InnVest Hotels Modernizes Hotel CapEx Management With Custom Workflows and Automation

The Solutions

Building a Connected Capital Project Financial Platform in Quickbase

Quandary Consulting Group expanded InnVest's Quickbase environment to bring previously separate financial and operational activities into one connected architecture. Rather than creating independent applications for procurement, invoices, forecasting, and accounting, the solution established relationships between the records driving each stage of the capital project lifecycle.

Quickbase became the operational layer where project teams could manage work, while automated workflows and integrations moved information between processes and InnVest's M3 accounting environment and this architecture gave InnVest a more complete view of project financial health while reducing the amount of manual coordination required between project teams and accounting.

Automating AFE Funding Transfers and Approvals

Capital control begins with understanding where funding has been authorized and how that funding changes over time. Quandary expanded InnVest's AFE management capabilities with a dedicated AFE Transfer structure connected to projects and existing AFE records.

Financial fields and reporting were designed to consolidate effective funding amounts, giving users a clearer picture of current project funding after transfers. Approval workflows could then route AFE transfers according to defined approval thresholds and role requirements; instead of allowing funding adjustments to happen outside the primary project management environment, InnVest could maintain a structured process around capital movements and this strengthened the relationship between: Approved Funding → Funding Changes → Project Budget → Actual Financial Activity

Turning Specification Tracking Into Procurement

For hotel renovations and capital projects, specifications eventually have to become purchases. Quandary expanded InnVest's specification tracking environment to capture the details required to move selected items into procurement and the solution included an import procedure for InnVest's existing Spec Sheet Tracker, allowing specification information to enter the centralized Quickbase environment. From there, users could select one or multiple specification items and convert them into purchase orders, reporting and dashboards provided visibility into specification status and procurement activity.

Instead of manually recreating information when a planned item became a purchase, the underlying project information could remain connected, this created a more continuous workflow from planning to purchasing: Specification → Selection → Purchase Order

Managing Purchase Order Revisions Without Losing Financial History

Purchase orders change, quantities are adjusted, costs move, project requirements evolve and scope changes; but the challenge is preserving the history of those changes without losing sight of the current financial commitment.

Quandary designed a structured PO Revision process with dedicated revision and revision-line records and the architecture included snapshot capabilities to preserve historical information while Quickbase Pipelines could update purchase orders and PO lines based on approved revisions. Where required, revisions could move through an approval workflow before updating the active purchase order, this system also supported purchase order previews and revised PO document previews, along with reporting on revision activity. This gave InnVest a stronger audit trail between the original commitment and subsequent changes.

Project Forecasting Gives Teams Visibility Into Future Capital Spend

Knowing what InnVest had already invested in, leadership also needed visibility into what was coming next. Quandary created a monthly project forecasting structure within Quickbase to give project teams a recurring mechanism for updating expected expenditures and Quickbase Pipelines could automatically generate monthly forecast records for open projects, while project teams entered or updated anticipated spending.

The system then calculated and reported information such as:

• Pending dollars still requiring forecasts
• Total projected spend
• Actual versus forecasted spending
• Project over/under trends
• Remaining financial exposure

Separate reporting experiences could support the needs of executive leadership, accounting teams, and project teams and instead of relying solely on historical spend, InnVest could gain a forward-looking view of capital requirements.

Expediting Helps Teams Monitor Critical Purchases

For hotel capital projects, a purchase order isn't finished when it is issued, the items still need to arrive, delayed furnishings, equipment, fixtures, or materials can affect project schedules and potentially disrupt hotel operations. Quandary incorporated expediting functionality into the procurement workflow so relevant delivery information could be tracked against purchase orders and line items. Reporting could flag upcoming expected receipts requiring review or updates and Quickbase Pipelines could identify the most recent activity and continuously surface items approaching important dates. This gave project teams a more proactive way to monitor procurement instead of discovering delivery problems after deadlines had already passed.

Building an End-to-End Invoice Management Workflow

Invoice processing became one of the most comprehensive components of the solution. Quandary designed an invoicing module capable of capturing invoice details and supporting documentation while maintaining relationships between invoices, invoice lines, projects, purchase orders, vendors, approvals, and payments.

