Finance at the Jobsite

Rishi Srivastava
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Running finance in construction isn’t easy — and we’re here to make it easier. On the Finance at the Jobsite Podcast, host Rishi Srivastava talks with top CFOs, owners, controllers, Ops and IT experts about what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s next. If you care about cash flow, automation, and smarter financial decision-making in construction, this show is for you.

  1. 19 Oct

    Down to One Vendor: How AP Automation Turned 10 Hours of Data Entry Into 30 Minutes — Taylor Johnson

    Taylor runs AR and AP at Lakeside, and also handles payroll, HR and most of the day-to-day finance work at a small concrete contractor. Before automation, every invoice was printed, walked to an operations manager for coding, then keyed into QuickBooks by hand. That was more than 300 invoices a month and six to ten hours a week of data entry. On this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, Taylor sits down with Rishi Srivastava three months into using Beiing Human to talk about what actually changed. Taylor explains how a field team used to paper got on board (“give it a couple of weeks”), how a QuickBooks version mismatch got sorted during setup, and how line-item extraction finally let Lakeside break out winter concrete treatment costs and speed up change orders. Time spent on AP dropped by 75 to 80%. The bigger surprise was the cash flow effect: with bills reaching the ERP in real time, Lakeside now pays on schedule instead of scrambling to cover bills two weeks late. Last week the AP list was down to a single vendor for the first time in almost three years. Taylor also shares a favorite feature (email auto-forwarding), a wishlist item for grouping line items, and simple advice for any contractor on the fence: just try it. Topics include: What AP looked like before automation: paper invoices, hand coding, 300+ manual entries a monthGetting a paper-first field team to give a new system a fair tryWorking through a QuickBooks version mismatch during implementationHow line-item extraction separated out winter concrete treatment costs and sped up change ordersCutting AP time by 75 to 80%: from 6–10 hours a week to about 30 minutesThe cash flow effect nobody expected: paying bills when they arrive, not two weeks lateGetting the AP list down to a single vendor for the first time in nearly three yearsWhy email auto-forwarding is the feature that makes AP “mindless”How project managers now see invoices and coding the way AP doesAdvice for contractors on the fence about AP automation: just try itFinance at the Jobsite is hosted by Rishi Srivastava, Co-Founder and CEO of Beiing Human, AI-powered accounts payable automation for construction contractors.

  2. 15 Oct

    How Swain Electric’s CFO Uses Claude with Foundation | Matt Robinson

    What happens when a construction CFO connects Claude to his ERP? Matt Robinson, CFO of Swain Electric, returns to Finance at the Jobsite to share how he’s using Claude with Foundation to automate daily cash reports, track overdue receivables, build financial dashboards, and review payroll data—without being a programmer. Matt walks through what’s working, what initially went wrong, and how he checks AI-generated results against trusted financial reports. He also explains how Swain Electric is extending automation beyond accounting, including personalized toolbox talk reminders and follow-ups for the field. In this episode:• Connecting Claude to Foundation through Beiing Human’s MCP connector• Replacing manual reporting with scheduled updates and reusable skills• Catching errors and teaching AI your company’s payroll rules• Setting boundaries around confidential data, transactions, and approvals• Getting leadership and employees comfortable with AI• Simple first steps any construction CFO or controller can try A practical conversation about putting AI to work in construction finance—and keeping people accountable for the results. #FinanceAtTheJobsite #ConstructionFinance #ConstructionTechnology #AIinConstruction #CFO #ClaudeAI #FoundationSoftware #MCP #FinanceAutomation #SwainElectric #BeiingHuman

  3. 5 Oct

    Stop Being the Bank for Everybody: A Heavy Civil CFO's Cash Playbook with Joseph Patti of Restani Construction

