Industrial Contractors · Marine Transport · Oil & Gas

Your back office is costing you more than you think.

Pillar built systems catch overbilling before invoices get paid, turn certified-payroll PDFs into clean data, and put the right numbers in front of the right person — before the decision makes itself.

Invoice Audit Automation — READY
SUBCONTRACTOR_INV_4471.pdf
GULF MARINE SUBCONTRACTOR
INVOICE #4471 · NET 30
Job 22-118
Barge Retrofit
Labor — journeyman welders (320 hrs) $412,600
Crane rental — 14 days @ daily $57,680
Markup on subcontracted labor $182,400
Welding gas & abrasives $96,230
Mobilization / demob $93,120
Materials — plate steel $489,220
Sales tax on materials $84,430
INVOICE TOTAL$2,417,880
VIOLATION ENGINE · 42 rules
0.00s
MARKUP Markup over contract ceiling
+$182,400
Line 14 markup 31% exceeds 15% contract ceiling on labor passthrough.
RENTAL Rental rate above allowable
+$148,765
Crane rental billed at $4,120/day vs. $2,900/day master agreement rate.
CONSUM Unauthorized consumables
+$96,230
Welding gas and abrasives billed outside approved scope of work.
DUPE Duplicate billing detected
+$93,120
Mobilization charge appears on invoices #4468 and #4471.
TAX Tax applied to exempt lines
+$84,430
Sales tax charged on tax-exempt materials for municipal contract.
Total overbilling flagged
$0

A real six-figure invoice, audited in under 2 minutes. A human reviewer would take hours — if they caught it at all.

What's happening in your back office right now

Manual processes are invisible until they're expensive.

01

Invoices get paid before anyone checks them

Your AP team can't audit every line. Markup overcharges, unauthorized consumables, and errors slip through — it's not a people problem, it's a volume problem. AI solves it.

02

Payroll arrives as a PDF and leaves as a headache

Certified payroll comes in as Crystal Reports PDFs. Someone rekeys it and hopes there's no transcription error. That takes hours and adds risk every time. It should take seconds.

03

The owner gets numbers after the decision made itself

Data sitting in a PDF, an email, or a spreadsheet isn't data — it's a delay. Every day between the transaction and the report is a day you're running on instinct, not information.

15–25 hrs/wk

is what manual back-office processes cost the average Gulf South contractor in labor alone — before the violations, errors, and delayed decisions that never show up on a timesheet but always show up on the bottom line.

Run your own numbers

What is your back office costing you?

20 hrs
560
$45
$20$120
800
503,000
Estimated annual recovery
$76,320
Labor hours reclaimed / year 800 hrs
Labor cost recovered $36,000
Overbilling caught (est.) $40,320
Get this audited on your real invoices →
Illustrative estimate. Your audit uses your actual data.
What we build

Production AI systems. Not concepts.

Every automation below is built, tested, and running for Gulf South operators right now. Not pilots. Not proofs of concept. Working systems, today.

01

Invoice Audit Automation

+
$600K+ flagged on one invoice

Reads subcontractor and vendor invoices, applies a multi-rule violation engine, and flags markup overcharges, unauthorized consumables, tax errors, and billing fraud — each with the rule violated, dollars at risk, and AI commentary.

Excel report Multi-rule engine Email delivery
02

Certified Payroll PDF → Timesheet

+
0 rekeys · seconds not hours

Reads Crystal Reports certified-payroll PDFs and outputs a structured Excel timesheet — Employee ID, Name, Date, Hours, ST/OT wage, Cost Type, Craft Code. No transcription errors.

Crystal Reports Excel out Cost-system ready
03

Invoice-to-PO Matching

+
<30ms end to end

Two-way matching that compares invoices against purchase orders, identifies discrepancies, and generates AI commentary explaining each mismatch. Attention goes only to flagged items.

2-way match Exception report AI commentary
04

Supplemental Payroll Auditor

+
Federal compliance, pre-payroll

Rules-based exception engine that flags missing signatures, time overlaps, agenda mismatches, and federal compliance issues before payroll is processed.

Compliance Exception engine Gov / districts
05

Financial Statement Tax Classifier

+
5-tab classified output

Reads P&L and balance-sheet PDFs or Excel, parses every line item, and classifies each to the correct tax-return grouping using prior-year mappings, deterministic rules, and AI with human-review flagging.

CPA firms Google Sheets writeback Review flags
06

SMS Equipment & Parts Lookup

+
24/7 from any field phone

Accepts an SMS from any field phone, looks up the equipment or part against your OEM library, and replies instantly with the right manual, spec sheet, or parts diagram. No app needed.

No app OEM library Instant reply
07

Benefits Reimbursement Billing

+
Multi-entity, automated

Pulls benefits reimbursement and software passthrough charges across portfolio entities, calculates billing splits, and emails formatted invoices automatically.

Multi-entity Auto invoicing Family office

Many More In Development

+
Your workflow, next

Timesheet collection, stevedore invoice audit, boat-log verification, construction AP coding, and municipal compliance reporting are in design or build now. Bring us your workflow.

Stevedore audit AP coding Boat logs
Case study
$600,000+
flagged on a single invoice.

A Gulf South industrial contractor submitted a six-figure subcontractor invoice for payment. Our audit engine flagged markup above the contract ceiling, materials billed outside allowable parameters, and tax applied to exempt line items.

<2 min
Time to run
Hours+
Human equivalent
$0
Would've been caught
violation_report.xlsx
Markup over contract ceiling $182,400
Rental rate above allowable $148,765
Unauthorized consumables $96,230
Duplicate billing + tax errors $177,550
Total flagged $604,945
Why Gulf South businesses work with Pillar

We build. We don't just advise.

01

Production systems, not slide decks

Every automation on this page is built, tested, and running. We hand you a working system — not a strategy document and a follow-up meeting.

02

We know your industry

Crystal Reports formats. Certified payroll compliance. Subcontractor billing. Municipal terms. Barge and vessel ops. We built these from the inside — not a case study.

03

Faster data. Smarter decisions.

When the right numbers hit your system faster, decisions get smarter, growth gets faster, and the chaos stops running your business. That's the design principle behind everything we build.

See it run on your invoices.

Send us a sample invoice or payroll PDF. We'll run it through the real engine and show you exactly what your manual process is missing — no obligation.

✓ Live results in the meeting ✓ Your real documents ✓ No slide decks
Book a free demo call →
or call (504) 565-2213 · Metairie, LA
Insights, Mondays & Thursdays

Get weekly strategy insights.

Join Gulf South owners and operators getting practical takes on financial automation, operational efficiency, and AI systems that make the back office run itself — a new insight every Monday and Thursday.