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MakersHub sends each vendor bill to the approver for its project, so an HVAC company with several divisions routes every bill without a lookup spreadsheet. MakersHub suggests the project from the PO number on the bill, and once the project is set, the bill goes to the approvers assigned to that project. Every bill lands in one AP inbox and codes to its job in QuickBooks before it posts. Five signs follow, each with the MakersHub fix.
Where do supplier charges slip past a trades company's books, and how does MakersHub catch them?
Supplier charges slip past the books at the supply house counter, and MakersHub catches them by tying every supplier bill to a job and an approver before it reaches QuickBooks. That gives the owner or controller a view of what the crews bought while the job is still open.
1. A crew member charges your supplier account and nobody knows which job it's for
Supply houses know your crews. That's the point of a trade account, and it's also the gap. The owner of a Florida plumbing contractor described how often it happens: "I guarantee you there's 10 of them, 20 of them, that either one of my employees have walked into the job, walked into the supply house, and bought something that I genuinely don't know if that really goes with that job, with all honesty." That contractor's largest supplier alone sends about 50 bills a month, one for every order. The supplier's statement shows who bought each item. It doesn't show which job the item was for.
MakersHub ties every supplier bill to a job and an approver before it posts, so a charge nobody ordered stops at review.
2. The office looks up who approves each project
At a multi-division HVAC contractor, divisions follow the project, so one vendor's bills can belong to any of them. The company's controller put it plainly: "And those divisions will be based on the project number." When he told his team to start sending bills out for approval, the answer came back: "And based on projects, how do I know?" The answer usually lives in a spreadsheet or in one person's head. The company also had a new audit engagement, so every approval needed a record someone could find later.
MakersHub sends each bill to its project's approvers and keeps the approval history on the bill record, so nobody looks up an approver and auditors see who signed off.
3. A supplier sends 30 bills in one month-end packet
Some of that contractor’s suppliers batch a month of bills into one packet, and the packet is often the first time the office sees those bills. The controller described what he wanted from it: "Like in a single PDF, it'll be able to create 30 invoices and send them off to six different managers based on what they are going to be, which is awesome."
Without that, someone pulls the packet apart bill by bill before any of it can be coded or approved. MakersHub splits the packet into separate bills and routes each one to its project's approver.
See how MakersHub routes a supplier packet by project
4. A division you acquired still runs AP its own way
Trades companies grow by buying other shops. That contractor handles 800 to 1,500 bills a month and expects to grow through acquisitions over the next couple of years. Each acquisition brings supplier accounts, approvers and coding habits that don't match the parent company's. Until those merge, the owner reads two sets of numbers that don't line up.
MakersHub runs AP for every division on one platform and routes each bill to the right entity by vendor, bill-to, ship-to or PO number, with the same coding and approvals across every division.
5. Bills from the field reach QuickBooks as memo lines
A handwritten bill from a job site, a scanned receipt, an emailed PDF from a supplier. Each one gets keyed into QuickBooks as a total with a note, and the line detail that tells you what the job cost stays on the paper.
MakersHub captures bills by email forwarding, upload, a connected inbox or a phone photo sent to the AP inbox, and codes each one to the right job, class, and customer before it lands in QuickBooks.
Can MakersHub send each vendor bill to the right project's approver for an HVAC company with several divisions?
Yes: MakersHub routes each bill by job, project, entity, location, vendor or spend threshold, so a bill for a project in one division goes to that division's project approver and nobody else. When a bill names no project, MakersHub suggests one from the PO number, or the first reviewer assigns it, and routing takes over from there.
Approvers act on the bill from the email notification, on a computer or a phone. The owner or controller sees every bill across every division in one AP inbox before anything is paid.
MakersHub pulls the job and project list from QuickBooks, so bills code to the jobs you already run.
Can MakersHub split a month-end vendor packet into separate bills and code each one to a job?
Yes: MakersHub reads a multi-bill PDF, splits it into separate bills and credits, and codes each one to its job using rules you set once. MakersHub keeps the original PDF intact and bookmarks each bill's pages, so an approver opens a bill and lands on the right page. Each bill then routes to the approver for its job.
Is a small trades shop too small for approvals in MakersHub?
No: MakersHub gives a small shop approvals that run from email, so the owner signs off on a bill from the truck.
A shop with a few trucks and an owner who signs every check often skips approvals entirely. The owner is the approval. That works until the owner is on a job site for a week and the bills stack up, or until the business adds a second location and the owner can't see what the new crew is buying. MakersHub applies the right account, class and job to every future bill from a supplier by rule, so the shop handles field bill volume without an AP hire.
Book a walkthrough: bring a supplier bill with a job on it and we'll route it to the right approver in front of you.
Where does MakersHub stop and your field service software start?
MakersHub stops at AP: it captures, codes, approves and pays vendor bills, while scheduling, dispatch, estimates and customer invoicing stay in your field service software. MakersHub doesn't create purchase orders; it matches each bill to the POs already in QuickBooks and closes the PO when the bill is approved. Certificates of insurance live outside MakersHub for now. If the gap is dispatch or estimating, the field service software is the place to fix it.