• Procore, Builder, ADP, and Acumatica workflow alignment
• Retainage, project time coding, and project template guidance
• Velixo/Valixo reporting and WIP forecasting planning
• Estimating and CRM workflow discovery
• AI-enabled forecasting and scenario planning strategy

A clear indicator of progress came during a later forecasting discussion, when Ruben noted that month-end close — previously a major burden — had been completed in a day and a half after prior work with ShapeConnect.

The Challenge

MLCO had a growing need to make its operational and financial systems work together more effectively. The company was using multiple systems across finance, construction operations, estimating, payroll, and pipeline management, including Acumatica, Procore, Builder, ADP, and reporting tools.

Several challenges emerged across the engagement:

1. Manual and fragmented reporting

MLCO needed stronger reporting across job cost, WIP, payroll, and forecasting. Existing spreadsheets were no longer sufficient for the scale of the company’s forecasting needs, and the team needed higher-level architectural guidance instead of continuing to “cobble together” older spreadsheets.

2. Forecast-to-complete visibility

A critical construction management metric — forecast to complete — lived in Procore and did not automatically transfer into Acumatica. This field was central to MLCO’s risk management process and WIP calculations, because project managers used it to reflect expected overruns, uncommitted costs, variable ongoing costs, and pending change-order risks.

3. Estimating workflow limitations

MLCO’s production estimating process still relied heavily on an older Excel workbook, while contract values were manually entered into Builder. The team also had underused Builder capabilities for bidding, bid leveling, budgets, markups, measurements, RFIs, and correspondence.

4. Disconnected scenario planning

Executive and board-level planning required real-time answers to “what-if” questions, such as the impact of delayed projects, new hires, staffing changes, pipeline shifts, and cash flow implications. MLCO’s current process required manual updates across multiple systems and did not support live scenario modeling during executive meetings.

5. Payroll and job costing complexity

MLCO needed a clean approach for tying time entry, payroll, standard labor costing, actual payroll costs, and variance reconciliation together. ShapeConnect helped define a target flow using Acumatica for standard costing and ADP for payroll processing, with payroll clearing and true-up logic to bridge operational job costing and payroll accounting.

ShapeConnect’s Role

ShapeConnect served as a strategic technology and implementation partner, helping MLCO translate business goals into practical system design, vendor decisions, implementation priorities, and operating workflows.

ERP and implementation oversight

ShapeConnect supported MLCO through Acumatica implementation and stabilization discussions, including project coding, retainage handling, reporting, payroll planning, recurring journal entries, and post-go-live process refinement.

Examples of support included:

• Advising on how project managers should code time across development phases
• Recommending project tasks and templates to improve consistency
• Helping think through AR retention invoice handling and reporting
• Reviewing payroll accounting alternatives and timing constraints
• Supporting job cost and payroll reporting improvement after go-live

Payroll costing process design

ShapeConnect documented a target end-to-end payroll costing flow for MLCO. The design separates operational job costing from actual payroll accounting by:

• Capturing and approving employee time in Acumatica
• Applying standard labor rates for job labor cost
• Exporting payroll time from Acumatica to ADP
• Importing ADP payroll journal entries back into Acumatica
• Reconciling the payroll clearing account and posting true-up entries
• Using variance results as a control to validate labor rates over time[4]

This gave MLCO a cleaner and more auditable bridge between standard job costing and actual payroll activity.

Reporting and forecasting architecture

ShapeConnect helped MLCO evaluate how to improve WIP reporting, project forecasting, and executive visibility. The team discussed Velixo/Valixo as a way to build more dynamic reporting on top of Acumatica and related data sources.

ShapeConnect also helped frame the architecture around the most important data sources:

• Acumatica for budgets, costs, committed costs, and accounting data
• Procore for forecast-to-complete information and field-driven project updates
• Builder for pipeline, estimating, and business development activity
• SharePoint and spreadsheets as potential supporting data sources
• ADP for payroll and workforce cost data

Estimating and Builder workflow discovery

ShapeConnect facilitated discovery around MLCO’s estimating process and Builder usage. The team identified opportunities to move more estimating work out of Excel and into Builder where practical, while recognizing that estimator adoption and change management would be critical.

