Invoice Automation for Construction and Contracting
Construction AP has a volume problem and a coding problem at the same time. A single active job generates invoices from a lumber yard, a concrete supplier, three subs, an equipment rental company and a dumpster service, and every one of them needs to land against the right job before the numbers mean anything.
Most of those invoices arrive as email attachments. They pile up in a shared inbox, get printed, get keyed in at the end of the week, and job costing runs two weeks behind reality.
ZapBooks reads that inbox, extracts each invoice including line items, matches vendors against your existing supplier list, and posts a coded bill to QuickBooks Online or Xero with the PDF attached.
What makes AP hard in construction and contracting
The volume is one problem. The shape of the documents is usually the bigger one.
Job costing lags behind the job
If bills post two weeks late, your cost-to-complete is wrong for two weeks. On a fixed-price job that is how margin disappears before anyone notices.
Material invoices carry long line-item detail
A supplier invoice with thirty line items across three deliveries is not a header-total document. Splitting it by hand is exactly the work nobody wants.
Duplicate billing from suppliers
Statements, re-sends and chaser emails mean the same invoice arrives repeatedly. Paying it twice is common and painful to unwind.
Retention, back-charges and change orders
Sub invoices rarely match the original contract cleanly, so someone has to check them against the PO or the schedule of values every time.
How it works
- 1
Point ZapBooks at the AP inbox
The shared mailbox suppliers and subs already send to. Read-only, OAuth, no forwarding rules.
- 2
Every invoice gets extracted in full
Header data plus line items with descriptions, quantities, unit prices and tax, so material bills arrive splittable rather than lumped.
- 3
Duplicates get flagged before they post
Vendor and invoice number matching catches the re-send, the statement copy and the chaser attachment.
- 4
PO matching on the Pro plan
Invoices are checked against open purchase orders so quantity and price variances surface before approval rather than after payment.
- 5
Coded bills sync to your ledger
Bills post to QuickBooks Online or Xero, where your existing job, class or tracking category structure does the job costing.
Documents it handles
- Material supplier invoices
- Subcontractor invoices and pay applications
- Equipment and tool rental invoices
- Fuel and fleet invoices
- Dumpster, portable toilet and site service invoices
- Permit and inspection fee receipts
What lands in your ledger
- ZapBooks posts bills; job costing happens through your existing QuickBooks classes, projects or Xero tracking categories.
- Line-item extraction is what makes job allocation possible. Header-only capture forces you to re-open the PDF and split by hand.
- Vendor matching against your existing supplier list prevents duplicate vendor records, which otherwise wreck supplier spend reporting.
- PO matching on Pro surfaces price and quantity variances before you approve, not at reconciliation.
Questions from construction and contracting
Ready to stop typing invoices?
Connect your inbox and your accounting software. ZapBooks reads the invoices, extracts the data and posts coded bills to QuickBooks, Xero or Excel.
14-day free trial. No credit card required.