Home / Case Studies / Multipave NW Ltd
Multipave NW Ltd: nearly a year on, still building.
From Sage Construct to Business Central, and now Power BI. How a road construction contractor brought CIS filing, project costing and retention receivables into one platform, then kept going.
Off Sage Construct and live on Business Central. A year on, still adding to it.
Multipave NW Ltd outgrew Sage Construct. What is more interesting is what happened after they replaced it.
They went live on Business Central in October 2025. Nearly a year later, they are still adding capability, building Microsoft Power BI dashboards, extending approval workflows, bringing more of the business into the system, and deploying specialist applications they identified themselves.
For a contractor asking whether Business Central for construction will still fit in three years, that is the answer.
Projects, not products.
Multipave NW Ltd are a road construction and surfacing contractor based in Preston, delivering roadworks and related civil engineering projects across North West England.
Like most contractors, the business runs on projects rather than products. Work is won, costed, delivered on site and invoiced against agreed stages, with subcontractors engaged throughout. That model puts particular demands on a finance system: it has to handle project budgeting and costing, manage subcontractor payments under the Construction Industry Scheme, and connect what happens on site to what appears in the accounts.
A legacy system that legislation had overtaken.
Multipave were running Sage Construct, a long-established construction finance product. The problem was not that it had stopped working. It was that the world had moved and the software had not.
CIS filing outside the system
Government changes to the Construction Industry Scheme meant the legacy system could no longer handle the filing requirements a contractor is obliged to meet. Multipave had no CIS capability in their finance system at all, so the work was being handled outside it. Subcontractor verification carried the same burden, a compliance requirement being done manually.
A disconnect between site and accounts
Multipave wanted their field operations, the boots-on-the-ground application their teams use on site, connected to the financial reporting that comes off the back of it, rather than the two living separately and being reconciled after the fact.
Limited visibility on project performance
Underlying both was a reporting problem familiar to any contractor: understanding how individual projects were performing, in enough detail and early enough to act on it.
The project came about because the business was facing new legal and regulatory requirements, while also looking for ways to improve how it operated. The finance leader leading the project had previously worked with Truly SMB's Microsoft Business Central expert, Steve Brooks, at another organisation and had seen first-hand how a structured review of business processes could improve the way a business works. Having seen the results first-hand, he approached Truly SMB because he wanted to repeat that success. If you are weighing up providers, here is what to look for in a Microsoft Business Central partner.
One platform. Eight capabilities.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central covered the requirement across finance, projects and compliance. You can see the full feature set here.
Granular project budgets and cost tracking for contract work
Subcontractor verification and filing via the Pryme CIS application
Handling the group structure in one system
For a plant and equipment-heavy business
Through Continia Document Capture
Bank reconciliation through Yavrio
Extended across the business as adoption grew
With a clear route into Microsoft Power BI when ready
The customer found the app themselves.
One detail says more about the platform than any feature list: Multipave needed to handle retention receivables, the retainage rules that govern how and when money is released to subcontractors on construction contracts, which are notoriously fiddly and highly sector-specific.
A specialist retainage add-on existed in the Business Central ecosystem. Multipave identified it, brought it to Truly SMB, and we worked with the publisher to get it deployed. It now processes subcontractor collections automatically against those retainage rules.
We could have said no, or quoted for a custom build. Instead we did what we would do for any customer who arrives with a problem worth solving: took it seriously, went to the publisher, and got it working. A customer knowing their own business better than we do is not an inconvenience. It is the point.
A customer, nearly a year into their system, solved a new problem by reaching into an ecosystem rather than commissioning custom development or changing platform.
Why add-ons rather than custom builds? A purpose-built application solving one problem properly typically costs tens of pounds a month. Building the same capability as custom development costs a great deal more, takes longer, and has to be maintained indefinitely. CIS is the clearest illustration: it's complex, changes with legislation, and is non-negotiable. A specialist publisher maintains it as their whole business.
Fixed price. Fixed scope. Live 1 October 2025.
Delivered on our fixed-price, fixed-scope implementation approach. Our implementation roadmap sets out what happens at each stage.
You do not have to buy it all on day one.
Most Business Central partners scope the whole business up front and quote accordingly. That is why contractors are routinely quoted six figures before anyone has configured anything, something we unpack in our Business Central pricing guide.
Truly SMB works in fixed-price implementation packs instead. You implement what the business needs now, and add the next pack when you are ready for it, not when a scoping document says you should be. There is no scoping fee, because after 15+ years of SMB implementations we already know where to start.
Multipave are a working example of this. Work in progress postings were part of the original conversation but were not deployed at go-live, because the business was not ready for them at the time. That conversation is now active again with their finance lead. Nothing was paid for early and nothing was forced in before it was useful.
Nearly a year in, and still investing.
CIS handled in-system
Subcontractor verification and CIS filing now run through the finance system rather than outside it, replacing a manual process.
Granular project visibility
The business now holds detailed project budgets and costings, with reporting to match.
Reporting is the standout
Multipave have invested significant time with Truly SMB specifically on reporting and dashboards, which they identified as a priority. See our guide to reporting in Business Central. Power BI work is in progress.
Widening adoption
Approval workflows have been extended and the business intends to bring more people into the system.
Automated retention receivables
Subcontractor collections now process automatically against construction retainage rules.
Modern cloud platform
A legacy on-premise construction system replaced, with a clear route from finance into business intelligence.
Outgrown your construction finance system?
If CIS filing sits outside your accounts, project costing is a spreadsheet exercise, or your software can't keep pace with legislation, we should talk. Fixed scope, fixed price, no scoping fee, with ongoing support after go-live.
