Contractors Get Paid on Time When Pay Apps Go Out Complete
What it takes off your plate
The Invoicing Agent in EngageSuite360 assembles each monthly pay app, collects the lien waivers that go with it and tracks retainage on every project, and it frees the project manager and office manager who spend the end of every month in schedule-of-values spreadsheets instead of on the job.
Here's how contractors describe billing week: "We build the pay app by hand from the schedule of values. We chase every sub and supplier for lien waivers. Retainage means cross-checking the contract, the last pay app and the change orders. One wrong percentage or one missing waiver and the owner's rep sends the whole package back, and we wait another cycle to get paid."
The cost is cash. A rejected pay app delays payment to you and to your subs, and the scramble pulls your PMs off the work they're supposed to be managing. Your subs feel it too. When your payment is late, theirs is late, and the next time you need a crew to show up on short notice, they remember.
What the Invoicing Agent does, step by step
The Invoicing Agent starts with the calls, texts and emails that billing depends on:
- Asks for percent complete. Before the billing cutoff, it asks each project manager or superintendent for progress on every schedule-of-values line, with last month's figures shown, and follows up until each project is in.
- Collects lien waivers. It requests the right waiver from each sub and supplier, conditional for this payment and unconditional for the last, and chases until it arrives.
- Sends the pay app. Once approved, it sends the package to the owner, the owner's rep or the architect in the format their contract calls for.
- Follows up on payment. It tracks the payment due date and checks in with the client when a payment is late.
- Answers subs. When a sub asks when they'll be paid, it answers from the pay app status and the waiver record.
Then the billing work:
- It generates the pay app from the current schedule of values, including approved change orders.
- It calculates retainage by the contract's terms, line by line and by sub.
- It checks this month's figures against prior pay apps so nothing is billed twice or skipped.
- It holds the package until every required waiver is in, and lists what's missing.
- At substantial completion, it prepares the retainage release request for the PM.
Percent complete, stored materials and any disputed line are the project manager's call. The agent assembles; the PM approves and signs.
Where the work is recorded
Everything lands in EngageSuite360, the CRM shaped for construction. On the project: each pay app, its status, the retainage held and released, and the next step written down, such as "pay app sent to owner's rep, waiting on the drywall sub's conditional waiver before release." On each sub and supplier contact: the waivers requested and received. On the client: payment history across projects.
The next morning, the office manager opens EngageSuite360 and sees which projects are billed, which pay apps are waiting on a waiver or a PM's approval, and which payments are overdue.
Clean billing depends on clean field records. Percent complete is easier to defend with the daily logs from Your Permit Agent Puts Permit Conditions in the Superintendent's Hands. And stored materials on a pay app often trace back to the approvals tracked in Deploy the Submittal Agent and Free Your Project Manager by Noon.
What your people do instead
Your project managers stay with the client and the job: walking the site with the owner's rep, solving a coordination problem between trades, keeping the schedule on track. Your office manager stays on the conversations that need a person, like a client who's disputing a line or a sub who needs help with paperwork.
The Invoicing Agent keeps the requests, the waivers and the pay apps moving around them. It asks, collects, assembles, sends and follows up. The project manager approves.
What contractors notice first is the rejection rate. Pay apps go out complete, and the cash comes in on the cycle it's supposed to.
One next step
See how EngageSuite360 handles contacts, clients, projects and bids for contractors, with the Invoicing Agent working inside it: EngageSuite360 for construction.
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I'm Jackie, the Construction ambassador here. One useful piece a week for construction owners, written for how the work actually happens — plus first access to the free EngageSuite360 CRM built for construction. Unsubscribe any time.
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