Finance & FP&A

How to track ar aging and run collections as Construction and Contractor Founders

Finance & FP&AFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You invoiced three jobs in February and it's now mid-March. You know one GC is slow-paying, one homeowner is disputing a change order, and one sub you front-paid hasn't been reimbursed yet — but you can't tell you which invoice is the real problem without opening QuickBooks, cross-referencing your Buildertrend job files, and manually sorting an export in Excel. Meanwhile payroll is in ten days. Most small GCs and trade shops don't have a controller, so AR aging lives in a spreadsheet that gets updated whenever someone remembers. By the time you notice a 90-day bucket is growing, you're already borrowing from next month's draw to cover labor.

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Finance & FP&AFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live AR aging dashboard that pulls directly from QuickBooks — broken down by job, customer, and days outstanding — updated automatically so you're never working from a stale export

Automated collection follow-up drafts: Starch surfaces every invoice over 30 days and queues a personalized email to each GC or homeowner so you're not writing collection emails from scratch on Friday afternoon

A cash-flow bridge that compares your open AR against your next 30 days of payroll and sub payments, so you know whether this month's receivables cover next month's commitments before you commit to another material order

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Runway Analysis Email Agent Transaction Insights

Data sources & config

Starch connects directly to QuickBooks via scheduled sync — invoices, payments, customers, and journal entries refresh automatically so AR aging is always current. Starch also connects directly to your Plaid bank accounts on a scheduled sync, pulling categorized transactions and balances daily for the cash-flow bridge. Gmail connects from Starch's integration catalog so the email agent can query your sent history live and draft collection follow-ups without storing your inbox permanently. If you use Buildertrend or CoConstruct for job tracking, Starch automates those sites through your browser — no API needed — to pull job-level data and match it against your QuickBooks invoices.

Prompts to copy

Connect my QuickBooks and Plaid accounts. Build me an AR aging table that shows every open invoice grouped by customer and job name, flagged by how many days they've been outstanding — 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, and 90+. Include the invoice amount, original due date, and any partial payments received. Refresh it every weekday morning.

Every Monday at 7am, look at my AR aging table. For any invoice that has crossed 30 days outstanding and hasn't had an email sent in the last 7 days, draft a collection follow-up in Gmail addressed to the customer on that invoice. Keep the tone professional but direct. Show me the drafts before sending so I can approve or edit.

Pull my QuickBooks invoices and Plaid bank transactions for the last 90 days. Show me a cash-flow bridge: what's my total open AR, when is each invoice realistically collectible based on how that customer has paid before, and does that cover my payroll run and sub payments due in the next 30 days? Flag any gap.

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Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect QuickBooks to Starch via scheduled sync. Starch will pull all open invoices, payment history, customers, and aging data. Initial sync takes a few minutes; after that it refreshes automatically on a daily schedule.

2 Connect your business checking account via Plaid scheduled sync. This gives Starch visibility into actual cash received versus what QuickBooks shows as paid, so you can catch timing mismatches where a check is in transit but not yet deposited.

3 If you track jobs in Buildertrend or CoConstruct, tell Starch to automate those sites through your browser so it can pull job names, contract values, and change order status to match against your QuickBooks invoice list. No API or export needed.

4 Tell Starch to build your AR aging dashboard. Use the prompt above — specify that you want it grouped by customer and job, bucketed by days outstanding, and refreshed every weekday morning so Monday's meeting starts with current numbers.

5 Start the Runway Analysis app from the Starch App Store. Wire it to your Plaid and QuickBooks connections. It will calculate real net burn and forward cash projection — useful background context while you're working the collections queue.

6 Set up the Email Agent to run a Monday morning AR sweep. It queries your QuickBooks aging data, identifies invoices past 30 days, checks your Gmail sent history live to confirm no recent outreach, then queues draft collection emails for your approval.

7 Review the draft collection emails each Monday before they go out. The agent personalizes by customer name, job name, invoice number, and amount due. You edit, approve, or kill each one. Nothing sends without your review unless you explicitly tell Starch to auto-send after 48 hours of no response.

8 Open the Transaction Insights app to see your Plaid spending broken down by category and vendor. Cross-reference against your open AR — if you're still buying materials for a job where the customer is 60 days late, that's a cash-flow exposure you want to see explicitly.

9 Ask Starch to build the 30-day cash-flow bridge: open AR by expected collection date, minus payroll and committed sub payments. If there's a gap, you'll know before your bank account tells you.

10 When a payment comes in, Starch detects it via Plaid and cross-references against the open invoice in QuickBooks. It surfaces any invoice that was paid but not yet marked closed in QuickBooks — a common lag that distorts your aging view.

11 At month-end, ask Starch to generate a one-page AR summary you can share with your accountant or lender: total invoiced, total collected, aging buckets, average days to pay by customer, and any invoices you've written off. It pulls from the same QuickBooks sync — no separate export needed.

12 Adjust collection follow-up frequency per customer. A GC who always pays on day 45 gets different treatment than a homeowner who's disputing a change order. Tell Starch the rules in plain language and it applies them on the next Monday sweep.