    "Why are we the bank for everybody?" That question sits behind every turnaround Joseph Patti has led. Joseph is CFO of Restani Construction Corp., a New York City heavy civil contractor. He is a CPA and CCIFP who has worked in construction finance since 1990, and a longtime CFMA leader, including past president of the New Jersey Chapter. In this episode he shares the cash, forecasting, and job tracking habits he brings to every contractor he joins, and how his team now uses AI on top of Sage 300 and HCSS to know how each job did every single day. In this episode: - How collecting material deposits up front helped take a flooring contractor from $10 million owed on its credit line to about $15 million in the bank - The turnaround levers at McLaren Engineering: weekly collection meetings, a bank-to-book 13-week cash flow, 85 to 90 percent utilization targets, and estimates to complete owned by project managers - Why borrowing at 18 percent on a 15 percent margin job means you are going backwards - What makes NYC agency work different: low-bid competition, utility conflicts, weather, and claims - Running the company "like a candy store": daily cost versus daily billable quantities, with AI pulling Sage 300 and HCSS data into one place - Unit price jobs: why daily quantity tracking makes your numbers "bulletproof," and why quantity you give up never comes back - Substituting bonds for cash retainage, and the $200,000 to $250,000 a year in interest income on a $5 million retainage position - The 5 percent mobilization payment trap and the race to the bottom on bids - Why the current ratio can mislead, and why underbillings and the financial statement notes deserve more attention - How CFMA's Financial Benchmarker avoids double counting contractor and CPA firm data - What a first-year construction CFO should do this month Chapters: (00:41) From Wall Street plans to construction finance (02:47) Turnaround lessons: deposits, collections, and the 13-week cash flow (08:59) Inside Restani: cash planning and forecasting (12:31) What makes NYC heavy civil different (15:56) Sage 300, HCSS, and AI: the numbers before 9 a.m. (20:01) Overrated metrics and why underbillings matter (22:25) Unit price jobs and daily quantity tracking (28:57) Could this become standalone software? (30:26) Bonds in lieu of cash retainage (33:03) The mobilization payment trap (35:05) Order of operations when cash is tight (38:37) CFMA and the Benchmarker (43:47) Advice for a first-year construction CFO Finance at the Jobsite is hosted by Rishi Srivastava, Co-Founder and CEO of Beiing Human, AI-powered accounts payable automation built for construction contractors. Learn more at beiinghuman.com.

  4. 18 Sept

    The Printer in the CFO's Living Room: How Construction Really Buys AP Tech — Eric Pratt

    Eric Pratt grew up counting inventory in his family's 100-year-old power tools and machinery business, learning bookkeeping from his grandmother while the rest of his family worked the trades. He spent years selling virtual card and e-payments before joining Viewpoint in 2020, right as they rolled out an e-payments program for Spectrum with barely twenty live customers. Six years later he sits on the Trimble App Exchange team, works closely with fintech partners like EarlyTrade, and calls himself the "AP partner guy."On this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, Eric sits down with Rishi Srivastava to unpack how construction finance teams actually buy software, why peer references beat logic every time, and why he thinks AI — the way most teams are using it today — is quietly creating more work at every stage of the funnel. He walks through what App Exchange is really solving as ERPs like Vista and Spectrum evolve, where economy of scale breaks an integration, and why AP managers, not CFOs, are often the ones doing the real selling upward. He tells the story of a COVID-era CFO whose owner leased an industrial printer for her living room so checks could keep flowing, uses it to explain why every "we've always done it this way" objection deserves curiosity rather than judgment, and closes on why reverse-prompting your own Drive to find the bottlenecks is more useful than another chatbot.Topics include: What Trimble App Exchange is really solving as ERPs evolveWhy trust signals — peer references, CFMA presence, live customers you can text mid-demo — beat logic in construction salesVista vs Spectrum: two ERPs, two very different customer personasWhat breaks first when an integration scales from 10 to 400 customersWhy AP managers, not CFOs, are often the real champions — and how to arm them to sell upward"Living in the white space": reading what isn't being said in a status-quo objectionWhich manual back-office behaviors are actually optional now, even if they don't feel like itThe COVID-era CFO who printed checks from her living room — and why accommodation beats judgmentEarlyTrade, dynamic discounting, and why it isn't factoringThe AI paradox: why the tools we're using today are creating more mental work at every stage of the funnelFinance at the Jobsite is hosted by Rishi Srivastava, Co-Founder and CEO of Beiing Human, AI-powered accounts payable automation for construction contractors.

