The construction industry continues to face significant financial pressure. Across many markets, companies are struggling to hire qualified workers despite increasing wages, while rising interest rates and inflation further strain budgets.

Although material prices have stabilized since pandemic-era highs, contractors must remain vigilant about supply chain disruptions, pricing dynamics, and maintaining profitability. The overall result: margins are slim, budgets are tight, and the stakes remain high.

In this environment, finance teams play a critical role — not only controlling costs, but also safeguarding cash flow, supporting subcontractor and vendor relationships, and providing the analysis leadership needs to make informed business decisions. Balancing these demands while maintaining accuracy and mitigating fraud risks puts increasing pressure on financial leaders.

Fortunately, advancements in payments automation and back-office technology are giving construction companies new tools to address these challenges. When implemented effectively, these solutions can streamline processes, reduce human error, improve vendor satisfaction, and free up finance teams to focus on more strategic priorities.

This article explores key areas where payments automation can strengthen financial performance and help companies remain competitive in today’s market.

Improving Cash Flow

Finance teams today are tasked with managing large volumes of data — from transactions, payments, payroll, and more, often in varied formats and sourced from multiple systems. Integrated systems can streamline these processes, helping businesses maintain accurate visibility into liquidity, manage debt more effectively, and sustain creditworthiness.

Replacing paper-based payments with electronic methods also offers financial benefits. With integrated systems, finance teams gain timely visibility into cash flow, automate payments processing, simplify reconciliation, and improve control over liquidity and debt management.

Some systems even allow organizations to consolidate payment files across different payment types, reducing manual work and improving consistency.

Supporting Subcontractor, Vendor & Employee Relationships

Keeping your clients, suppliers, employees, and contractors happy isn’t always easy, but it’s necessary for the health of your company’s reputation.

Subcontractors & Vendors

The more you show you value your subcontractors and vendors, the more likely they’ll say yes to your next job.

One way to keep your hard-earned 
reputation polished is to pay your subcontractors and vendors on time and in the way the payee wants to be paid.

The right solution will offer a variety of electronic payment options, such as automated clearing house (ACH) payments, direct-to-debit cards, and payments directly into a digital wallet.

Not every business accepts card or digital wallet payments, but their use in construction is growing as more companies see the benefits these payment types offer. These options give valuable suppliers money in hand within minutes — a big plus for your subcontractors — and shows that your business is ahead of the curve.

Employees

If you haven’t already, consider taking a similar approach with another critical stakeholder group — your employees.

Many companies are reducing payroll costs by eliminating paper checks through direct deposit or reloadable payroll cards, offering employees greater convenience while simplifying internal processes.

Both are attractive options that are simple for your team to execute, enhance convenience, and foster loyalty among your workforce.

Increasing Accuracy Through Automation

Mistakes in A/P aren’t just embarrassing; they’re expensive. Whether it’s a typo in an invoice, a misfiled payment, or missing remittance data, mistakes can cause payment delays, strained relationships with subcontractors, and disruptions to cash flow.

Implement Automation

One way to reduce human error is to implement automation in your A/P workflows.

For example, many modern payments solutions use artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically validate invoices, match them with purchase orders, and ensure all data is accurately logged into the 
system. This eliminates the risk of manual data entry errors, saving time and reducing headaches.

Additionally, intelligent systems that are integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms can instantly cross-check payment details against supplier agreements and flag discrepancies.

For instance, if an invoice includes a dollar amount that doesn’t match the purchase order, then the system can notify the A/P team before the payment is processed. This not only prevents overpayments, but also ensures consistent compliance with contract terms.

Digitize Manual Payment Processes

Another way to reduce human error is to digitize paper invoices. Your business can use optical character recognition technology to scan and automatically input invoice data into your payments network, bypassing the need for manual keying and the potential errors that come with that approach.

By incorporating these technologies, construction companies can turn error-prone manual processes into seamless, efficient workflows. It can result in not only fewer mistakes, but also more time and resources for the A/P team to dedicate to tasks that truly add value to the business.

Strengthening Fraud Prevention

Unfortunately, no industry is immune from bad actors. Payment fraud continues to be a growing threat for businesses, with cyberattacks, mail theft, and check fraud continuing to surge.

Mail theft-related check fraud, for example, continues to be a significant risk for businesses that rely on mailing paper checks as payment. Thieves steal physical checks from the mail and then alter them or fraudulently sign them and deposit the funds, or in some cases, use the stolen checks as templates to create counterfeit checks.

As reported in 2024, in one recent six-month period, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) received 15,417 Bank Secrecy Act reports from more than 800 financial institutions related to this type of fraud, totaling more than $688 million in suspicious activity.¹

Many banks and financial institutions integrate fraud prevention measures into their products. One commonly used tool is a positive pay system.

This technology allows businesses to submit an electronic file each day detailing the checks that they issue. Then, as each check is presented for payment, the system electronically compares it to the information in the submitted file. Any discrepancies are flagged and reported for manual review and approval prior to payment processing.

Similarly, ACH transactions and wires can be monitored and flagged when your filtered criteria are unmet.