How L.A. Roser automated union payroll and recovered $400K

L.A. Roser Company (Louis A. Roser) has been building and maintaining industrial refrigeration systems since 1907. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, they serve food processing facilities, cold storage warehouses, ice rinks, and industrial plants across the Western United States. The company is employee-owned and handles the full life cycle of a refrigeration project: engineering, design, fabrication, installation, service, parts, and 24-hour emergency response.

Their projects range from large-scale food distribution facilities and ice rinks to the bobsled track and venues being built for the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. As the company grew, so did the demands on the back office. Shane Brooks, CTO, and Autum Peterson, CFO, knew the existing systems weren’t going to support where L.A. Roser was headed.

Key takeaways:

• L.A. Roser had outgrown QuickBooks Desktop. Manual payroll, paper work orders, carbon copy forms, and no single source of truth made it hard to report accurately, manage union compliance, or see the full financial picture.
• Switching to NetSuite for financials and Miter for payroll and workforce management replaced years of manual workarounds with one connected system.
• The new software surfaced $400,000 in unbilled transactions (work that had been completed but never invoiced) during the first year-end close.
• Union payroll had been one of the hardest things to manage but Miter handles union fringes, dues, and reporting natively, cutting manual entry and giving the team audit-ready records going back years.
• With implementations behind them, L.A. Roser is focused on growth, including M&A, expanded service offerings, and a portfolio of projects tied to the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

The challenge: Manual everything, no single source of truth

Before NetSuite and Miter, L.A. Roser ran on QuickBooks Desktop, Airtable, spreadsheets, and paper. Work orders came in on carbon copy forms. Timesheets were submitted on paper or via text message, and receipts were turned in by hand and entered manually.

Union payroll was especially hard. Autum had spent years managing it herself because QuickBooks couldn’t handle the fringes, dues, and reporting that unions require. Payroll was slow and setting up a new union was a lengthy manual process. Audits, which happen regularly and can cover three to five years of records, meant hours of digging through whatever documentation existed.

Reporting was just as frustrating. They could run reports, but not the ones they actually needed. There was no single source of truth, just multiple systems with gaps between them.

L.A. Roser’s crews had strong tenure, with decades of experience in construction and service. But when critical knowledge lived only with individual employees, it created bottlenecks that got harder to manage as the company grew. Once they crossed about 30 employees, keeping up with everything started to get harder.

The solution: NetSuite and Miter, connected from day one

L.A. Roser needed a platform flexible enough to handle a business that spans engineering, construction, fabrication, and ongoing service, and one that could support the acquisitions they were planning. They also run Procore for construction project management, integrated through RabbIT, and Ramp for spend management so integration was important.

NetSuite fit the bill. “NetSuite can be anything you want it to be,” Shane says. “The maturity of the platform, the whole ecosystem around it – everybody’s friendly and willing to share and helpful.”

As they evaluated NetSuite, payroll became a key part of the conversation. Autum had spent years managing union complexity herself because most platforms simply couldn’t handle it. Miter was built for it, automatically handling union fringes, dues, certified payroll, and custom overtime rules. And its direct integration with NetSuite means labor data flows into financials automatically, without manual uploads or double entry. 

For Shane, the priority was keeping implementation manageable. They were rolling out a new ERP while running a growing business. “I needed something frictionless that could handle all the heavy lifting and just fit into that model,” he says.

Outcome #1: $400,000 in recovered revenue

When L.A. Roser moved to NetSuite and Miter, they had one system for the first time. During the first year-end close, that visibility surfaced something immediately: $400,000 in work that had been completed but never billed. 

It wasn’t that the work was undocumented. The reporting tools they had before just couldn’t surface it. With everything in one place, Autum could segment data, customize reports, and look at the business from angles weren’t possible in QuickBooks.

Closing is a much faster process now. Reports that used to require workarounds take minutes and the data that used to live across spreadsheets and QuickBooks exports now lives in one place.

Outcome #2: Union payroll that actually works

Miter changed how payroll actually runs day to day. Time comes in from the field, supervisors verify it, and it flows through to payroll without manual re-entry. Meanwhile, union fringes and dues are tracked automatically.

Accessibility matters too. Autum processed payroll twice from the floor of NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference. The work that used to take days at her desk can now be done quickly from anywhere.

Outcome #3: A back office built for what comes next

L.A. Roser is growing fast. They are pursuing acquisitions, expanding their service footprint, and taking on a growing portfolio of work tied to the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, including ice rink builds, the bobsled track, and the Olympic Oval.

The old system couldn’t have supported any of it. NetSuite and Miter give the team the infrastructure to keep growing without adding back-office overhead.

One project already underway: bringing tens of thousands of historic work orders into NetSuite as custom records and making that history visible to customers. “Before, it was like we had to call a guy,” Shane says. “The really good stuff is still coming.”

L.A. Roser replaced a back office built on paper and spreadsheets with a connected system that gives finance and operations the same real-time picture. Payroll runs accurately from anywhere and reports surface what the business actually needs to see.

Finding $400,000 in unbilled revenue in year one was eye-opening. But the shift went deeper than that. Shane and Autum and their teams went from making decisions based on thoughts and feelings to making them based on data.

With Miter and NetSuite, L.A. Roser has the foundation in place to support whatever comes next.