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Worked example

March 2026 AR sweep — three open jobs, payroll in 11 days

Sample numbers from a real run

Hendricks Remodel — Invoice #1047 (62 days)	18,400
Ortega Commercial Fit-Out — Invoice #1051 (38 days)	34,750
Sunrise HOA Framing — Invoice #1059 (14 days)	11,200
Total open AR	64,350
Payroll due March 21	22,800
Sub payments due (electrical, insulation)	14,500
Total committed outflows next 30 days	37,300
Cash in business checking (Plaid)	29,100
Net gap if AR doesn't move	-8,200

On Monday March 10, Starch runs its AR sweep at 7am. It sees that Hendricks Remodel (#1047) is 62 days out — the homeowner approved the change order verbally but never signed the paper. Ortega Commercial is 38 days out, which is inside their normal 45-day cycle, so Starch holds the follow-up email. Sunrise HOA is only 14 days, no action needed. Starch drafts a single collection email to the Hendersons referencing Invoice #1047 for $18,400, the original due date, and the unsigned change order as the likely hold-up. You review it at 8am, add a line about the change order paperwork you're re-sending, and approve. Separately, the cash-flow bridge flags an $8,200 gap: even if Ortega pays on day 45 and Sunrise pays on time, payroll and sub payments total $37,300 and you only have $29,100 in the bank. Starch surfaces this before you've committed to the next material draw. You call Hendricks directly, collect a partial payment of $9,000, and Starch detects the deposit via Plaid by Thursday. The gap closes to under $1,000 — manageable.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) by customer — because knowing the Hendersons always pay on day 50 is more useful than an average across all jobs

Open AR as a percentage of next 30-day payroll and sub commitments — the number that tells you whether to chase hard or hold

Number of invoices in the 60+ day bucket at the start of each month — your leading indicator of a cash crunch 45 days out

Average time from invoice sent to first collection follow-up — most small GCs wait too long; this shortens it

Change-order invoice close rate — what percentage of verbal approvals actually convert to signed invoices and collected cash

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

QuickBooks alone

QuickBooks has an AR aging report but it won't draft your follow-up emails, alert you to a cash-flow gap, or cross-reference your bank balance against upcoming payroll — you still have to pull all three manually and do the math yourself.

Buildertrend or CoConstruct AR tools

Field management software tracks draws and change orders well but doesn't connect to your actual bank account or generate collection emails — you still need QuickBooks for real AR aging and a separate process for collections.

Hiring a part-time bookkeeper or controller

A good bookkeeper catches these issues during month-end close, which is usually 2-3 weeks after the problem started — by then a 60-day invoice is an 80-day invoice and payroll is already tight.

Excel AR aging template

Works fine until you forget to update it for two weeks, at which point it's worse than no system because you trust numbers that are stale — and it definitely won't draft a collection email or compare your AR to next month's payroll.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — runway analysis, email agent, transaction insights all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch connect to Buildertrend or CoConstruct directly?

Neither has a formal API connector in Starch's integration catalog today, but Starch automates those sites through your browser — no API needed. You stay logged in, and Starch can pull job names, contract values, and change order status the same way you would by clicking through the site. It's a first-class pattern, not a workaround.

What QuickBooks data does Starch actually pull?

Starch syncs invoices, payments, customers, vendors, bills, and journal entries from QuickBooks on a scheduled basis — so your AR aging table is always working from current data, not an export you ran last Tuesday. One honest note: QuickBooks report views like the built-in P&L and Transaction List are temporarily unavailable due to a connector issue, but entity-level data — the invoices and payments that drive AR aging — sync normally.

Will Starch send collection emails automatically without me reviewing them?

Only if you tell it to. By default the Email Agent queues drafts for your approval — you see each one before it goes out. If you want to flip it to auto-send after a certain delay for specific customer types, you can set that rule in plain language. But most small GCs want eyes on every collection email before it goes to a homeowner or a GC who might be a repeat customer.

My AR is spread across QuickBooks and a couple of manual invoices I send from Word or Google Docs. Can Starch handle both?

Starch will capture everything that flows through QuickBooks automatically. For invoices that live outside QuickBooks — Word docs, PDF invoices you email directly — you'd need to enter them into QuickBooks first, or tell Starch to check your Gmail for sent PDF invoices through browser automation and cross-reference against what's in QuickBooks. It's doable; just tell Starch what you want it to look for.

Is my QuickBooks and bank data stored permanently in Starch?

Starch is a live data platform, not a long-horizon data warehouse. Your QuickBooks invoices and Plaid transactions are synced and available for your dashboards and automations, but Starch isn't designed to be your system of record for historical archives. Your source data stays in QuickBooks and your bank. Also worth knowing: Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified yet — if that's a hard requirement for your lender or general contractor, it's worth flagging.

What happens when a customer pays and QuickBooks hasn't been updated yet?

Starch detects the deposit in your Plaid bank feed the day it clears — usually before your bookkeeper has marked the invoice paid in QuickBooks. When Starch sees a deposit that matches an open invoice amount, it surfaces the likely match so you can confirm and close the loop. It won't auto-mark things as paid in QuickBooks, but it gives you the heads-up so the aging report doesn't stay wrong for a week.