Hello Tom …
Tom Bridges is the CFO of Ridgeline Construction, a general contracting firm based in Colorado that has been operating since 2009. The business manages commercial and residential construction projects across the state, running three separate bank accounts across different project portfolios. Tom joined five years ago to bring financial structure to a business that had grown faster than its back office could keep up with. By the time he arrived the company was profitable and busy — but the finance ops were held together manually.
▶ Sales Tools: Salesforce
▶ Accounting: Sage 50
▶ Payments: ACH / Bank Transfer
▶ Team Size: 33
▶ Operating Since: 2009
"The first week of every month was gone before it started."
THE PROBLEM
Every month Tom's team spent the first week of the month doing one thing — closing the books. Reconciling three bank accounts against Sage 50 manually. Cross-referencing ACH payment confirmations against invoices one by one. Chasing down variances between what Salesforce showed as closed and what Sage showed as billed. Pulling together a P&L summary for Tom to review before he could sign off.
Seven days. Every month. The same story.
Tom described it as the tax his business paid on not having connected systems. The data existed in three places — Salesforce, Sage 50, and the bank. Nobody had built a bridge between them. So a human had to be the bridge — every single month.
What Carapace did for Tom …
Carapace connected Salesforce, Sage 50, and the bank feeds and automated the entire month-end close process.
On the 1st of every month, Carapace runs the reconciliation automatically. ACH payments are matched against Sage 50 invoices across all three bank accounts. Deals closed in Salesforce are checked against billed amounts in Sage — any gap is flagged immediately. Uncategorised expenses are categorised. A P&L summary is prepared and delivered to Tom before 9am.
Tom's Team now reviews three flagged items instead of rebuilding the close from scratch. The entire process takes 24 minutes.Payment time dropped from 52 days to 19. I actually have cash flow now.
Month-end close used to take my team a full week. With Carapace handling reconciliation across our three bank accounts and Sage, we're done in two days.
7→2 days
Month-end close dropped from seven days to two. Tom gets his Friday back every week of the month — not just the last three.