Real-Time Project Receivables Cut Accounting Time by 45% for a Construction Firm

Company Background

Shandong Tianyao Construction Engineering Co., Ltd. was established in 2017 and serves customers in real estate exterior wall insulation, doors and windows, decoration and renovation, and government coal-to-electricity programs. Because its projects are varied and operationally distinctive, the company usually has to confirm engineering payments in stages or by steps, a billing model that shaped the challenges it would later face.

Why Staged Billing Is Risky in Construction

Staged billing is common in construction because large jobs are paid in milestones rather than all at once, but it creates a timing mismatch. Revenue is recognized piece by piece while costs are incurred continuously, so a project can look profitable on paper yet bleed cash if collections slip. When confirmation of payment depends on manual month-end reports, managers learn about trouble weeks too late to act. For a firm like Tianyao, whose work ranges from wall insulation to government coal-to-electricity programs, that lag directly threatened both margins and cash flow, which is why real-time visibility became the priority.

Why Staged Billing Created Problems

That staged payment model repeatedly triggered a set of issues the company struggled to control:

• At the point of collection, it was hard to book project profit clearly, which undercut the firm's view of profitability.
• A single project often carried multiple long-cycle contracts, placing heavy pressure on contract management.
• Costs and expenses during construction could not be gathered in real time, so cost overruns were noticed too late.
• Project execution was only visible in month-end financial reports, leaving no real-time monitoring or decision support.

These gaps left the company unable to evaluate cost and profit or analyze its own operations. HaoYeCai's project management capability turned out to map directly onto each of Tianyao's pain points.

Project Dashboard: Full Visibility Across Devices

Every project carries its own dashboard that clearly shows progress, settlement, payables and receivables, and expenses, with prompts highlighting what needs attention. Progress is broadcast live, so owners, project managers, and finance can check status from PC or mobile at any time. Managers gain a real-time, comprehensive, and accurate picture that supports sound project decisions.

The system also warns on project start and end dates and raises alarms on stage dates, flagging overdue projects that need special attention. A messaging mechanism notifies the right people immediately, which goes a long way toward reducing the company's risk.

Real-Time Cost Collection and Profit Calculation

HaoYeCai delivers an integrated solution for labor and expense accounting and supports outsourced cost as well. A general contractor can award part of a project to a qualified subcontractor, sign a subcontract, and agree a settlement amount, then settle and pay by progress in stages while aggregating those amounts into the total project's subcontract cost, which can be viewed in real time.

Profitability Analysis: Controlled in Real Time

Users can check a project's income and expense anytime, see a profit forecast, and monitor income and cost line items as they happen. Profitability analysis is reported live for every project on both mobile and PC, so the margin picture is never a month-end surprise.

Contract Execution Statistics: Transparent Progress

The system compiles contract execution data across dimensions such as project, contract, department, salesperson, and customer, giving real-time control of operations and a scientific basis for decisions. Through contract statistics it tracks cumulative incurred and unincurred income, collections, and invoicing, while contract execution follow-up covers fund settlement, collection, invoicing, material in and out, and expense spending.

The Results: 45% Faster Receivables Accounting

With Chanjet HaoYeCai's support, Tianyao's finance team now collects against contract progress and can see each project's collections clearly at any moment, cutting receivables accounting time by 45%. The system also helped build project and contract archives and a contract workspace to view and handle contract business centrally. During execution, costs are gathered and accounted by project to keep cost control on track, and the owner can check progress, cost, and profit from phone or PC anytime, giving management clearer and fuller data to drive decisions.

What Contractors Can Take Away

Tianyao's results show that for milestone-billed contractors, the win from ERP is not just a 45% cut in accounting time but a shift from reactive to proactive control. When collections, costs, and profit are visible the moment they happen, leaders stop waiting for month-end surprises and start steering each project while it is still in motion. Building organized project and contract archives on top of a live dashboard turns scattered job data into a single source of truth, which is exactly the foundation a growing construction firm needs to take on more work without losing sight of any of it. The payoff is a finance function that scales with the backlog instead of drowning in it. The payoff is a finance function that scales with the backlog instead of drowning in it.