How Cornerstone Masonry cut expense admin by 140 hours a month and captures a receipt on every charge with Workyard

Cornerstone Masonry ran crew spending across three credit card providers, and getting receipts back was a daily fight. Most never came in, the QuickBooks sync kept dropping (so the office fell back on manual CSV imports), and three admins spent two to three hours a day each clearing charges they couldn't fully verify.

They moved field spending onto Workyard Expense, tied to the same app their crews already clock in and out of.

With Workyard,
Cornerstone now:

• Saves about 140 admin hours a month — an estimated $35,000 a year
• Cut charge reconciliation from 3 admins at 2-3 hours a day to 2 admins at about 1 hour
• Captures a receipt on nearly every charge — workers photograph it before they clock out, up from under half
• Runs all field spend through one unified account instead of three providers

The Challenege

Cornerstone managed field spending across three separate credit card providers, and every one of them carried its own manual work. One covered the foremen's day-to-day purchases. Another was held back for large or emergency buys, so a single equipment charge or an urgent material drop wouldn't eat into what the foremen had to spend.

The trouble was everything after the swipe. Workers had to carry paper receipts back to the office, and most of the time they didn't. Cornerstone got back under half of them, so office staff chased the rest down day after day. The office wouldn't close a charge without the receipt behind it, which meant the same charges sat open, waiting on slips that trickled in or never came.

Three admins spent two to three hours a day each working through it, on top of their other jobs. Job costs were tagged from memory, based on where crews happened to be working that day, because nobody could match a charge to a receipt. The QuickBooks connections kept dropping, forcing manual CSV downloads just to get the charges in. And the missing receipts created real tax exposure: a bank statement shows the merchant and the amount, but not what was bought, which isn't enough to stand behind a deduction.

"The IRS would accept a statement, but the statement doesn't tell you what was bought. It only tells you the charge and what company it was spent at. Without the receipt, it was an issue."
Suann Lilly, Cornerstone Masonry

The Solution

Cornerstone already used Workyard for time tracking, so the crews clocked in and out every day. That was the opening. Because workers already clock out in the app, Workyard Expense could require a photo of the receipt before they do, capturing it in the field at the moment of purchase instead of counting on anyone to carry paper back to the office. It also meant one unified account and one connection to QuickBooks, instead of reconciling three providers by hand. Suann started small, putting a couple of people on physical Workyard cards as a test, then expanded once it held up.

The Results

Before Workyard, three admins each spent two to three hours a day clearing charges across three credit card providers, on top of their other jobs, and under half of receipts ever made it back to the office. Now two admins handle reconciliation in about an hour a day, with a receipt on nearly every charge because workers photograph it before they clock out. That's roughly 140 admin hours a month back, an estimated $35,000 a year, and three separate credit lines consolidated into one unified account for field spend.

The accounting side changed just as much. Charges that used to come in through dropping QuickBooks connections and manual CSV imports now flow through a single connection, and job costs once tagged from memory now carry the company, the job, and the receipt on every charge, giving the CPA clean, audit-ready records instead of misclassifications to fix. Cornerstone still keeps separate credit lines for large and emergency purchases, but the day-to-day field spending, the part that used to drive the receipt chase, now runs through Workyard Expense.

"Workyard Expense saves us about 140 admin hours a month, and we finally get a receipt on every charge so we can actually review spend instead of guessing."
Suann Lilly, Cornerstone Masonry

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