An acquired firm's open projects, mapped onto your setup before they bill.

Someone on your team pulls the seller's project list, contracts and billing history. They decide where each project lands in your structure, rebuild its fee and rates, carry over what has already been billed, and work out what happens to time that was never invoiced. Until that is done, the acquired projects either can't bill or keep billing from the old system.

For the proof of concept, AI takes the first pass on copies. For each project it drafts the setup in your terms: project and phase numbers, billing terms by phase, the labor categories and rates it needs, opening figures, and a gap list. It writes into no system and changes no contract.

The structures rarely fit. Ajera lets a project carry as many as six levels of phases, and uses invoice groups when one project goes out as more than one invoice, for a joint venture or a phase of additional services. Vantagepoint allows three levels, project, phase and task, with phase and task IDs of seven characters at most. It bills at the project level, though each phase and task can carry its own billing terms. So a seller's deep phase tree has to fold into fewer levels, and a project that went out as two invoices needs a decision about how it bills on your side. The map shows every fold and the reason for it.

Rates belong to contracts, not to firms. The seller's open contracts carry rate schedules it negotiated, often keyed to its own job titles, and those rates keep billing as signed even where your standard rates differ. In Vantagepoint, an employee's labor category comes from the Labor Category field on their employee record unless the project's own category table says otherwise. Each acquired employee therefore needs a category that lines up with the classifications on the contracts they work, so the signed rates apply to their hours.

Who the contract is with can change. After an asset purchase, a federal contract does not simply move to the buyer. Under FAR 42.1204 the government may recognize a successor in interest through a novation agreement, and federal law otherwise bars transferring the contract. A stock purchase in which the contracting company stays the same needs no novation. State DOTs have their own steps. Florida's DOT asks firms to tell it before a merger or acquisition happens, to protect prequalification, and notes that the last overhead audit described the firm's cost pools from before the deal. Under its Rule Chapter 14-75, a reorganized firm prepares projected rates. The map records each contract's status, because invoices follow it.

Opening figures and unbilled time. Each project needs its fee, what has been billed against it, any retainage the client still holds, and the work done but not yet invoiced. Unbilled hours are the hard part. Some go out on the seller's final invoice, some carry over to bill on yours, and some get written off; those are your integration lead's calls, and the gap list names each one. The integration has a cost rule of its own, too. The AASHTO Uniform Audit and Accounting Guide, used by state DOTs to audit overhead rates, treats the cost of planning or carrying out a merger or acquisition as unallowable, so time spent on the deal stays out of the overhead pool.

What your reviewer will watch. Does every open project land somewhere, with each phase's billing method intact? Do the contract rates survive, tied to the right labor categories? Do fee, billed to date and retainage tie to the seller's records? Is every unbilled hour listed, with the decision left open? And is each gap stated plainly instead of quietly filled with your defaults?

A yes from your reviewer moves the job onto live work for about 30 days: the open projects of your next acquisition, or ones still waiting from a recent deal.

Each draft setup waits for your integration lead to approve it before anyone enters it in your system. Contracts, invoices and anything that goes to a client or an agency stay with your team.

No second job starts until those 30 days are over.