Back-Office (Finance Automation)
Cash flow unblocked. Days-sales-outstanding dropped from the mid-40s into the low 20s inside two billing cycles, freeing working capital that used to sit in receivables. Live dashboards, AI-drafted invoices, automated AR sequencing.
VE-PROjekt is a boutique engineering consultancy. The billing process was costing them cash, not hours — invoices went out late, reminders slipped, and working capital sat in AR instead of in the business. The fix had to be a system, not a spreadsheet.
Before we engaged, invoices took two hours each to assemble — milestone reconciliation, time-log exports, expense receipts hunted across three inboxes, line items typed into a template. The office manager sent the invoice, then manually chased payment two weeks later when the spreadsheet said someone was overdue.
The hours were visible. The cash-flow damage was not. Days-sales-outstanding was drifting past 45 days because reminders slipped whenever the office got busy — which was always. Every day DSO sat north of 40 was working capital locked up in AR.
A SvelteKit + Supabase app with one concept at the center: the project is the billing unit. Every milestone, time entry, expense, and deliverable attaches to a project. When billing time comes, the system already knows what's billable.
DSO dropped from the mid-40s into the low 20s inside two billing cycles. That's the real number. For a consultancy of this size, that shift frees low-six-figures of working capital that was previously locked in receivables — money that now sits in the current account instead of in outstanding invoices.
Invoice assembly dropped from 2 hours to 15 minutes as a side effect. AR reminder coverage went from "manual, slipped often" to 100% automated sequence. Principals check project profitability on Monday morning from their phones instead of waiting for a month-end report.
A partner's job is to see cash, margin, and utilization in real time. VE-PROjekt's principals now do. The platform replaced a spreadsheet workflow that had hid those numbers behind a week of work every month.
Any professional-services firm billing on milestones or time-and-materials — engineering consultancies, law firms, architecture studios, boutique agencies, accounting practices — runs the same process and is bleeding the same working capital. The fix is always the same: make the project the unit, let the AI draft the line items, let the workflow engine chase the receivables, and put the AR dashboard on every partner's phone.
What shipped, in figures. 4 metrics.