How Mills Street Fitout grew 300% without losing control
Business name: Mills Street Fitout
Location: Tasmania, Queensland, South Australia
To support that growth, Mills Street relies on Nexvia for complete visibility over project performance and margins.
“We’d never really had a true, concrete picture of our margins before. Now, with Nexvia, I know down to the cent what we’ve made on each job - in real time.”
300%
growth
Over the past
five years
100% visibility
Over project margins delivered in real-time
4
teams
Collaborating seamlessly across Australia.
About Mills Street Fitout
Integrations: Xero
The challenge
Before Mills Street, Managing Director and Founder, Daniel Muir, had run two other businesses.
“The first was straight out of my trade - I was pretty naive and young, didn’t really have all the processes and systems in place because I was too young to realise you needed them.”
The second cost him $135,000 to exit. When he started again in Tasmania, he knew the systems had to be right.
Early on, the software choices were fit for purpose. Tools like Buildertrend and Buildxact worked at a smaller scale. But neither was designed for shopfitting, and as the business grew, so did the workarounds – five or six bolt-on apps filling gaps the core platform couldn’t.
COVID accelerated everything. With demand shifting and competitors unable to travel, Mills Street quickly picked up additional work. Revenue more than doubled in twelve months – but the systems were already straining before that growth hit.
“Buildxact was a good entry-level software - very user friendly for a small business. But the nature of the projects and the visibility around remote offices - we weren’t getting the data we needed to effectively dissect projects at a cost level.”
With no live project data, Daniel was reading profitability through his Xero dashboard and bank balance – neither of which told him much about where a job actually sits mid-delivery.
“I went off feeling. If I had money in the account, then we must be doing OK. But that’s such a fluctuating indicator. You can look like a king one week and be on bread and water the next.”
By the time Mills Street had offices in four states and a joinery factory running alongside the fitout business, the disconnected stack of apps wasn’t just slowing things down – it was making it harder to trust the numbers.
Why Nexvia
Daniel came across Nexvia while actively searching for a replacement. Procore had come knocking, but it lacked the estimating and accounting depth he needed. Nexvia was built differently.
“The fact that it was built by shop fitters for shopfitters was a massive factor. The holes in the previous software were there because those platforms were made for commercial or residential construction. I wanted something built by someone who understood what we actually do.”
The flexibility of the platform was equally important. Unlike Buildxact,where their customisation requests often went nowhere, Nexvia could be shaped around how Mills Street actually operated – and evolve as the business changed.
“What Nexvia started as for us to what it is now is completely different. As the business has grown, we’ve changed our ways of doing things within Nexvia, and that’s happening all the time.”
He’d also seen other fitout businesses using Nexvia and knew it could scale with them.
Mills Street went live on Nexvia in 2022. Onboarding wasn’t instant, given the volume of data to migrate, but the process was closely supported by the Nexvia team.
The arrival of Grant McBeath as Construction Manager roughly a year ago added another dimension. Having used Nexvia for close to a decade, he brought deep, practical experience with the platform.
His familiarity helped the team get more out of Nexvia, particularly around real-time budget management and lifted how consistently it was used across the business.
“Prior to Grant, we weren’t using Nexvia to its full potential. But he’s lived and breathed it for years. Now he’s shown me some quick ways to get real visibility over budgets - and it’s spreading across the whole business.”
What changed with Nexvia
The most immediate shift was visibility. Where Daniel had previously been guessing at project performance, he can now see the precise state of every job at any moment – from any location.
“Work starts in Nexvia. I’m on the dashboard, and it tells me everything I need to be concentrating on at the click of a mouse. Urgent, overdue, and upcoming - it’s all visible for me to manage.”
For Grant, the budget section is the centre of his working day. The ability to forecast a cost in real time, see its effect on the overall project instantly, and reverse it if needed changed how the team manages costs on active jobs.
“I love the budget section. If you need to forecast a cost, you can forecast it, click a button, and know instantly what effect that additional cost is going to have. It gives you the flexibility to look at things and decide what path you’re going to take, because you know what the effect is going to be on your budget.”
That visibility now extends across the whole team. Rather than waiting for a project to close before reviewing performance, Daniel and Grant are discussing cost movements in real time as jobs progress – catching issues before they compound.
“We can have those chats in real time. I’ll let Daniel know we’re spending too much here, we need to rethink what we’re doing - rather than waiting until the end to see where it all washes up.”
The transition to Nexvia also eliminated the disconnection between joinery and fitout. Both arms of the business now operate within the same platform – subsidiaries clearly separated but with full visibility across both. Invoicing pushes straight through to Xero. Time tracking for factory and site staff links directly to payroll.
When a new estimator hands a project over, everything transfers across automatically – no re-entry, no lost detail.
“All the good information that the estimator pulls together transfers across from the estimate to the project. So as soon as it comes across, all the information the team has put together is right there.”
As Mills Street continues to grow, onboarding new staff has become significantly easier. Their newest joinery production manager came from a residential cabinetmaking background and had never used Nexvia. Within weeks, he was pulling insights from the platform he’d never had access to before.
For the first time, margins are tracked as real numbers – not estimates at the end of a job or gut-feel based on the bank balance.
“Without a tool like Nexvia to provide that live information, I don’t really know how we ever did it before.”
Why it matters
Mills Street has grown from $4 million in its first year to $15 million today, adding a joinery factory, a hoarding division and three additional offices along the way. The team has expanded from two people to nineteen, with more hires underway.
What started as a system to bring structure to a small team is now underpinning a multi-division business – without being replaced or rebuilt along the way.
Daniel had initially assumed Nexvia was built for larger operations. What he found instead was a platform that could support his business at every stage – and continue to scale as it grew.
"The flexibility and how easy it is to customise means it just grows with you. You start with as many features as your business needs, and as the business grows, Nexvia grows with it."
Highlights
Grew from $4M to $15M revenue – 300% over five years – on a single platform
Scaled from two staff to 19 across four offices in three states
Replaced five to six disconnected apps with one system covering estimating, project management, time tracking and financials
Live budget visibility across all projects and locations, accessible from anywhere early.
Joinery and fitout running as connected subsidiaries within the same platform
Xero integration with time tracking linked directly to payroll
get started
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