The Challenge
The client is a 100-plus-year-old, employee-owned municipal engineering firm that needed a better way to manage project accounting and time-based billing across thousands of active jobs. Its legacy project system still relied on paper pre-bills, manual markups, and rekeying. Reports often failed to align, leading to accounting issues and write-offs.
The Solution
The engineering firm implemented Progressus on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to bring project accounting, time and expense, and financials into one Microsoft ecosystem. Progressus added project-focused capabilities that standard Business Central lacked, including flexible billing, detailed WIP, and resource and utilization tracking tailored to engineering work.
The Results
Handles 1,200 to 1,500 detailed invoices a month with ease, so volume and complexity are no longer a concern.
Replaces paper pre-bills with electronic workflows so project managers can correct time before submission instead of writing off mistakes later.
Shortens the practical billing cycle by about a week, helping the firm bill more predictably and increasing billing volume by roughly 10%.
Gives project managers a “PM Hub” view of AR, WIP, job profitability, and task totals so they can act without waiting for reports.
Improves utilization by a few percentage points, with consistent reports that show who is under- or overutilized and where to adjust workloads.
Engineering better insight into every project
The engineering firm has been helping communities grow for more than a century. The employee-owned firm began as a small land surveying business and has evolved into a full-service engineering company with civil, structural, transportation, geotechnical, and environmental practices. Townships and developers rely on the engineering firm to design roads and utilities, review land development plans, and keep essential infrastructure safe and compliant.
Behind every project is a web of time entries, tasks, contracts, and invoices. For an engineering firm with thousands of active projects at any given moment, managing that web well has a direct impact on growth.
The client chose Progressus, running on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, to support the way the firm wanted to grow.
Outgrowing paper pre-bills and legacy project accounting
When the accounting director joined the engineering firm, his public accounting background gave him a clear sense of how project accounting should run. The firm was using a legacy project accounting system, with pre-bills printed on paper, marked up by hand, and keyed back in by billing staff. Time and billing data did not always reconcile cleanly. Reports felt more like snapshots than a current view of the business.
“We were still printing pre-bills, marking them up with a pen, and keying them back in,” says the accounting director. “For a firm our size, that just wasn’t sustainable.”
Project managers could see their timesheets, but not much else. When mistakes appeared, they often went unnoticed until billing, when they were written off rather than corrected. It was difficult to see open accounts receivable by project manager, which projects were hitting their budgets, or how utilization looked across offices.
At the same time, the firm was growing. It had thousands of projects in flight and generated roughly 1,200 to 1,500 invoices each month. The accounting director worried that the existing system might not keep up with that volume or give project managers and leaders the insight they needed.
He also had a strategic goal in mind: move the firm onto a single Microsoft ecosystem. The firm was already using Microsoft 365. The accounting director wanted finance and project accounting in Dynamics 365, with reporting and automation handled by familiar tools such as Power BI and Power Apps. In his view, that was the foundation for a finance and operations function that could support the firm for the next decade.
Finding a project-centric ERP on the Microsoft platform
The accounting director had seen a range of ERP systems while working with clients in public accounting. When he first reviewed standard Dynamics 365 Business Central, it did not feel like the right fit for a project-focused firm. It looked strong for distribution, but less suited to time and project tracking.
Progressus changed that view. Built for project-based companies, Progressus adds deep project accounting, flexible billing, resource management, and time and expense capabilities to Business Central. It provides the pieces the engineering firm needed to make Dynamics a natural fit for the way engineers and project managers already work.
Just as important, Business Central and Progressus support the engineering firm’s one-ecosystem philosophy. Time, projects, and financials live on one platform alongside Microsoft 365, Power BI, and Power Apps. The accounting director also valued a practical capability: exporting large data sets to Excel, making changes, and uploading them back into the system. For a busy accounting team, that flexibility matters.
The client migrated roughly 3,000 active projects, including lifetime data, into Progressus. That allowed the firm to turn off the legacy system entirely rather than maintain two sources of truth. The implementation team took a deliberate, collaborative approach by testing in a sandbox, adjusting project and task structures, and building reports project managers would use.
