How Locke Buildings Saved 40+ Hours a Month by Digitizing AP Approvals with MakersHub
About Locke Buildings
Founded in 1998, Locke Buildings is a family-owned construction company based in Portland, Oregon, specializing in high-quality pole buildings for commercial, agricultural, and residential projects. With over 3,000 buildings completed across the Pacific Northwest, Locke has grown into a multi-million-dollar operation with 24 employees and plans to expand to additional locations.
The Challenge
With over 500 incoming bills every month, Locke’s accounts payable process had become overwhelming. Their Office Manager, Trina Brockway, spent 10–12 hours per week printing bills, gathering signatures, and manually entering data into QuickBooks—just to keep up with approvals and payments.
The process was not only time-consuming but also limited collaboration. Project managers had little visibility into the details of the bills they approved, and important context was often lost in email threads or handwritten notes.
General Manager Andy Price knew the process wouldn’t scale as the business grew. He wanted to give his team a better way to manage approvals, capture line-item data, and collaborate without being office-bound.
“We had a system that worked, but it was slow, manual, and tied to the office.”
Trina Brockway
Office Manager, Locke Buildings
The MakersHub Solution
Locke Buildings moved its entire AP approval process to MakersHub, transforming how bills were reviewed, coded, and paid. With cloud-based approvals and Smart Data Capture, Locke eliminated manual paperwork and unlocked real-time collaboration across the team.
MakersHub allows the Locke team to:
- Automatically capture line-item details, vendors, and job codes from every bill.
- Route bills to the right project managers for digital review and approval.
- Collaborate in real time, adding notes, attachments, and coding instructions.
- Sync approved bills directly to QuickBooks, eliminating duplicate entry.
MakersHub’s remote-friendly platform even enabled Trina to transition to working from home four days a week, freeing her from the office-bound nature of their old paper-based system.
“It’s the same process we had before—it’s just way faster with MakersHub. It’s super duper easy and has given me back hours of time.”
Trina Brockway
Office Manager, Locke Buildings
The Results
Since switching to MakersHub, Locke Buildings has saved time, improved visibility, and strengthened collaboration across teams:
40+
hours saved per month, reducing AP processing from 10–12 hours per week to just 2
500+
bills processed digitally each month, with full line-item capture
These improvements have empowered real-time collaboration by giving project managers direct visibility into approvals, enabled remote AP management with work-from-home flexibility for the office team, ensured consistent vendor coding for accurate financial reporting in QuickBooks, and allowed for faster decision-making thanks to searchable, centralized records for all bills.
Andy and the team are excited to expand their use of MakersHub to manage receipts and expenses next—continuing to scale their operations with confidence. Andy has already referred MakersHub to other business leaders in the construction industry, a testament to the impact it’s had on their business.
“There’s now more data in QuickBooks, giving us a more accurate and comprehensive view of the business.”
Andy Price
General Manager, Locke Buildings
Ready to Digitize Your AP Process?
See how MakersHub can help your team save time, improve accuracy, and enable scalable, remote-friendly operations.