The $100,000 Lesson
How Developers Quietly Overpay on Contracts — and How to Catch It Before It Happens
A 45-minute live session for real estate developers and GCs whose contracts, change orders, and contingencies live in spreadsheets that the AP team can't see.
Event Details
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The Story
Last year we sat down with a developer who'd just discovered they'd overpaid a contractor by more than $100,000.
Nobody on their team caught it. The AP clerk paid every invoice that came in. The contract was in a spreadsheet only the project manager had open. Change orders lived in a different file. Contingency was a number on a whiteboard. Nothing in the accounting system knew that the total paid had crossed the contract value plus approved changes.
They found out because the contractor was honest enough to send the money back.
If your contracts and your invoices live in different places, this isn't a story. It's a pattern. And it's not always going to be a contractor who sends the money back.
What You'll See
Live walkthrough — your screen, no slides:
- How a developer can overpay a contract without anyone catching it (the failure mode in detail)
- What a contract-with-teeth looks like in your system: commitment, change order, contingency, paid-to-date, all on one screen
- The AP invoice match that stops an overpayment before it gets cut
- Lien waiver and COI compliance built into the AP workflow — not tracked separately
- The cost-to-complete report your PM is rebuilding in Excel every week
- How to give your owner the contract-by-contract visibility they keep asking for
Who This Is For
Real Estate Developers
With active construction projects who need visibility into every contract and change order.
General Contractors
Managing multiple subcontracts and change orders across active job sites.
Vertically Integrated Developers
With internal construction arms bridging both sides of the workflow.
CFOs & Controllers
Responsible for the AP-to-contract match and financial oversight.
Owners
Who want a single source of truth for what's been committed and what's been paid.
If your contract values live in spreadsheets and your AP team is approving invoices without seeing the commitment, this is the session for you.
Who's Running It
Michael Antonelli has been building back offices for real estate developers, general contractors, and property managers for 35 years. Anton Systems serves more than 220 clients across the Southeast.
We don't build software. We build back offices.
Reserve Your Seat
Live group capped at 100 registrants. Recording sent to all registrants within 24 hours — the live Q&A is where the real answers happen.
FAQ
It's a back-office demo first. You'll see the workflow — how a real contract management process protects you from overpayment — before you see any feature list.
Yes. The contract-to-AP match is the same workflow whether you're managing a GC who's running subs for you, or running the subs directly. Both setups have the same failure mode.
Yes. Anonymized — the developer asked us not to name them — but the dollar figure is accurate. We'll walk through the failure mode in detail and what would have caught it.
Yes — and we recommend it. The CFO and Controller seats are the highest-leverage attendees for this session.
Yes. Anton Systems is an Acumatica Gold Certified Partner — we've standardized on Acumatica for real estate developers and GCs. But the platform is the engine. The 35 years of vertical expertise is what makes the implementation work.
Yes. Sent to all registrants within 24 hours of the live session.