  5. 10 Sept

    The $80,000 Engine: What Equipment Dealers Know About Contractor Operations — Brandon Kyse

    Brandon Kyse started as a framer at fifteen, studied construction management at Cal Poly, spent seven years in solar, and then thirteen years at RDO Equipment — one of the largest John Deere dealers in the world — running divisions up to $400 million. On this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, he sits down with Rishi Srivastava to unpack what he learned from the dealer seat and what it means for the contractors he now works with. Brandon walks through the P&L of a $400 million dealership and explains why the biggest revenue line carries the thinnest margin, why service is where the money is made, and how cutting one service manager can improve the numbers on paper while quietly wrecking the customer experience. He tells the story of an $80,000 engine that telematics flagged a week before it failed — and why the real breakdown was about ownership and communication, not the technology. He also revisits the Sungevity moment of 2009, when a competitor selling solar off Google Maps aerials proved everyone in the market wrong about how customers had to buy, and draws a straight line to how construction and equipment companies are operating today. Topics include: What contractors actually want from dealers (and what dealers keep missing)Why companies outgrow their operating systems long before they outgrow their technologyThe hidden cost of good people compensating for broken handoffsWho your best customer really is — hint: not the biggestCapturing thirty years of technician knowledge before it walks out the doorWhat to change Monday morning if you have telematics and nobody owns the alertsWhy "bring AI into the company" is not an operating objectiveAdvice for contractors mid-ERP implementation: don't blow it up, cut the timeline in halfHow to move a "we've done it this way for forty years" culture — put a cost on the status quoFinance at the Jobsite is hosted by Rishi Srivastava, Co-Founder and CEO of Beiing Human, AI-powered accounts payable automation for construction contractors.

  6. 2 Sept

    From 15 Attendees to 300: How Caryl Coronis Rebuilt the CFMA Lone Star Conference

    Caryl Coronis, CPA, CCIFP, has served CFMA at every level — Houston chapter president, co-founder of the resurrected Lone Star Conference, and most recently national chair. But her construction finance career started with a surety agent telling her, "You're going to have to do percent complete," and an invitation to a chapter meeting. In this episode, Caryl joins Rishi Srivastava to talk about what a commercial landscape company taught her about equipment: when one riding mower goes down, four people with push mowers finish the job, and that labor is where the money quietly leaves. Those fundamentals scaled all the way up to cranes at a specialty bridge builder, where shaving one or two points off equipment cost meant real dollars in a thin-margin business. She also shares how three chapter presidents brought back a regional conference that had died at 15 attendees and grew it to roughly 300 — and why sponsors willing to risk their money made it possible. Then the conversation gets candid: navigating owner politics from the finance seat, the family business where Friday decisions got reversed after Sunday dinner, the son who bought a two-seat sports car on the company's dime, and the quiet way tasks stop getting done when one person leaves and nobody plans the handoff. We also cover the CCIFP exam at regional conferences (with a free retake), why the certification still matters when AI models can pass it, the CFMA heavy equipment comparator (hecomparator.com), and Caryl's pitch for why the regionals — at half the cost of national — are the best first step for anyone in year one. Topics covered: Percentage of completion accounting and how CFMA fills the training gapThe real cost of equipment downtime and the repair-vs-replace decisionRebuilding the CFMA Lone Star Conference from 15 to 300 attendeesOffering the CCIFP exam at regional conferencesKeeping the CCIFP relevant in the age of AIOwner politics, family businesses, and being the outsider in the roomWhy handoffs fail and how job descriptions, task lists, and software training fix it"Yes, it integrates" — the ERP bolt-on realityHow to get involved with CFMA at any levelResources mentioned: CFMA Connection Cafe, hecomparator.com, cfma.org (search "regional conferences") Beiing Human will be at the CFMA Carolinas Conference in Greensboro, October 22–23. Stop by the booth. Finance at the Jobsite is hosted by Rishi Srivastava, founder of Beiing Human. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Audible, or watch on YouTube.

