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If you run finance for a construction or trade services business where the people who need to approve bills are not sitting in an office, this is for you.
In construction and trade services, the person who needs to approve a bill is on a job site, in a vehicle, or managing a crew. When a bill arrives asking for sign-off, all they can see is a vendor name and a total. That is not enough context to approve accurately, and sending it back for more information costs days.
Why AP approvals fail in field operations
The wrong person gets the bill
In a company managing 15 active construction projects, a bill from a framing subcontractor needs to reach the project manager on that specific project - not the office manager or finance. When approval routing is manual (email chains, forwarded PDFs, verbal sign-offs), bills land in the wrong queue and wait. The framing PM is on site. The bill is in an inbox. Nobody knows it is stalled.
The right person gets the bill but can't do anything with it
Even when routing is correct, approvals stall when the approver lacks context. A PM on a job site receives an email with a PDF attachment and a total. The bill is from a vendor they work with. The amount looks approximately right. But without seeing the line items - what was delivered, in what quantity, against which phase of work - approving is guesswork, and guessing wrong means a miscoded cost entering the job report.
The alternative is to send the bill back for more information, which delays payment by days and starts a back-and-forth that could have been avoided if the line-item detail had arrived with the approval request.
Approval chains don't reflect the real authority structure
Construction and trade businesses have layered approval structures. A materials purchase under $500 might be approved by a foreman. Between $500 and $5,000, the PM approves. Above $5,000, it goes to the controller or president. Subcontractor bills might require both a PM for scope validation and finance for cost code confirmation.
When approval workflows are managed through email or simple AP tools with flat approval chains, these thresholds either don't exist or require manual override every time a bill crosses a limit. The system that was supposed to create control creates workarounds instead.
What approval routing built for field operations looks like
Bills reach the right person automatically
Approval routing in MakersHub is configured by vendor, bill type, amount threshold, and job assignment. A framing subcontractor bill on Project 14 routes to the PM on Project 14, not to a general queue. A materials bill above $5,000 routes to the controller after the PM approves. The routing happens automatically when the bill is processed, without a person manually forwarding it.
Approvers see the line items instead of just totals
MakersHub routes bills with the full line-item detail already attached: what was purchased, at what unit price, and against which cost code. A project manager approving a subcontractor bill sees the actual lines on the bill, not a summarized total. That context is what makes approval meaningful rather than reflexive.
PJB Construction, a general contractor managing subcontractor payments across multiple active projects, implemented MakersHub specifically to address the approval problem. Project managers now approve bills with full line-item visibility on mobile, without requiring a desktop login or a trip to the office. Invoice processing became 70% faster, and the firm moved to same-day subcontractor payments - a change that Marla Bissett, operations lead at PJB, described as directly improving subcontractor loyalty and site availability.
Approval happens on mobile, not at a desk
A project manager approving bills from the field needs a mobile-first experience. MakersHub approvals work on any device. The PM receives a notification, opens the bill, reviews the lines, and approves or queries directly from the app.
Notes and queries stay attached to the bill
When a project manager has a question about a line item, that question should attach to the bill, not go into a separate email thread that gets lost. MakersHub supports notes and attachments at the bill level, so the query, the response, and the eventual approval all travel with the bill through the process. Finance can see the full history without hunting through email.
The downstream cost of approval delays
Subcontractors and vendors who wait for payment because approvals are stalled eventually price that risk into their quotes.
PJB Construction saw the subcontractor relationship impact directly. Faster approvals and same-day payments changed how subcontractors prioritized PJB's jobs.
Locke Buildings, a modular building manufacturer processing 500 or more bills per month across multiple locations, reduced AP processing time from 10-12 hours per week to two hours after implementing MakersHub. The reduction came primarily from removing the approval bottlenecks that had been stalling bills for days when approvers were off site or unavailable.
What to look for in approval workflows for construction and trades
Does routing reach field staff on mobile without requiring a dedicated login? Approval tools that require approvers to create accounts or log into portals create friction that slows adoption. PMs on job sites will not use a system that adds steps.
Can routing be configured by amount threshold, vendor, and job? Flat approval chains do not reflect how authority works in construction. The tool needs to support the approval structure the business uses, not a simplified version of it.
Is there a complete audit trail at the bill level? For construction companies managing multiple projects with multiple approvers, the ability to see who approved what, when, and with what context is a control requirement.
Frequently asked questions
Why do construction AP approvals take longer than in other industries?
Because the people with the authority to approve bills are on job sites, not in the office. When approval workflows require in-office access or desktop logins, approvals wait until the right person is available in the right place. Field-first approval routing removes that dependency.
How do approval thresholds work for construction companies?
Most construction businesses have informal or documented thresholds: small purchases approved by a foreman, mid-range by a PM, large bills by the controller or owner. AP automation tools that support configurable approval routing can encode these thresholds directly, so a $300 materials bill routes differently from a $50,000 subcontractor payment without requiring manual override.
What is the relationship between approval speed and subcontractor loyalty?
Subcontractors price payment risk into their quotes. A GC with a reputation for paying fast gets better availability and tighter bids. PJB Construction saw this directly - faster approvals and same-day payments changed how subcontractors prioritized their jobs.
Can approval routing in MakersHub handle bills that need multiple approvers?
Yes. Approval chains in MakersHub can require sequential or parallel approvals (a PM approves first, then finance, for example) with configurable thresholds that determine which chain applies to which bill. The routing applies automatically when the bill is processed.
How does approval routing handle bills that span multiple projects?
When a bill covers work or materials across multiple active jobs, it can be split in MakersHub and routed to the relevant PM for each job portion. Each approver sees only the lines relevant to their project, with the cost codes and job references attached.