Bauen Build Cuts 20+ Hours of Paperwork Each Month with Adaptive + BuilderTrend

Bauen Build is a high-performance residential builder specializing in Passive House construction across Colorado’s Front Range. Their homes are designed for comfort, durability, and energy efficiency. Until switching to Adaptive, their billing and back-office workflows didn’t reflect the same seamless and efficient approach to their builds.

While building some of the most advanced homes in Boulder, their accounting system relied on spreadsheets, email threads, and heavy manual effort — a setup that worked but simply didn’t scale as they were growing.

The Challenge: A System That Worked — Until It Didn’t

• Draw prep was a spreadsheet maze. Assembling client draws meant stitching together data across spreadsheets — a process that relied heavily on institutional knowledge. While it was functional, it was time intensive.
• Cross-checking receipts and invoices took too much manpower. Two bookkeepers spent hours manually cross-checking to prevent missed billables or errors that forced rework.
• PMs were stuck in a manual approval loop. Reviewing and approving costs before billing happened outside the system, slowing down the process and adding room for error.
• Financials were disconnected across tools, which meant duplicate entry and constant reconciliation.

“We were spending a full day per project building draws,” said Matt Brill, Founder of Bauen Build. “It wasn’t just time — it was a risk and also a concern to make sure draws were accurate. Missed documentation meant missed revenue.”

What the System Looks Like Now

Since adopting Adaptive, Bauen Build has built a fully integrated, three-system financial tech stack that supports both back-office efficiency and real-time job costing visibility.

Adaptive: The Financial Engine

• All bills and receipts are routed through Adaptive’s email or mobile capture.
• AI-assisted coding assigns cost codes pulled directly from QuickBooks.
• Structured approval workflows allow PMs to review and approve vendor invoices before they hit client draws.
• Adaptive allows the team to create client-ready draw packages in just a few clicks with real-time budget data, expense attachments, and markup.

Buildertrend: The Client Communication Hub

• BuilderTrend remains the source of truth for client-facing interactions: selections, change orders, messages, and daily logs.
• PMs operate in BuilderTrend, while Adaptive powers the financial layer behind it.

QuickBooks Online: The Accounting Source of Truth

• All approved bills from Adaptive sync directly into QBO as open payables — no double entry.
• Bill payments and client invoices are mirrored in QBO, keeping books tight and reconciled.
• Bank transactions and payroll flow into QBO, completing the picture.

“The integration between BuilderTrend, Adaptive, and QuickBooks is seamless,” Brill explains. “BuilderTrend runs the job. Adaptive runs the books. QuickBooks stays accurate without extra effort.”

Real Results: Financial Precision, Not Just Time Savings

Since implementing Adaptive:

• 25+ hours saved every month in draw prep alone at current scale.
• Bill approval now happens in minutes, not days. PMs approve on mobile with budget context.
• Draw packages are generated with a few clicks, fully supported with attachments and lien waivers.
• Nothing slips through the cracks. Receipts and invoices are captured at the source and categorized immediately.
• No more hunting through inboxes or spreadsheets. Everything is structured, searchable, and synced.

“We used to lose time and money chasing down bills and receipts,” said Brill. “Now, everything’s in one place, updated in real time. We’re more accurate, faster, and more professional.”

A System That Scales With the Business

The time savings alone were worth the switch. But the real value? Bauen Build’s financial operations now scale with their pipeline.

‍

As the team takes on more Passive House builds, they aren’t adding accounting staff or back-office complexity.

‍

“The same system that saves us 25 hours a month today will save us 50 hours a month when we double our projects,” Brill said. “It’s an investment in our future capacity.”

Advice to Other Builders

“If you’re still using spreadsheets and email for billing, you’re behind,” Brill says. “I wish we had started with Adaptive from day one. It would’ve saved us countless hours and made billing clean from the start.”

‍