  7. 28 Aug

    Cut Revenue in Half, Double Your Profit — with Luke Boyenger

    Most contractors will tell you they run at 25%, 30%, even 40% gross margin. Almost none of them are right. In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, host Rishi Srivastava sits down with Luke Boyenger — former EY auditor turned fractional CFO, running a firm built specifically for construction companies. Luke's family manufacturing business went bankrupt in the 2008 crisis, and the question "what did we get wrong?" sent him back to school at 24. What he found is the same gap he sees in nearly every contractor he talks to today: the finance seat is the last one to get filled. The uncomfortable thesis: revenue in construction doesn't create cash, it consumes it. Luke walks through why some contractors need to cut their business in half to double their profit, why a line of credit and your own cash is a fragile capital structure, why merchant cash advances trap good companies in a spiral, and why "revenue is something you should back your way into" after you've set a profit target. What we get into: Why gross margin is almost always lower than owners think$20M at $250K profit vs. $10M at $1M profit — real contractors who shrank and made more money60–120 day payment terms and why subcontractors are functioning as unpaid banksWhat "capital infrastructure" actually means for a $10–30M subcontractorThe war chest: building 6–12 months of cash before you take distributionsThe five KPIs every construction owner should review monthlyWhy owners who know what to do still don't do itKeeping business and personal finances clean — and why stacked entities and trusts usually backfireChapters00:00 Intro01:00 From the trades to EY to fractional CFO02:56 Where contractors are most confidently wrong04:46 Profitability vs. "happy revenue"06:44 Warning signs you're growing revenue at the expense of profit09:00 Shrinking from $20M to $10M and making more money10:21 Cash flow and capital infrastructure14:10 MCAs, predatory lending, and 120% effective rates15:09 Smarter capital tools before you're under pressure17:20 Subcontractors as the industry's real banks18:10 Operator vs. owner mindset21:00 Managing by financial signals instead of gut feel23:35 Why execution is so hard in construction finance25:38 Weekly, monthly, and quarterly financial disciplines26:35 Invoice terms, late-paying GCs, and how to bid for them29:45 The biggest mistakes limiting $10–50M subcontractors33:40 Separating business and personal finances37:25 One uncomfortable financial truth for construction owners Finance at the Jobsite is hosted by Rishi Srivastava, founder of Beiing Human. New episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and YouTube — just search Finance at the Jobsite.

  8. 17 Aug

    Beyond the P&L: What Construction CFOs Really Need to Watch | Josh Bohlke

    What actually tells you whether a construction company is healthy? For Josh Bohlke, CFO of Columbia River Electric Maintenance, the answer goes far beyond the P&L. After moving from commercial banking into the CFO seat at a $30–40 million electrical contractor, Josh saw firsthand how different construction finance looks from inside the business. In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, we dig into WIP, backlog, gross profit, job costing, working capital, ERP data quality, automation, and the changing role of the construction CFO. Josh explains why WIP is more art than science, why contractors need to understand their balance sheet, and how bad ERP data—from stale POs to unclosed jobs—can quietly distort decision-making. We also discuss: Why backlog and gross profit are two of the most important construction KPIsHow labor hours, installed quantities, and cost should be used together to evaluate job performanceWhy analyzing the business entirely through the P&L can be dangerousWhen it may be worth reconverting or cleaning up your construction ERPLessons from rebuilding a Spectrum ERP environmentWhy clean data can help identify job fade weeks instead of months laterWhere automation works well in construction—and where human judgment is still criticalThe opportunity to automate AP, credit-card coding, and vendor statement reconciliationProcore, Spectrum, integrations, and the reality of “software fatigue”Why building your own software with AI may work for small workflows but create security and maintenance risks for mission-critical systemsHow AI could shift finance teams away from building spreadsheets and dashboards toward interpreting data and making strategic decisionsWhy the CFO's job requires not only financial expertise, but tact when delivering difficult messages to ownershipA practical conversation about what it really takes to run the finance function inside a growing construction company—and how that job may change as AI becomes part of the back office. #ConstructionFinance #ConstructionCFO #ConstructionAccounting #JobCosting #WIP #ConstructionTechnology #ConstructionERP #APAutomation #ArtificialIntelligence #ConstructionAI #Procore #ViewpointSpectrum #CashFlow #WorkingCapital #FinanceLeadership #ElectricalContractor #FinanceAtTheJobsite

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About

Running finance in construction isn’t easy — and we’re here to make it easier. On the Finance at the Jobsite Podcast, host Rishi Srivastava talks with top CFOs, owners, controllers, Ops and IT experts about what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s next. If you care about cash flow, automation, and smarter financial decision-making in construction, this show is for you.

Information

  • Creator
    Rishi Srivastava
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    78
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Rishi Srivastava
  • Show Website
    Finance at the Jobsite

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