Tamarack Grove Engineering Cuts DSO to 38 Days with Unanet AR Automation
A Structural Engineering Firm Rebuilds Its Cash Cycle
Growth is usually described as a revenue problem. For Tamarack Grove Engineering, it was a collections problem. The Idaho-based structural engineering practice was winning work across the country while its finance function ran on spreadsheets and goodwill, and the gap between delivering a project and being paid for it had become the constraint on how fast the firm could move. Adopting Unanet AR Automation as part of its ERP AE platform brought days sales outstanding down from a reported 60-65 days to 38 days, roughly a 40 percent improvement, and turned a manual billing cycle measured in days into one measured in hours.
The Firm Behind the Numbers
Tamarack Grove Engineering was founded in 2007 and provides structural engineering and design services from its Idaho headquarters, with additional offices in Lyndhurst, New Jersey and Bozeman, Montana. The practice works across manufacturing, commercial, facilities, modular and public-sector markets, and reports more than 24,000 completed jobs with licensure covering all 50 US states and Canada.
That national footprint is the relevant detail. A firm operating a high volume of comparatively small engagements across many jurisdictions generates far more invoices than a practice of similar revenue doing a handful of large projects, and invoice volume is precisely what manual accounts receivable handles worst.
Collections Run on Hope
Hunter Robertson, Tamarack Grove's Director of Finance, described the firm's pre-Unanet accounts receivable process bluntly: there was not one. Collections were managed, in his words, on hopes and wishes.
In practice that meant several compounding problems. As many as 300 active projects were tracked in Excel, where every update carried the risk of overwriting data someone else depended on. Invoicing was manual and, by Robertson's account, took roughly four times longer than it needed to. Without a central record of what had been billed and what remained outstanding, chasing overdue accounts depended on someone remembering to look. DSO sat at 60 to 65 days, which meant the firm was persistently financing its own clients' payment habits out of working capital.
Why Automation Rather Than Better Spreadsheets
Tamarack Grove moved to Unanet in 2018. The decision was less about finding a billing tool than about eliminating the handoffs between systems that were producing the errors in the first place.
Unanet's AR Automation product - previously marketed as Unanet Pay - is built natively into the Unanet ERP AE platform rather than bolted on as a third-party integration. For a firm whose project data, time records and billing already lived in one system, that native relationship removed the reconciliation work that typically sits between a project ledger and a separate payments tool.
Capabilities That Changed the Workflow
Automated Invoice Generation and Delivery
Invoices are produced and issued from project data rather than rekeyed, with delivery tracked so finance can see whether a client actually received and opened a bill. Robertson reported that the billing cycle compressed from days to hours.
A Single Collections View
A consolidated dashboard replaced the spreadsheet, giving the team one place to see invoice status, ageing and collection activity, and to prioritise which accounts warranted attention first.
Digital Payment Rails
Integration with Stripe enabled card and ACH payments, with a payer portal handling the transaction. Offering clients a way to pay immediately, in the manner they prefer, removes one of the quieter causes of late payment: friction at the moment the client is finally ready to settle.
Automated Posting and Real-Time Visibility
Payments post back against the correct project automatically, keeping receivables data current enough to forecast against rather than reconcile after the fact.
What Changed, Measurably
The headline outcome is the DSO reduction from 60-65 days to 38. The supporting figures matter as much: Tamarack Grove reported cutting aged receivables in half and recording its lowest write-off total year to date. The firm's stated treasury goal - holding cash equal to twice monthly expenses - moved from implausible to roughly achieved.
Robertson also connected the improvement to physical expansion, with the firm relocating to premises around three times the size of its previous office. That is a second-order effect rather than a direct software outcome, but it illustrates the underlying point: liquidity freed by faster collection is capital available for something else.
The Lesson for AEC Finance Teams
Professional services firms tend to treat receivables as an administrative function and design their technology stack around project delivery instead. Tamarack Grove's experience suggests the opposite ordering has merit for firms doing high-volume, multi-jurisdiction work. Nothing in this implementation required the engineers to change how they work; the change was confined to the finance function, and the return showed up as working capital.
The practical test for a comparable firm is simple enough: if nobody can say today what the current DSO figure is without building a spreadsheet to work it out, the AR process is being managed on hopes and wishes too.
All performance figures cited are as reported by Tamarack Grove Engineering in Unanet's published customer case study. Note that Unanet's own headline describes the improvement as 58 percent, which does not reconcile with the 60-65 to 38 day figures given in the body of that document; the day counts are used here as the more precise measure.
Key Facts
View key facts for "Tamarack Grove Engineering Cuts DSO to 38 Days with Unanet AR Automation".
Business Impact
- DSO cut from 60-65 days to 38 days
- Aged receivables reduced by 50%
- Billing cycle down from days to hours
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Tools Used in the Case Study
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Unanet ERP AE
Unanet AE ERP is an enterprise resource planning platform built specifically for architecture, engineering, and consulting firms. It combines project management, accounting, resource planning, financial reporting, time and expense tracking, billing, and forecasting in a single cloud platform. Designed for project-based organizations, it provides real-time operational and financial visibility that helps firms improve profitability, streamline project delivery, and make better business decisions throughout the project lifecycle.
User Experience
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Why this tool/tech was selected
Tamarack Grove adopted Unanet in 2018 to solve a structural problem rather than a feature gap. The firm had no accounts receivable process to improve - it had an absence of one. Collections depended on individual memory, project billing status lived in a spreadsheet shared across a team managing as many as 300 active engagements, and there was no reliable way to answer basic questions about what had been invoiced or what was overdue.
