You copy the previous total from one sheet to the next to put together your monthly payment application, and a simple typing mistake in the second month often only comes to light at the final balance of the job. In the meantime, a lien waiver that nobody remembered to request holds up a payment without anyone understanding why.
Who the application is for
For construction firms carrying out contracts in the United States who need to put together a US periodic payment application, with its retainage and its lien waivers.
What the application does
- Calculates the nine lines of the payment application: the previous total and prior certificates are worked out from earlier applications, and are never entered by hand.
- Keeps work done during the period separate from materials stored but not yet installed, without ever adding them together from one period to the next.
- Refuses to bill a schedule-of-values line beyond its scheduled value; anything above it belongs to a change order that increases that value first.
- Keeps the register of the four forms of lien waiver and says who needs to sign what, without ever mixing them within a single request.
- Keeps, for each state where the work is carried out, the retainage rule you have looked up yourself, with its source, its address and its reading date; the table ships empty.
- Launches a campaign of waiver requests for a whole payment application, with dated follow-ups and a screen showing what has never been requested at all.
- Invoices the certified application in a single line, and refuses to invoice it a second time.
Day to day
- Open the project with the contract, the owner, the architect and the state where work is carried out, then set up the schedule of values line by line, or import it from a spreadsheet.
- Enter the proposed change orders, and only count the approved ones in the contract sum to date.
- On the month's application, only enter the work done in the period and the materials stored: everything else works itself out.
- Launch a waiver campaign for the application, then watch the screen showing what has never been requested and follow up if needed.
- Once the application is certified, invoice it in one step and print the payment application.
What the application does not do
- It does not set any retainage rate on your behalf: the table is empty, and a rate not yet looked up stays marked as such, never treated as zero.
- It does not say whether a payment is due, nor whether a contract is lawful.
- It does not supply any lien waiver form, its printed statement is not an American Institute of Architects form, and no application produced has been submitted to an owner, an architect or a submission portal.
- It does not send any waiver request on its own: every message goes out after you have reviewed it.
- This application is designed for contracts carried out in the United States; the law on retainage and lien waivers varies by state and changes, and it does not replace the advice of a professional or the relevant authority.
Free and full editions
The free edition already carries the projects, the schedule of values, the change orders, the applications with their nine lines calculated, retainage entered by hand, the waiver register and the printed payment application. The full edition installs on top without losing anything, and adds per-state retainage rules with their dated source, waiver campaigns, invoicing from the certified application, importing the schedule of values, and cross-checking against the sale order, the project and timesheets.
Getting started
Open a trial project before any real job, and set up your schedule of values. Before relying on any retainage rule, read the state's text and record its source, its address and the date you read it: without that, the application will not mark the rule as looked up.
Going further
To find out whether this application suits your business and how to activate it, compare the plans or write to us.