Habitat for Humanity of Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties Doubles Annual Home Production with NetSuite + FullClarity
By: Rich Uphus | February 4, 2026
Introduction
Habitat for Humanity of Seattle–King & Kittitas Counties is a nonprofit builder that delivers affordable housing by managing and completing dozens of home builds each year.
They operate at an unusually high volume for a Habitat affiliate—complex urban infill, multi-building projects, and GC + volunteer work run side by side—where funding, compliance, and reporting accuracy must hold up at scale.
Headquarters: Renton, Washington
Founded: 1986
Primary Activities: Homebuilding, Home Repairs, Neighborhood Revitalization, ReStores, Advocacy
“We’re not only building the most, we’re also building the most complicated… we need systems that can enable us… on the project management side as well as the financial side.”
- Scott Slater, CFO, Habitat for Humanity
At a Glance
Here’s some context -
- Project Type & Complexity: Complex urban infill work, including multi-story projects.
- Operating Model - Mixed Delivery: General-contractor supported builds plus volunteer builds—sometimes running side-by-side on the same project.
- Why Systems Matter - Ops + Finance: They needed systems that support both the project management side and the financial side.
- Reporting Priority - Funder Requirements: More flexible reporting helped them pursue funders with stricter, more complicated requirements.
“Tracking spending and doing cost reimbursement was the primary driver. Doing that better, we can access more public funding… grow and scale.”
— Scott Slater, CFO
The Challenge
As Habitat for Humanity scaled up, three things created the most pressure on their team:
High-volume delivery with high oversight
- Scaling a large portfolio while keeping project and financial controls reliable.
Funder/Compliance pressure:
- Multiple funding sources per project increased the operational risk of mis-attribution.
Manual reporting didn’t scale:
- They needed reporting that was systemized—manual processes were “never really consistent.”
“With our old system, the ability for us to scale was not going to be possible… without doubling or tripling staff.”
— Scott Slater, CFO
The Solution: Construction for NetSuite
What mattered to the team was having a system they could depend on every day as volume and complexity increased. They pointed to four practical FullClarity-driven improvements:
Systemized reporting (built in the NetSuite system)
- Replacing manual, inconsistent reporting with repeatable reports, the team could run the same way every month.
Job cost reporting that the construction team trusts
- Clear, dependable job cost visibility, so project conversations aren’t spent debating the numbers.
Cleaner funding attribution
- More reliable tracking across multiple funders, reducing dependence on “somebody’s memory” and lowering the risk of mistakes like double-dipping.
Room to evolve as requirements become clearer
- A platform (and partner) that supports ongoing refinement—adapting reports and workflows as new needs show up.
“We did 30 projects before…67 with the new system in 2025, and we'll do 76 this year… the system is an important piece of that… FullClarity is a key ingredient in that recipe.”
- Scott Slater, CFO, Habitat for Humanity
"Our work is complicated. FullClarity helped us to solve problems that most teams assume can’t be solved."
— Scott Slater, CFO
“We know exactly what’s going into the job cost reports… usable and dependable.”
— Ellen Gonitzke, FP&A Manager
"FullClarity makes it more efficient to track which funder is tied to which invoices, lowering the risk of double-billing."
— Scott Slater, CFO
“We use FullClarity's Retainage and File Storage solutions extensively.”
— Ellen Gonitzke, FP&A Manager
The Results
1. More than doubled annual production
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- Impact: Habitat for Humanity reported moving from 30 homes (average) to 67 homes in 2025, with 76 projected in 2026. The increase to the 2026 projection is 153%.
2. Built a foundation for growth without proportional hiring
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- Impact: Habitat for Humanity believes ~100 homes is achievable with the same staff (or only slightly more) as efficiencies compound from the new system. They believe their new system will support 3.3x greater production.
3. Funding scale-up alongside the new system
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- Impact: Over the same period, they described moving from their old setup to NetSuite + FullClarity, they cited scaling from roughly $42M to $85M in budget/funding, an increase of 102%
4. Reduced risk in cost-reimbursement funding
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- Impact: With multiple funders involved, systemized tracking reduced the risk of billing the same invoice to more than one funding source, protecting future eligibility and avoiding major compliance issues.
5. Better positioning for stricter funders
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- Impact: Habitat for Humanity linked improved, standardized reporting to the ability to pursue more and larger funding sources with stricter, more complex requirements, without relying on inconsistent manual work.
“FullClarity is absolutely critical to the accuracy of our monthly ‘Affiliate Report’ that gives our leadership and board dependable, project and pipeline visibility."
— Scott Slater, CFO
Snapshot: What Changed Operationally
As Habitat for Humanity scaled, the biggest shift was moving away from “tribal knowledge” and hand-built reporting toward repeatable, systemized workflows, especially around reporting and funder attribution.
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- Reporting became more consistent and repeatable (less manual, “hand-built” work each month).
- Job cost reporting became dependable enough that the construction team could trust what they were seeing.
- Funding attribution became systemized, reducing reliance on memory and lowering the risk of issues like double-dipping across funding sources.
“We're now in the top 15 of 950 Habitat for Humanity affiliates, the top 1%.”
“We used to drive a Pinto… [now] we're driving a Lexus.”
— Scott Slater, CFO
Moving Forward
With Oracle NetSuite + FullClarity in place, Habitat for Humanity's focus is now on getting more out of what they’ve already put in place: refining workflows, tightening reporting, and continuing to improve how they manage project financials and cost-reimbursement tracking as production scales.
“The opportunity and the bottleneck is our ability to unlock the potential of the system… to really take it into fourth and fifth gear," shared Scott Slater.
