How GBX Group Manages Budgets and Plans Ahead with Rabbet Development

GBX Group manages a growing portfolio of historic preservation projects across the country. With 15 to 20+ projects in the pipeline at any given time, its development team needs a clear picture of budgets, commitments, spending, and future cash needs.

With Rabbet Development, the team brings budgets, contracts, invoices, and cash flow projections into one place, making it easier to track costs, plan for upcoming funding needs, and give teams across the company access to the information they need.

The challenge: Managing a growing portfolio with spreadsheets and separate documents

Each year, GBX Group invests in anywhere from 5 to 12 properties, sometimes as many as 15. About a third are development projects overseen by Zach Guren, Director of Development at GBX Group. Zach works with a six-person development team and various JV partners to manage projects around the country from pre-development through construction.

Before Rabbet, the team managed budgets and draws in Excel, with contracts, invoices, and other documents spread across tools like Smartsheet and SharePoint. Connecting the pieces took manual work, and keeping everything organized took time.

As Zach explained:

“Before Rabbet, we were managing our budgets in Excel, and our documents were not as organized as I would have liked. Tracking them was always a challenge, and preparing draws was tedious and time consuming.”

Cash flow forecasting presented its own challenges. Zach had built a solid spreadsheet to project future costs and funding, but modeling construction costs on a curve took extra work in Excel, and budget notes were harder to keep alongside the numbers.

With more than 20 projects at different stages, answering a question like how much a project had spent to date meant going to the right spreadsheet, and the latest numbers weren’t always easy for the rest of the team to see. 

The solution: Bringing project financials into one place

In early 2023, Zach began looking for software that could help his team work more efficiently. After evaluating Northspyre and exploring alternatives, he found Rabbet Development. What stood out was the ability to keep documents, budgets, and draws connected in one place. He also found Rabbet's interface intuitive and easy to learn and navigate.

Today, GBX Group uses Rabbet Development to manage projects from early pre-development spending through construction. The accounting team uses internal draws to track pre-development costs, while custom fields help the development team keep project status and next steps visible.

Connecting budgets, contracts, and invoices

GBX Group tracks contracts, change orders, and budget adjustments directly against each project's budget, with a history of what changed and why.

Zach uses the percent committed metric for each budget line item to see how a new contract will affect the budget. Rather than manually reconciling information across documents and spreadsheets, he can quickly see whether a commitment puts a line item over or under budget.

By connecting contracts and invoices to the budget, the team has a clearer picture of what's been committed and how those commitments affect the project's financial outlook.

Making cash flow projections easier

Historic preservation projects often involve complicated capital stacks, combining historic tax credits, multiple loans, and several equity partners. Knowing how much funding is coming and when it's expected to arrive is essential to planning project costs.

On one project, Zach tracks 12 different funding sources in Rabbet Development, including when each is expected to come in. The team can model soft costs on a straight-line basis and construction costs using a curve without building and maintaining complicated Excel formulas.

As Zach put it:

“Doing a bell curve in Excel is not very fun. In Rabbet Development, it’s a clickable button, and that makes it a lot easier.”

Instead of spending time building formulas and maintaining spreadsheets, the team can focus on understanding future cash needs and planning around the timing of incoming capital.

Preparing for funding decisions

When a project needs additional capital to reach its next phase, Zach brings a funding request to GBX Group's investment committee. Rabbet's projections help him show what was approved in the previous round, how much has been spent, and how much funding the project will need over the next five months.

Once the committee approves additional capital, Zach can add it as a funding source in Rabbet and track it alongside the project's other funding.

This gives the team a clearer view of what's been funded, what's already been spent, and what's still needed to move the project forward.

The results: Better visibility across the portfolio

Project information at their fingertips

For Zach, the biggest benefit is having project information readily available and accessible to the people who need it. Unit counts, square footage, the latest architectural drawings, current budgets, and spending to date are all in one place.

As he explained:

“The biggest benefit of Rabbet is the visibility into everything and having things at my fingertips. How much we’ve spent to date on a project is very easy to get from Rabbet, and everyone has visibility into it, instead of a spreadsheet on my computer that may or may not be up to date.”

Rather than relying on a spreadsheet saved on one person’s computer, GBX’s development, accounting, and investor relations teams work from the same project financials in Rabbet Development. That makes it easier to get answers, stay aligned, and understand where each project stands.

Faster answers for forward-looking decisions

Having current financials and projections in one place also means Zach can answer questions about spending and future funding needs without needing someone else to pull the numbers.

“Rabbet makes it very easy for me to track spending, rather than going to my accounting team and hoping they have time for a quick response.”

That visibility helps Zach and his team look ahead, understand what a project will need next, and make informed decisions, with fewer requests to the accounting team.

Spotting potential cost overruns earlier

Tracking contingencies, retainage, contracts, and change orders against the budget helps the team understand how changes affect a project's financial outlook. With a clearer view of commitments and remaining budget, they can identify potential cost pressures before they become bigger problems.

As Zach explained:

“Rabbet helps us see the potential for cost overruns down the road.”

This forward-looking view helps the team understand not just where a project stands today, but where it could be headed if costs change.

Keeping development, accounting, and investor relations aligned

Rabbet also gives teams across GBX Group a shared view of project financials.

The accounting team compares development spending in Rabbet against the general ledger to account for costs paid outside the development workflow, such as insurance, real estate taxes, and carry costs.

Investor relations uses project status, timing, and cost projections from Rabbet to prepare summary reports. Zach reviews those reports rather than having to build them himself.

With project information organized in one place, teams can spend less time tracking down numbers and more time using them to understand project performance and communicate progress.

Advice for other real estate developers

For Zach, the value of Rabbet comes down to connecting the information teams rely on every day.

“Having the budget, the contracts, and the invoices all tied together in one place makes visibility and efficiency so much better than using a combination of Excel, Smartsheet, SharePoint, etc.”

For a team managing a complex portfolio, having budgets, documents, and cash flow projections in one place makes it easier to understand what's happening today, plan for what's coming next, and give everyone a clearer picture of the project's financial health.

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