Founderwright for construction & contractors
AI for general and specialty contractors. From the bid to the final waiver.
We connect your estimating, project management, accounting, and payroll systems into one AI brain, then build the job cost, WIP, and pay app tools your office now runs on spreadsheets. Everything above the compliance line is built in-house, around your jobs, your crews, and your margins.
Private-equity-grade tools. Without giving up equity. Built by an operationally minded CFO, not a software vendor.
- General contractors
- Specialty subs
- Remodelers
- Site work
- Concrete
- Mechanical & electrical
- Commercial interiors
- Custom homes
Operator-CFO built
Not generic software. What a CFO would put in front of a construction company.
Founderwright is built by an operationally minded CFO. The numbers that grow a company organically are the same ones that make an acquisition work and hold up when you sell. Every build starts there: surfaced before you ask and ranked by dollar impact.
Budget vs. actual by job
Fade by cost code, projected to completion, every week
Fade caught in week three is a conversation. Caught at closeout, it’s a write-off.
Receivables aging
Over/under billings and unbilled change orders by job
Underbilling is cash you’ve already spent financing someone else’s project.
A backlog total
Backlog gross profit against the overhead it has to carry
It tells you whether to bid hungry or bid for margin next quarter.
The same numbers carry a construction company through every stage: recovery, growth, acquisitions, and exit prep.
The morning brief
Surfaced before you ask. Ranked by what it’s worth.
Agents watch every connected system overnight. By morning, the issues that matter most are ranked, assigned, and drafted.
Monday, 5:45 a.m. · What the owner sees before the crews reach the site
Ranked actions
From your own numbers, across every system- 1Send two change orders for signatureToday$38K of finished work · missing from Friday’s pay app
- 2Framing labor running long on the clinic jobThis week18% over budget at 40% complete · PM review assigned
- 3Two subs’ insurance certificates expire FridayThis weekRenewals requested · payment hold flagged on both
- 4$112K of retainage ready to billOn trackTwo closed jobs · final waivers and closeout docs in hand
Illustrative data. Every build is designed around your company’s own systems and numbers.
Voice notes that take action
Or just say it.
Between jobs, on the drive, or walking the floor: record a thought and the platform drafts the tasks, schedule changes, and answers. Nothing happens until you approve it. How voice notes work.
“Push the clinic framing inspection to Monday, get the change order for the extra blocking to the GC today, and how much retainage is sitting on finished jobs?”
- RescheduleClinic framing inspection → Monday · PM and super notified on approval
- New taskPM: send change order for added blocking to the GC · due today
- AnswerRetainage on closed jobs: $112K across 2 jobs · final waivers in hand
Illustrative. Nothing changes until you approve it.
Sound familiar
Most jobs don’t lose money all at once.
Fade shows up at month end
Labor runs over budget for three weeks before anyone compares it to the estimate. By the time the books close, the fade is already baked into the job.
Extra work gets done, not billed
Crews do the extra work on a verbal OK. The paperwork trails behind, the change order never makes the pay app, and you end up financing someone else’s scope change.
The WIP schedule takes a week
Your surety and your bank want a current WIP schedule. Pulling percent complete, cost to date, and billings from four places means it’s stale the day it’s finished.
Retainage waits on paperwork
Retainage sits on jobs you finished months ago because a closeout document or a final lien waiver is missing, and nobody on the team owns the chase.
What we’d build
What we’d build for a contractor.
We start from how you bid, build, and bill, then design each module around it. Everything is built in-house by Founderwright and owned by you, and it runs on your real jobs, cost codes, subs, and pay apps from day one.
Owner’s command center
Backlog, margin by job, over/under billings, and cash on one screen, with the week’s problems ranked by what they put at risk. Click any number to see the cost codes behind it.
Live job cost and fade
Committed cost, cost to date, and estimated cost to complete by job and cost code, updated as time and invoices land, so fade shows up in week two, not at closeout.
WIP schedule on demand
Percent complete, earned revenue, and over/under billings for every open job, built from your own numbers and ready for your surety, your bank, or your CPA the day they ask.