From time entry to timely billing
With Progressus in place, the most visible change for many people at the engineering firm was how time and billing began to flow.
About 200 employees enter time each week. In the old process, errors often surfaced weeks later when bills were being prepared. Correcting those mistakes meant extra work for accounting, uncomfortable conversations with project managers, and write-offs when it was easier to let a small amount slide. “By the time an error showed up, it was usually at billing,” the accounting director recalls. “Fixing it took more time than it was worth, so it often turned into a write-off.”
Progressus introduced a clear review flow. Project managers now review and approve time before submission. When something does not look right, they can correct it at the source. By the time billing staff begin their work, the data is cleaner and requires less guesswork.
The engineering firm still aims to send invoices on 30-day terms, but the operational pace has improved. The firm now completes most billing in about two weeks: the first week for project manager review of pre-bills and the second for billing staff to finalize and send invoices. The accounting director estimates that the practical cycle is about a week faster than before. The system also handles the firm’s volume comfortably, which was a key concern going in. “We’re billing more than we ever have, and we’re doing it on a predictable cadence,” he says. “That’s a big change from where we started.”
The result is a more predictable billing rhythm that supports cash flow and workload planning. In the accounting director’s words, the firm is “billing more than we ever have,” in part because it can keep up with the work and send invoices consistently.
Giving project managers the data to lead
One of the accounting director’s goals was to give project managers better information, without forcing them to become accountants. Progressus, paired with Power BI, helped them get there.
The engineering firm’s team worked with its implementation partner to build a “PM Hub” in Power BI. Within that hub, project managers can see accounts receivable balances, work in progress, project profitability, task totals, and utilization. They no longer have to call accounting for a report or wait until month-end to understand how their jobs are performing. “Before, PMs were flying blind,” the accounting director says. “Now they can see their projects and actually steer them.”
That shift has had a direct impact on cash flow. Project managers now take responsibility for their own aging. They can see which invoices are outstanding, follow up with clients when needed, and work with accounting to resolve issues more quickly. The accounting director has seen accounts receivable turnover improve, with collections moving faster than before.
Utilization has also moved in the right direction. Progressus gives the engineering firm consistent project and task structures, so utilization reports mean the same thing across offices and disciplines. Leaders can see who is under- or overutilized and adjust assignments or expectations. Since going live, utilization rates have increased a few percentage points, which matters in an employee-owned firm where everyone benefits from better performance.
Building a finance and operations engine for an ESOP
The engineering firm is an ESOP, and that ownership structure shapes how it thinks about systems. The firm wants employees to feel like owners, not simply billable resources. Data matters in that culture.
Before Progressus, many employees saw only their timesheets. Now project managers can see how their projects perform, how their choices affect billing and profitability, and where there is room to improve. That visibility supports professional development and makes it easier to bring people into management roles earlier in their careers.
Progressus and Business Central have also changed how the finance team works. The accounting director now describes his group as finance and operations. “Half my job now is building systems and processes that buy time for the rest of the firm,” he says. “Progressus is the backbone that lets us do that.”
The technology story also helps with recruiting. Many senior project managers the engineering firm has hired came from firms using other project accounting systems. When they see Dynamics 365, Progressus, and the reporting environment the firm has built, they often say it is one of the best setups they have worked with. For candidates who know Microsoft tools, the platform feels familiar rather than intimidating.
A platform built for how engineers really work
The engineering firm chose Progressus on Dynamics 365 Business Central because it fits the way a modern engineering firm operates. The system supports thousands of projects, more than a thousand invoices a month, and a busy team of project managers who now have the information they need to lead.
By bringing time, projects, and financials into one Microsoft ecosystem, the engineering firm has made its project accounting system an asset. The firm can bill more efficiently, manage utilization, and grow as an employee-owned business while giving clients and communities confidence that their projects are in good hands.