Accounting-specific fields captured the information required for the downstream M3 financial process, invoice statuses provided visibility into where each transaction stood and automated status logging created a history of changes for reporting and tracking. Most importantly, invoices didn't exist independently from project budgets and purchase orders.

The system tracked total PO spend and introduced controls between invoice amounts and approved purchase order budgets and this allowed InnVest to evaluate an invoice in the context that actually mattered:

• What was authorized
• What was ordered
• What has already been invoiced
• What remains?

Automated Invoice Approval Workflows

Invoices could move through structured approval workflows instead of relying entirely on email and manual follow-up. Quandary incorporated invoice approval routing along with processes for exceptions and emergencies requiring an alternate approval path.

The system also introduced Service Level Agreement tracking around invoice processing, which meant that invoices could be prioritized and escalated according to processing requirements rather than simply remaining in someone's inbox until someone noticed them. In addition, custom dashboards gave teams visibility into invoice workflows and surrounding financial metrics, including remaining purchase order spend and remaining project spend.

Automating Holdbacks and Retention

Certain projects require portions of payments to be retained until contractual or project conditions are satisfied, so rather than forcing accounting teams to calculate and track these amounts independently, the solution incorporated automatic holdback retention and release functionality into the invoice process. This allowed retention requirements to remain connected to the underlying invoice and project financial records.

Connecting Quickbase With M3

One of the most important elements of the engagement was connecting InnVest's operational project environment with its M3 financial system. Quandary designed a bidirectional integration architecture using file feeds and secure SFTP processes.

Quickbase generated invoice data for M3, create the required CSV file, and transfer that file to the designated M3 SFTP location. The processed files were then recorded in a dedicated Integration Log, including timestamps for traceability. Once an invoice had been successfully processed, Quickbase records were updated to prevent the same invoice from being included in future outbound feeds, this new workflow process created a controlled flow: Approved Quickbase Invoice → CSV File → Secure SFTP → M3

Bringing Payment Data Back Into Quickbase

The integration was not designed to stop once invoice information reached accounting because the payment information also needed to return. Quandary designed a process to retrieve payment data from M3 through SFTP, load those payment records into Quickbase, and associate payments with their corresponding invoices. Quickbase then calculate and report: Invoice Amount → Payment Amount → Outstanding Accounts Payable

This gave operational users visibility into payment status without requiring them to independently reconcile information against M3 and allowed the solution also accounted for exceptions, payments that couldn't automatically be associated with an invoice could appear in dedicated reporting so users could investigate and resolve them.

Synchronizing Vendor Data Between M3 and Quickbase

Vendor data represented another important integration point. Quandary created an M3 Vendors table inside Quickbase and designed synchronization between M3 vendor files and the operational environment. M3 vendor information would then be compared against existing Quickbase vendor records to validate whether a vendor was properly configured for invoicing, allowing exceptions to surface when records couldn't be matched.

InnVest's existing Quickbase vendor list was also mapped against M3 vendor records to establish the appropriate relationships, resulting in a stronger alignment between operational vendor management and financial master data.

Building Resilience Into Financial Integration

Financial workflows cannot simply stop because an automated transfer encounters a problem, so Quandary therefore included a fallback process allowing InnVest users to manually load M3 files into Quickbase if the automated integration failed. This created operational resilience without sacrificing the benefits of automation during normal processing.

Automating Project Accruals

Accrual management was another critical piece of the financial lifecycle. Quandary created a dedicated Accrual table structure within Quickbase and designed Quickbase Pipelines to generate accrual schedules based on applicable purchase orders.

Project teams could now report the current percentage of work that was completed and the system could then calculate the associated accrual using the defined methodology: (PO Value × % Complete) − Actual Invoice Amount = Accrued Amount. This transformed accrual preparation from an isolated accounting exercise into a process connected directly to live project and purchasing information, where the custom reporting and dashboards supported users responsible for entering and reviewing this accrual information.