Pay apps and retainage
Schedules of values, pay applications, and retainage receivable tracked by job, with the backup each GC or project owner needs gathered before the billing deadline.
Change order tracker
Every field change logged the day it happens, priced, sent for signature, and tied to the next pay app. Agents flag work in the daily reports that has no approved change order.
Sub compliance and waivers
Certificates of insurance, licenses, and lien waivers tracked for every sub and supplier, with expirations flagged early and a hold raised on any payment missing its paperwork.
Bids and hit rate
Every bid tracked from invitation to award, with hit rate by market, customer, and estimator, and unit costs from finished jobs fed back to whoever bids the next one.
Crew and equipment board
Crews, foremen, and equipment scheduled across jobs on one board, with labor hours against budget and rented equipment sitting idle flagged before the next cycle bills.
The compliance line
We build above the line. We connect to everything else.
For contractors, the line sits under payroll, certified payroll on prevailing-wage jobs, your books, and your bank. Estimating, project controls, and the jobsite sit above it, and that’s the work we build for.
Above the line
Built custom, in-house by Founderwright, around how you run. Owned by you.
Below the line
The regulated systems you’re required to keep. We read from them, and where they offer a write API, approved work is written straight back in.
Keep any tool you like. We integrate with it. Many contractors keep their estimating software, their project management platform, and their accounting system. We build the job cost, WIP, and cash tools that tie them together. See the systems we connect.
The build
How we’d build it for a contractor.
Walk a job end to end
We sit down with you and follow one job from the bid invite to the final waiver: how you estimate, how PMs track cost, how pay apps get built, and which reports your surety and bank expect.
Connect your job cost data
Your accounting and project management systems are connected, and the first command center is live on your real jobs, budgets, commitments, and billings. Nothing is retyped, and nothing moves.
Add estimating, payroll, and the field
Estimating, payroll and time, equipment, and daily reports join the same brain, so job cost, the WIP schedule, and the crew board all read from the same numbers.
Replace the spreadsheets you run on
Above the compliance line, we build what you’ve been working around: the WIP workbook, the change order log, the waiver chase. One tool at a time, each one owned by you.
The numbers it runs on
Your definitions. Measured the same way everywhere.
Every metric is defined with you once, tied back to the source systems, and checked by agents before anyone makes a decision on it.
Questions
What owners ask us.
Do we have to switch off our accounting or project management software?
No. Keep any tool you like, and we connect what you run today on day one. Most contractors keep their accounting system and project management platform, and we build job cost, WIP, and pay app tools on top of them. If you later retire something above the compliance line, we replace it with software built around how your company bids, builds, and bills.
What stays below the compliance line for a contractor?
Payroll and payroll tax, your books of record, sales and use tax filings, banking, and your licensing, bonding, and insurance. Certified payroll sits here too, and it applies only on prevailing-wage jobs, which are usually public work. We leave those systems in place and read from them. Where one offers a write API, approved entries go straight back in. Nothing is written without a person’s approval, and every write is logged.
Can it produce the WIP schedule our surety and bank ask for?
Yes. The WIP schedule is built from the same job cost and billing data as everything else, so percent complete, earned revenue, and over/under billings move as the job moves. Your controller or outside CPA still reviews it and signs off. The difference is that preparing it no longer means a week of pulling numbers, and every figure traces back to the entries behind it.
What do the agents actually do with change orders and lien waivers?
They find the gap and hand it to a person. When a daily report shows extra work with no approved change order, an agent drafts one and assigns it to the PM. When a payment is coming due and a sub’s waiver or insurance certificate is missing, it flags the payment and drafts the request. Nothing is sent, signed, or paid until someone approves it.
What happens to the system if we stop working with you?
It stays with you. The system is yours: the software we build above the compliance line, the data in it, and the cost history of every job. Keep improving it with us, or run it on your own. Nothing is locked behind a subscription, and your job history never sits somewhere you can’t reach.
Start with one conversation.
Recovering, growing, buying, or getting ready to sell: tell us how your company runs. We’ll show you what it could run on.
Start a conversation logan@founderwright.com