Guides for subcontractors
How progress billing actually works, written for the person doing it: retainage, stored materials, change orders, short payments, GC forms, the books, and the job record.
- 1. Retainage: the money you wait for, and how to keep track of it
How retainage works on a G702 pay application, why it's held back, and how to track it from the first pay app to the final release.
- 2. Schedule of values: how to set it up so every pay app ties out
What a schedule of values is, how it ties to the contract sum on a G702, and how to set up the lines so every monthly pay app is correct from the first one.
- 3. Stored materials on a G702: which box is which, and when the money moves
What stored materials mean on a G702/G703, how they differ from installed work, and when the billed amount should move into completed work.
- 4. Change orders: how to bill new work without losing the original contract
How a change order moves through a G702, the difference between a new-work line and a price change, and how to keep the original contract clean.
- 5. When the GC pays less than you billed
What to do when a GC certifies less than you billed or holds part of a payment, how a short payment carries forward, and how to keep the difference from going missing.
- 6. Your GC's form isn't the standard form
Why some GCs want their own pay application form, what a template has to capture to be right, and how to check a template before it goes out.
- 7. Getting pay apps into your books: the QuickBooks file and the CSV
How to get a finished pay app into your accounting, why we export a QuickBooks Online file and a plain CSV, and what to watch for on import.
- 8. Halfway through a job, how did we get here? (the job record)
A job's money changes over months. A job record gives you one page that shows every billing change, who recorded it, and when, so you can answer "how did we get here?" without digging through email.
- 9. Not every job has a GC: billing a client directly
Some subcontractors work directly for homeowners and private clients, with no general contractor in between. How to set up a private job, bill it on a progress schedule, and keep the same records as a GC job.
- 10. G702 and G703 explained, line by line
What each line of the G702 and G703 means, how retainage and stored materials work, and the mistakes that get a pay app sent back. Worked example included.