About Walker Masonry & Sons

Founded in 1974 by Larry and Be-Ann Walker, Walker Masonry & Sons has grown into one of Northwest Arkansas's leading specialty contractors. Headquartered in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, the family-owned company runs about 170 employees and $25–28 million in annual revenue across masonry, concrete, waterproofing, and materials divisions, including its own concrete production. Its portfolio includes expansions of Donald W. Reynolds Stadium at the University of Arkansas and 15 buildings on Walmart's 360-acre Home Office campus, along with hotels, schools, and office buildings across the region. Today the company is led by owner and President Eric Walker, the founders' son, with a third generation of Walkers already leading its concrete division.

The Challenge: A Thousand Invoices a Month and a Lean Back Office

Three years ago, Walker Masonry's office consisted of Eric Walker and his wife. Since then, the company has added divisions, crews, and staff at a pace that put enormous pressure on accounts payable. With 16 crews in the field and 20 to 25 active jobs at any given time, Walker estimates the company processes roughly 1,000 invoices a month each one needing to be matched, coded, and entered against the right job.

At that volume, small details slip. Walker recalls learning from a local parts store that an invoice had gone delinquent; after investigating, he found the supplier had been handing invoices to its delivery drivers instead of sending them to accounts payable. As the company has grown, he says, the demands have grown stronger too, making it hard to keep up with the fine details — the kind of heavy load he wanted a partner like Agave to carry so his team could stay focused.

Manual review carried its own risks. A person checking tickets all day gets tired, and Walker knew that during the company's period of rapid growth, bills were sometimes being paid just to keep up.

Choosing Agave

Walker Masonry was already an Agave customer. About a year and a half earlier, on Procore's recommendation, the company had used Agave to connect Procore and Foundation, ending years of double-entering budgets and job costs between systems. Walker had been skeptical at the start — it sounded, he admits, more like magic — so Agave agreed to a six-month trial and proved the integration worked.

That track record made the AP Automation decision easy. From the first pitch, Walker was hooked: "If anybody can make it work, they can make it work. It's a no-brainer."

Rolling Out AP Automation

Walker Masonry has fully cut over its AP invoice processing to Agave. Invoices are captured and coded automatically, and the company also uses Agave's delivery-ticket checking to match tickets against invoices, a feature Walker's team helped shape and test as it rolled out. Like anything new, it required some teaching, since every supplier's ticket looks a little different. But the learning curve has been short — Walker says he's been amazed at how quickly the system figures things out and how quickly it assists Elly Stone, who runs the AP process.

“Agave has been everything we hoped it to be."

Eric Walker

President, Walker Masonry

One person doing the work of three

The clearest result is leverage. The system lets one specialist do the job of two or three people, more effectively and more efficiently. Walker still insists on a human touch for decisions that align with the company's core values, but the routine matching and entry now runs on its own.

Scaling without back-office hires

Between their two Agave products, AP Automation and the Procore–Foundation Sync, Walker estimates the alternative was more headcount.

"If we didn't have Agave, we would have had to have another two employees in the office just transferring data. And they wouldn't keep it as current as Agave can."

Eric Walker

President, Walker Masonry

Cleaner books and caught errors

The same connected data has paid for itself directly. Reviewing synced actuals in Procore, Walker spotted two eerily similar rebar invoices on one job and sent them down to accounting. The supplier had double-billed: once at the shop ticket and once at delivery, for $68,000. "If it wouldn't have been for Agave bringing it over and putting it into Procore, I don't believe we would have ever caught it."

Looking Ahead

Walker sees Agave as a long-term technology partner. He is already thinking about connecting the maintenance system his shop foreman uses so purchase orders flow in without re-keying, and he expects AI to eventually help schedule the company's concrete delivery trucks. Walker describes Agave as "The silent partner. A partner that works harder than me, is more accurate than me, but never asks for a raise."

His recommendation to other contractors comes with one caveat:

"[I recommend Agave] to other contractors a hundred percent, as long as they're not in my market. I have a huge competitive edge using Agave. If you use Agave, you are advancing your company."

Eric Walker

President, Walker Masonry