How a Chattanooga Builder Combined Adaptive + Intuit Enterprise Suite for Multi-Entity Construction Magic

Croxall Construction Companies runs four construction brands under one holding company—Residential, Commercial, Roofing, and Painting—serving the Greater Chattanooga area. It’s a second-generation, family-led operation with 75+ years of combined experience and projects that range from custom homes to commercial build-outs.

When the family consolidated the businesses last year, the work in the field scaled smoothly. The back office didn’t. Accounts payable and receivable were split across QuickBooks, BuilderTrend, email, and spreadsheets. On any given week, the team sifted through hundreds of bills and receipts, all needing to be rolled up into cost plus invoices across different projects.

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“We were at the point where we’d started interviewing for a third bookkeeper. It was the best system we knew at the time, but it wasn’t organized the way we needed,” says Hayden Croxall, President

The Challenge: Consolidation Exposed the Gaps

Croxall had two in-house bookkeepers and an outside accountant. Even with that bench, rolling multiple entities into a single operating rhythm surfaced three specific issues:

• Job costing was a grind. Bills landed by email or paper, were re-keyed into QuickBooks, referenced in the field tool, then rebuilt again for client draws. On big cost-plus jobs with 100+ invoices, assembling a clean, client-ready package took days—to the point they’d started interviewing a third bookkeeper just to keep up.
• AR and AP didn’t talk. Billing clients and paying vendors lived in separate lanes. Sequencing was unclear—which invoices were approved, which belonged in the next draw, who gets paid when, and whether cash was coming in before checks went out. The “order of operations” lived in people’s heads.
• No clean roll-up across entities. Leadership needed one snapshot of AR/AP, job exposure, and cash risk across all companies. Instead, they bounced between systems and exports. A true cross-entity view was missing when decisions had to be made.

Volume was the tipping point. With hundreds of invoices each week—and single jobs carrying 100+ bills—the team had already begun interviewing a third bookkeeper just to keep pace. It wasn’t about growth; it was about keeping AR/AP and draws from falling behind.

The Turn: Choosing Adaptive + Intuit Enterprise Suite for AR/AP + Draws

Hayden wasn’t shopping for bells and whistles. He wanted one financial lane where bills, coding, approvals, and client billing lived together—and that still played nicely with Intuit Enterprise Suite for multi-entity roll-ups.

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Adaptive clicked because it made Croxall’s day-to-day faster and cleaner:

• Inbox to Draw in just a few clicks. Bills land in Adaptive by email/upload, get coded to QuickBooks cost codes, approved with budget context, and queued for the next client draw—without re-keying.
• Client-ready draw packages. Every supporting doc, markup, and lien waiver exports in one place—exactly how Croxall wants to present cost-plus work.
• Intuit Enterprise Suite stays the consolidation layer. Adaptive feeds back structured transactions so multi-entity roll-ups in Intuit Enterprise Suite remain clear.

“For our AR/AP and invoicing workflow, Adaptive is just so efficient. It’s the tool—and it does its job really well.”

What the Workflow Looks Like Now

1. Capture & Code
Bookkeepers forward bills into Adaptive based on entity. Adaptive takes a first pass, automatically job costing ~80% of transactions, and the team reviews and does the rest.

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2. Approve With Context

PMs can approve from their phone—with live budget visibility—before anything hits a client draw.

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3. Package the Draw

Adaptive generates a client-ready draw (line items, attachments, lien waivers, markup) in just a few clicks. This matches Croxall’s transparency standard and cuts out the spreadsheet gymnastics.

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4. Sync & Roll-Up

Approved payables sync back to QuickBooks Online (Intuit Enterprise Suite) for clean books and multi-entity reporting. Field operations are moving to Ressio for a simpler, less-cluttered PM experience while Adaptive continues to run the financial layer.

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Says Haden, “We’re categorizing AR, building out AP, and getting invoices into the draw in fewer clicks than it takes to type a client’s name in QuickBooks. You can’t beat that.”

Easy Adoption: From QuickBooks Desktop Loyalist to Adaptive Power User

One of Croxall’s longest-tenured bookkeepers had spent her career in QuickBooks Desktop. Within 1–2 weeks, she was fully effective in Adaptive + IES. The linear flow made the new process stick and the team noticeably faster.

Results That Mattered

• Headcount avoided: Croxall did not hire the third bookkeeper they were interviewing.
• Capacity gained: 3–5 hours saved per week per bookkeeper (≈ 6–10 hours weekly) now go to higher-value work.
• Draws without drama: Even for jobs with 100+ invoices the team can quickly create a comprehensive draw package clients actually like.
• Cleaner roll-ups: Intuit Enterprise Suite remains the home for multi-entity views, now fed by cleaner transactions from Adaptive.

“Adaptive is a top-line expense with an immediate bottom-line impact. Of all the software we use, Adaptive’s ROI is the clearest,” says Hayden.

The Takeaway

Croxall didn’t chase an all-in-one unicorn. They sought out focused solutions to simplify their processes for both the field (moving to Ressio) and the back office (Adaptive for AR/AP + draws, Intuit Enterprise Suite for consolidation). The result is a stack that matches how a multi-entity builder truly operates:

• Field stays nimble.
• Finance stays precise.
• Leadership gets the roll-ups they need—without adding headcount.

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That simplicity and efficiency is why he tells other builders: get your process right, then let Adaptive run AR, AP, invoicing, and draw prep so your team can focus on exceptional work—not data entry.

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