Different industries, different challenges, but similar frustrations with budget tracking. Here's what changed when they stopped fighting their old systems.
Brightwave Creative was spending three hours every Friday reviewing client budgets across twelve active campaigns. Their spreadsheet system worked—until it didn't. When they brought on two new account managers in January 2025, everything fell apart.
Now they're running 18 campaigns with fewer headaches. Budget approvals happen in minutes instead of days. And their Friday meetings? Down to 90 minutes, most of which is actually strategic planning.
Hollister Construction had a visibility problem. They knew projects were going over budget—they just couldn't pinpoint why until weeks after the fact. By the time they caught material cost overruns, it was too late to adjust.
Their project manager, Garrett Ashford, switched to Howtomanual in March 2025. Two months later, they caught a supplier billing error that would've cost them $14,000. The real-time tracking meant they could see expense patterns as they happened, not after.
Tessa Lindquist was doing budget reconciliation at 11 PM on Sundays. As the founder of a 12-person software startup, she couldn't justify hiring a full-time finance person yet. But tracking development costs, contractor payments, and cloud infrastructure expenses was eating her alive.
She implemented Howtomanual in February 2025 and automated most of the tedious tracking. Her engineering leads can now log expenses directly tied to features. She gets a real picture of burn rate without manual calculations every week.
Julian Merrick
Operations Director
Cascade Regional Services
We were hemorrhaging money on a project in Sacramento and didn't realize it until we were 60% over budget. That hurt. When we started our next project in April 2025, we used Howtomanual from day one. The difference was night and day.
The challenge: Managing budgets across six simultaneous regional projects with teams in different cities. Previous system required manual consolidation every two weeks, which meant problems weren't caught until they'd already snowballed.
What changed: Real-time visibility meant Julian's team could spot cost trends early. When their Portland project started trending 12% over on materials in week three, they adjusted purchasing strategy immediately instead of discovering it six weeks later.
Honest outcome: They still go over budget sometimes—construction has too many variables for perfection. But now they know why, they know when, and they can make informed decisions instead of reacting to surprises.