“What Clearstory will do that we have not found anywhere else is take at-risk money and make it real funds.”

That's how Josh Alterman, Vice President of Goodman Decorating, cuts to the heart of what Clearstory has meant for his company. Goodman is one of Atlanta’s most accomplished commercial painting contractors, responsible for 12 of the city’s 16 skyline buildings and now delivering some of the Southeast’s most demanding projects, from hyperscale data centers to Atlanta’s tallest building in 40 years.

For a company operating at that level, the financial exposure tied to out-of-contract work is significant. Up to 30 to 40 percent of total billings on any project can fall outside the original contract in the form of change orders and T&M work, and payment is never assured.

"What we do every day is at risk," Alterman says. "You're not guaranteed to get paid on things that aren't part of your contract."

Traditional, Manual Workflows = Lost Revenue, Zero Visibility

For years, Goodman managed that risk the way the industry always had: with paper T&M tickets, manual Change Order logs, PDFs assembled by hand and chased through layers of stakeholder review and approval. Visibility was nonexistent.

"I don't have any visibility of who's looking at it, if it's even in review or if it's sitting on someone's desk," Alterman says. "We have no idea because it's paper. You can't track it, you can't follow it, you don't know where your at-risk money is, which makes it harder to budget, makes it harder to do your billings, it makes it harder for everything." 



When Change Order documentation didn’t stand up at closeout, much of Goodman’s out-of-contract work became a matter of negotiation. Tickets went missing, signatures were inconsistent, and even legitimate costs often had to be settled rather than fully recovered. "There are plenty of projects where if you're settling out on 60 or 70 cents on the dollar, you're killing it," Alterman says.

As Goodman takes on larger, more complex work across data centers, high-rise towers, and projects spread across multiple states, the gap between the sophistication of the work and the systems supporting it became harder to ignore. "We're doing data centers for God's sake," Alterman says. "We’re at the forefront of technology, and we're using paper tickets."

All of that changed when Goodman Decorating adopted Clearstory.

Capturing $1 Million Annually in Revenue-at-Risk to Boost EBITA +10 Points

Purpose-built to help Specialty Contractors reduce risk and get paid faster on out-of-contract work, Clearstory's core product is a shareable, cloud-based Change Order Log that creates instant alignment between stakeholders with powerful tools like a mobile app for digital T&M Tags, built-in Change Order templates, instant pricing, and more.

The impact was immediate — and the numbers are hard to argue with. Goodman has now captured 100% of its Change Orders since deploying Clearstory, a result Alterman calls very unusual in an industry where negotiating down at closeout is practically a given. On Goodman's current flagship data center project, a contract that started at $1.5 million and has grown to $2.3 million in under a year, $756,000 in Change Orders have been submitted and resolved with virtually nothing left outstanding. 

"With Clearstory, we can align quickly on change order after change order after change order," Alterman says. "They say yes, they're approved, because here's the pictures, here's the evidence. Thank you, have a great day." Across the business, Alterman estimates that at least $1 million in revenue at risk has been captured directly because of Clearstory. EBITDA is up 10 points.

Speed has been just as transformative as capture rate. In a cash-flow-intensive business where Goodman is fronting hundreds of thousands of dollars a month across multiple active projects, the time between submitting a Change Order and getting paid used to stretch 120 to 180 days. With Clearstory, that window has been cut to 30 to 60 days. 

100% Alignment, 100% Close Rate on all Change Orders 

T&M Tags are captured and signed in the field in real time. Change Orders are packaged, shared, and in front of the GC the same day. "From the time we ask for money to the time we get money has been cut in half," Alterman says. "You're getting more profit, you're getting 100% of what you bill, and you're getting it faster. And you're not talking about small numbers. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in a swing."

For the GCs on the other side of those conversations, Clearstory has made life easier too. Alterman's customers no longer need to check email or chase down status updates. "They literally can go on, type in Clearstory, every single ticket pops up," he says. And in the field, adoption took hours, not weeks. "I've got a guy in the field now who hits five buttons, doesn't have to price anything, doesn't have to do anything except write what he's done and when it's done. Somebody clicks a button and it gets sent."

Asked what he'd tell another executive at a painting contractor who hasn't made the move yet, Alterman is direct. "If you're a large business, a small business, whatever it is — you need to track your at-risk money. That's where we found Clearstory the most valuable. I haven't missed money since we got it. There's not a Change Order out there I've asked for that we have not received in the last year." He pauses. "The only regret I have is that we didn't do it earlier."