How to automate AIA billing?
The pay app is arithmetic over data you already have. The problem is where that data lives.
Answered in short
5 things that decide this
- 01AIA progress billing automates cleanly. G702 and G703 are fixed arithmetic over the schedule of values, percent complete, stored materials and retainage.
- 02The schedule of values must live as data, not as a spreadsheet formatted to look like a G703.
- 03Percent complete should come from field records: daily reports and approved change orders. The pay app then draws on evidence rather than month-end memory.
- 04Retainage, previous billings and change orders are where manual pay apps go wrong. Encoded once, they stop being monthly judgement calls.
- 05The project manager still approves every application. Automation removes the retyping and the arithmetic, not the accountability.
The monthly retype between two systems
At most mid-size general contractors, billing month-end looks the same. The project manager reads progress out of one system or a site notebook, and an admin retypes it into a billing spreadsheet shaped like a G703. Every retype is a chance to disagree with last month's numbers.
Surveys from AGC and Sage show construction firms buying more software while daily habits lag behind. Billing is the lagging edge. Project controls sit in spreadsheets long after scheduling and drawings have moved into software.
A rejected pay app costs a billing cycle. On a project billed monthly, one math error in retainage or prior billings can push cash thirty days to the right.
- Schedule of valuesLine items as data, versioned.
- Field progressDaily reports, photos, quantities.
- Change ordersApproved COs update the SOV.
- Draft G702/G703Retainage and prior billings computed.
- PM approvalA person signs every application.
- Submit and reconcilePayment matched back to the app.
Steps one to four are software. Step five is deliberately not.
Start from the systems the GC already runs
This is integration work more than product work. Progress data usually exists in Procore, a field app, or daily reports. Accounting lives in Sage, Foundation or QuickBooks. The automation is the layer between them. One source of truth for the SOV, and a generator that drafts the pay app plus the lien waiver package that travels with it.
Two things break the approach: owner-mandated billing portals with their own formats, and projects where the SOV gets renegotiated mid-stream. The system has to export to whatever the owner demands. SOV versions must be traceable, or the automation creates disputes instead of preventing them.
Start with one project and run the generated application alongside the manual one for a cycle. Agreement between the two is the go-live test.
Related questions
01Does this replace our accounting software?+
No. The generator reads project data and writes pay apps and journal entries into the accounting system you already run. Replacing accounting mid-year is the kind of project that stalls. A billing layer on top of it is integration work, not a migration.
02Can it handle stored materials and retainage variations?+
Yes, and it should be set per contract, because retainage rules vary by owner and by state. Stored materials need backup documents attached to the pay app. Encoding the contract's rules once is what removes the monthly judgement calls.
03What about T&M work on the same project?+
Time-and-materials tickets follow the same pattern with different arithmetic: field capture, rates applied, markup, approval. Firms often automate T&M first because the tickets are smaller and the disputes are more frequent. The two share the field-capture layer.
