Construction Billing Platform Siteline Raises $15M

Construction billing platform Siteline has raised $15 million in Series A funding, the San Francisco company announced Thursday (Feb. 24).

The round brings the company’s funding to $18.4 million and will let Siteline expand its sales, marketing, product, engineering and recruiting staff.

The company says its financial platform lets trade contractors compile accurate payment applications, manage compliance documents, and keep track of payment status from a single,  customizable platform.

Siteline says this has helped its clients accelerate their internal billing processes up to six times faster, and improve collaboration between project and finance teams. The company says it processes more than $180 million a year in billing for its customers, for projects that range from office campuses and schools to major airport terminals and hospital wings.

“Getting paid in construction is a huge hassle, and that makes cash flow harder to manage,” said Gloria Lin, co-founder and CEO of Siteline.

“Growing up with a dad in construction, I’ve seen some of the industry’s challenges and opportunities firsthand. That’s why our mission is to help contractors focus on building, not billing. Ultimately, we want to empower builders to make better business decisions, by transforming a painful payments process into a powerhouse of financial data.”

Siteline says that construction is the slowest-paying industry in the world, with the median time to get paid at 90 days.

“This is especially painful for trade contractors, who typically pay for labor and materials out of pocket before getting paid months later,” the company said.

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PYMNTS examined this topic last month in a conversation with Gregg Lund, CEO of the construction financing company Struxtion, who points out that commercial construction has the longest days sales outstanding (DSO) of any mature industry — 83 days.

“That’s the days between when a subcontractor invoices the general contractor and the general contractor pays them,” he said.

“In the value chain of material suppliers, [subcontractors], [general contractors], owners, banks that the owners may use to fund their projects, [subcontractors] are the smallest player in the value chain and essentially they front all of the working capital expense for really that $900 billion worth of commercial construction put in the ground.”