How Sustainable 9 Transformed Draws from 80+ Hours to 2 Hours with Adaptive

Founded in 2008, Sustainable 9 Design + Build has made a name for itself crafting some of the Twin Cities’ most distinctive, sustainable, and design-forward custom homes. As a builder focused on innovation and performance, co-founder Ryan Hanson knew their financial operations needed to match the sophistication of their product... and that their old process wasn’t cutting it.

The Challenge: Cost-Plus Chaos

Sustainable 9 runs 100% cost-plus, open-book projects, with some reaching $6M+. That transparency comes with high financial expectations from clients.

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But behind the scenes, their internal processes were breaking down. “We were using this massive spreadsheet that we manually updated every month with actuals and invoices,” said Ryan. “It was ripe for error. One broken formula could throw off the entire draw, so there was plenty of double and triple checking every draw.”

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The draw process, which involved sorting PDFs in Adobe, double-checking invoices, updating spreadsheets, and printing spreadsheets, spanned across the office:

• 80–100+ hours per month of bookkeeping time
• Multiple project managers + owner involvement
• Full-day internal draw meetings
• Missed receipts that cost thousands in unbilled expenses
• Slower cash flow, forcing them to often float costs on a line of credit

It was, in Ryan’s words, “Groundhog Day,” finishing one month’s draw and immediately starting the next.

The Solution: Adaptive’s Cost-Plus Draw Automation

Ryan found Adaptive early and saw an opportunity to automate the entire cost-plus billing process. “Now we’ve brought our whole process into Adaptive. Receipts, invoices, approvals… it’s all in one place, in real time.”

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With Adaptive, Sustainable 9 was able to:

• Pull in all costs automatically via bank feeds, vendor emails, and field receipts
• Enforce coding + approval workflows with PMs and Finance
• Compile draw packages instantly, with AIA-style formatting and client-ready PDFs
• Use Adaptive’s mobile receipt capture, enabling field teams to upload before leaving the store

Real-Time Budgeting & Better Cash Flow

Instead of spreadsheet guesswork, Adaptive gave Ryan real-time budget health with every cost coded to the right job and cost code, allowing for proactive decisions and client transparency.

The Results

Since implementing Adaptive, Sustainable 9 has seen dramatic improvements across operations:

“We used to take weeks just to get a draw out the door. Now my bookkeeper clicks a few buttons and the packages are ready by our 1 PM meeting,” Ryan explained.

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Serious Gains

• 80+ hours saved/month across bookkeeping and owner time
• Thousands in receipts recovered, billed to clients with markup
• Faster draw approvals, fewer errors, and reduced risk of overages
• Less float on line of credit, improving cash position
• Professional presentation to high-end clients with clean audit trails

“It’s not just time saved. It’s money we used to leave on the table. That’s a six-figure difference.”

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Adaptive Enables Growth, Not Just Efficiency

By streamlining financials, Ryan has reclaimed time to focus on development, growth, and zoning—not tracking receipts or sorting spreadsheets. “I used to spend days reviewing draws,” says Ryan. “Now I spend that time on actual business-building work.”

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And the field team? They’re more organized, too. “They snap a photo at Home Depot, it’s uploaded, coded, done. No more missing receipts under truck seats.”

Advice to Other Builders?

“Don’t wait. If you’re doing cost-plus and still doing your draws in spreadsheets, you’re burning hours and losing money. Adaptive changed the game for us.”

The Takeaway

For forward-thinking builders like Sustainable 9, Adaptive isn’t just a financial tool. It’s a system of control, visibility, and confidence.

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“Adaptive brought our finances into the modern era. We’re more efficient, more accurate, and more profitable.”

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Listen to Sustainable 9’s story in our recent webinar with Ryan here.