How Moonshot fills the gap between progress billing and vendor payment timing

^{The provider of this testimonial is a client of Mercury Advisory, LLC, did not receive compensation, and was not aware of any conflict of interest when the testimonial was provided.}

Moonshot builds the electrical infrastructure that runs data centers — custom switchboards, control panels, and power distribution units — for companies that need power for their services, fast. The company got its start building for Bitcoin miners after Founder and CEO Ethan Ellenberg started following the crypto markets closely, and became convinced Bitcoin mining was about to take off in the U.S. With a plan to get into mining himself, he went looking for a company that could supply him with power and host his equipment.

He found one — but the company could only offer power, not hosting. Ellenberg saw a gap in the market. He found a manufacturer willing to design the prefab units that house mining equipment and started quoting builds to anyone who needed one. That pivot, from wanting to mine Bitcoin to building the infrastructure other miners needed, became Moonshot. Since then, Moonshot has grown alongside its earliest customers, scaling from 25 employees to 125 in just two years.

Moonshot opened its first business account with a traditional bank, and it didn't last long. “We were transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars within our first couple months, and the traditional banking route had a lot of red tape,” Ellenberg says. “It wasn't easy.” Every wire transfer meant a trip to the branch for approval. What’s more, the bank's online portal only kept ACH payment history for 45 days before it vanished — a real problem for a founder who was running sales and building the product himself, while also tracking every payment in and out of the business.

“It was painful to send anybody money, and it didn't keep the history,” Ellenberg says. Moving to Mercury fixed that immediately. “I saved a ton of time, and I didn't have to worry. It was easy to find out who paid, where the money's at, what they'd paid before — versus calling up the bank and asking them to send me a report.”

Mercury also gave Ellenberg something a single traditional bank account couldn't: real protection at Moonshot's scale. Deposits at Mercury are swept across a network of partner banks, extending FDIC coverage well past the standard $250,000 — providing a safety net for Moonshot’s balance sheet that can move by millions in a single day.

Like many manufacturers, Moonshot bills customers in stages as a project moves forward. Material and labor costs often show up before the customer’s matching payment arrives. Building the switchboards, panels, and modular units its customers need means ordering materials months ahead of when a project is far enough along to invoice for them.

To manage the cash flow gap, Moonshot keeps a dedicated project prepayment account separate from its day-to-day operating checking account. Every customer deposit lands there first, making the account's balance a running total of how much project capital has been collected across Moonshot's active projects, but not yet spent on materials or labor. Having two, separate accounts — one for operating cash and one for project prepayments — helps Ellenberg understand how much collected project money is actually on hand right now, checked against what's scheduled to go out to vendors.

And it doesn’t stop there. Whatever cash isn't needed immediately doesn't just sit in Moonshot’s prepayment account. Instead, Ellenberg moves into Mercury Treasury, where it starts earning a return until the next payment comes due.

Not every customer deposit is needed right away. When a payment lands that exceeds Moonshot’s immediate project expenses, Ellenberg moves the excess into Mercury Treasury rather than letting it sit idle in the prepayment account.

Roughly 88% of Moonshot's balance sits in Treasury this way, still earning a return the whole time it waits. Funds sit in lower-risk, highly liquid U.S. government securities and money market funds, with same-day access to withdraw, so none of the yield comes at the cost of not being able to pull the money back the moment a project needs it. That yield adds up to real money Moonshot can put straight back into a project, covering materials or labor before the next customer payment catches up — instead of waiting on billing alone to close the gap. “I get the yield, and I still have the money right there when I need it,” Ellenberg says. “That extra return helps pay for the next round of materials — it's not just sitting there.”

Managing progress billing against vendor payment timing comes down to answering the same question: is there enough collected, available capital to cover what's coming due?

Moonshot answers that by checking its prepayment account balance against its upcoming vendor obligations, which it schedules through Mercury Bill Pay. Bill Pay lays out exactly what's due and when, helping Ellenberg compare Moonshot’s outgoing pipeline against the capital sitting in the prepayment account — and pull more back from Treasury if needed — before committing to further spending.

“I can look at our account and know right away if we're ahead or behind on a job,” Ellenberg says. “Before, I'd have to dig through old bank statements and vendor invoices to get an answer.” It's a completely different way of running the business.” That comparison is what catches the moments when scheduled vendor payments are outpacing what's actually been collected, instead of finding out after the fact.

Since bringing its finances onto Mercury, Moonshot has been able to:

• Save 10 hours a month on payment tracking by pulling payment history directly in Mercury instead of requesting reports from a bank
• Keep the majority of its cash working, holding roughly 88% of its balance in Mercury Treasury instead of idle checking, earning yield while staying accessible
• Bridge the cash flow gap in progress billing by using Treasury yield to help cover materials and labor before the next customer payment arrives
• Avoid running out of money mid-project by comparing Mercury Bill Pay's upcoming payment schedule against the balance of a dedicated project prepayment account

^{The provider of this testimonial is a client of Mercury Advisory, LLC, did not receive compensation, and was not aware of any conflict of interest when the testimonial was provided.}