The proposed approach included:

• Walking through a full project from start to finish
• Testing Builder’s budget-building and bid-leveling functionality
• Understanding current estimating team workflows
• Aligning Builder, Procore, and Acumatica cost-code structures
• Creating an implementation approach that reduces duplicate entry

AI-enabled forecasting and scenario planning

As MLCO’s needs evolved, ShapeConnect helped define a forward-looking strategy for AI-enabled forecasting and scenario planning. The desired end state was a secure dashboard and planning layer that could combine ERP, CRM/pipeline, payroll, and operational data to answer executive questions in real time.[1]

The strategy ShapeConnect helped shape included:

• A hybrid solution combining an off-the-shelf platform with a custom AI layer
• Integration with Acumatica, Builder, ADP, and other core data sources
• Support for board-level scenario modeling
• Role-based access and governance for sensitive financial and HR data
• Ability to model project delays, hiring decisions, cash flow impacts, pipeline hit rates, and year-end forecast changes

Key Workstreams

1. Acumatica stabilization and process design

ShapeConnect helped MLCO address tactical post-go-live questions while also shaping durable workflows. This included project coding, retainage, payroll, recurring entries, allocation logic, and job cost reporting.

2. Payroll and labor costing

ShapeConnect designed a payroll costing process that balances the need for meaningful job costing with the reality that standard labor rates will not always equal actual payroll. The resulting flow uses payroll clearing and periodic variance true-ups as a control mechanism.

3. WIP and forecasting reporting

ShapeConnect helped MLCO evaluate Velixo/Valixo and determine how to build reports that connect Acumatica’s financial data with project-level risk and forecast information from Procore.

4. Estimating modernization

ShapeConnect helped MLCO assess whether Builder could support more of the estimating workflow, reducing reliance on legacy Excel files while preserving the sophistication needed by estimators.

5. Executive scenario planning

ShapeConnect helped MLCO define requirements for an integrated forecasting environment capable of answering real-time questions from leadership and board stakeholders.

Outcomes and Impact

While the engagement included ongoing implementation and advisory work, several meaningful outcomes emerged:

Faster financial close

MLCO saw a significant improvement in month-end close, with Ruben noting that a process that had previously been a major burden was completed in a day and a half after ShapeConnect’s prior support.

Clearer operating architecture

MLCO gained a clearer view of how Acumatica, Procore, Builder, ADP, Velixo/Valixo, and potential AI tools should fit together in a future-state operating model.

Better job costing and payroll control design

The payroll costing flow created a more auditable connection between operational time entry, standard job cost rates, actual payroll results, and variance true-ups.

More disciplined reporting roadmap

ShapeConnect helped MLCO move from spreadsheet-heavy reporting toward a more structured reporting architecture for WIP, job cost, payroll, and executive forecasting.

Practical estimating modernization path

Rather than recommending a disruptive rip-and-replace approach, ShapeConnect helped MLCO evaluate the tools it already had — especially Builder — and determine where existing functionality could be used more effectively.

Stronger executive decision support

ShapeConnect helped MLCO define the path toward a real-time forecasting and scenario planning solution that can support board-level questions, hiring decisions, project delay analysis, pipeline modeling, and cash flow planning.

Why It Matters

MLCO’s work with ShapeConnect illustrates how a construction company can move beyond software implementation as a technical project and treat it as an operating model transformation.

The engagement was not limited to one system or one workflow. Instead, ShapeConnect helped MLCO connect the dots across ERP, project management, estimating, payroll, reporting, and executive planning. That broader perspective allowed MLCO to address immediate post-go-live needs while also building toward a more integrated, AI-ready future state.

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