That framing shaped the selection criteria. A standalone billing or payments tool would have solved the invoicing bottleneck while leaving the reconciliation problem intact, because project data would still have had to move between systems. The firm needed receivables handled inside the same platform that already held its project, time and accounting records.
Unanet AR Automation, previously marketed as Unanet Pay, is native to the Unanet ERP AE platform rather than an integrated third-party product. For Tamarack Grove that meant invoices could be generated directly from project data, payments could post back automatically against the correct project, and the collections dashboard would draw on the same source of truth as the general ledger, with no export, import or manual matching step in between.
Two secondary factors supported the choice. The first was payment flexibility: integration with Stripe allowed the firm to accept ACH and credit card payments, giving clients a frictionless way to settle rather than defaulting to cheques. Unanet cites Bain research indicating more than 40 percent of B2B payments are still made by check, each one adding float and manual handling. The second was implementation risk. For a firm without a finance systems team, a platform the staff could operate without extensive retraining mattered as much as the feature set, and Robertson credited the straightforward interface and Unanet support for a transition he characterised as smooth.
Challenges the Client Faced before
- No accounts receivable process. Collections were ad hoc, with no defined workflow for issuing, tracking or chasing invoices.
- Spreadsheet-based project tracking. Up to 300 active projects were managed in Excel, where updates risked overwriting data other team members depended on.
- Slow manual invoicing. Preparing invoices by hand took roughly four times longer than automated invoicing, extending the billing cycle and delaying cash receipt.
- Extended days sales outstanding. DSO of 60 to 65 days tied up working capital and made cash flow difficult to plan around.
- No visibility into ageing or collections priority. Without a central dashboard, the team could not readily see which accounts were overdue or most at risk.
- Limited payment options for clients. Reliance on cheque payments added handling time and float to every settlement.
- Growth constraint. Unpredictable cash flow limited the firm’s ability to invest in expansion despite a growing national workload.
The previous method used
Before Unanet, Tamarack Grove ran accounts receivable manually with no defined process. Billing status for as many as 300 active projects was maintained in Excel, a shared-file approach that carried a constant risk of one team member overwriting data another relied on.
Invoices were prepared by hand, which the firm estimated took about four times as long as automated invoicing. There was no centralised record of outstanding balances or ageing, so identifying overdue accounts and following up depended on someone remembering to check. Payments arrived largely by cheque and were reconciled to projects manually after the fact.
The result was a days sales outstanding figure of 60 to 65 days and, in the Director of Finance’s own description, collections managed on hopes and wishes.
Time / Money saved & the Business Impact.
Days sales outstanding reduced from 60-65 days to 38 days. This is the primary return. On a firm-wide receivables balance, cutting roughly 25 days out of the collection cycle releases a substantial block of working capital permanently, because the improvement compounds across every invoice issued thereafter.
Aged receivables cut in half. The proportion of the ledger sitting in older ageing buckets fell by 50 percent, reducing the share of revenue at genuine risk of non-collection.
Lowest write-off total year to date. Faster, more systematic follow-up meant fewer balances aged to the point of being written off - a direct margin benefit, since a written-off invoice costs the firm the full delivery cost of the work.
Billing cycle compressed from days to hours. Automated invoicing removed a process the firm estimated took four times longer manually, freeing finance staff time and shortening the interval between work completion and invoice issue.
Cash reserves at target. Tamarack Grove set a treasury goal of holding twice its monthly expenses in cash and reported operating at approximately that threshold, a position the Director of Finance described as previously out of reach.
Capacity for expansion. The firm relocated to premises roughly three times the size of its previous office. This is an indirect outcome rather than a software metric, but improved liquidity was cited as an enabling factor.
Improved client experience. ACH and credit card payment options via the Stripe integration reduced friction for clients settling invoices, which the firm linked to stronger payment behaviour and client relationships.
Figures are as reported by Tamarack Grove Engineering in Unanet’s published case study and have not been independently audited.
Customer Quote
"The automated invoicing and the AR collections page just makes everything so much easier." - Hunter Robertson, Director of Finance, Tamarack Grove Engineering
Original Case Study
Additional Information
About the firm. Tamarack Grove Engineering PLLC was founded in 2007 and provides structural engineering and design services. Its headquarters is in Idaho, with additional offices in Lyndhurst, New Jersey and Bozeman, Montana. The firm reports more than 24,000 completed jobs and works across manufacturing, commercial, facilities, modular and public markets, licensed in all 50 US states and Canada.
About the product. Unanet AR Automation is the accounts receivable module of Unanet ERP AE, Unanet’s ERP platform for architecture and engineering firms. It was previously marketed under the name Unanet Pay. Published capabilities include native ERP integration, digital invoice delivery and engagement tracking, automated reminders, dynamic early-pay discounting, a payer portal with stored payment profiles, card and ACH payments, a collections dashboard and automated payment posting.
Timeline. Tamarack Grove began working with Unanet in 2018. The outcomes described here were published by Unanet in 2024.
Sources. Unanet customer case study, “Tamarack Grove reduces DSO with Unanet AR Automation” (2024); Unanet AR Automation product documentation, unanet.com/erp-for-a-e/ar-automation; Tamarack Grove Engineering corporate website, tamarackgrove.com.
Editorial note. This case study was independently written by aec+tech from primary sources. Metrics are attributed to the firm as reported and have not been independently verified. Where Unanet’s published headline figure conflicted with the day counts given in the body of its own document, the day counts have been used.
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