Billing automation for contractors: pay apps, lien waivers and sub payments that assemble themselves before the 25th
Every month your office rebuilds the same package by hand. G702 and G703 against a schedule of values that lives in two places. Retention worked out twice. We build that assembly around Sage, Foundation, Viewpoint, Procore, QuickBooks or whatever you run.
What you get
3 things that decide this
- 01Pay apps that build themselves from approved quantities against your schedule of values, with retention calculated and the backup attached, so your controller reviews a package instead of rebuilding one.
- 02Lien waivers requested from every tier in the conditional or unconditional form that state requires, chased until they land, and tracked against the payment they belong to.
- 03A sub and vendor portal that collects COIs, W-9s and certifications, watches expiry dates, and gates payment on a clean file. Nothing releases money except a person at your AP desk.
From the schedule of values to the paid sub to the number your CFO reads
These three stations are the month your office closes. Pick your platform to see what each one writes back; Sage Intacct Construction, Viewpoint Vista, CMiC, Autodesk Build, QuickBooks or whatever you run follow the same pattern, to the depth their access model allows.
Station 01 · The pay app and the lien waivers
- Today
- Every twenty-fifth, someone rebuilds G702 and G703 by hand against the schedule of values, then emails every sub for a waiver and tracks the replies in a spreadsheet.
- What we automate
- Your pay app assembles from approved quantities against your SOV with retention calculated, and waiver requests go out to every tier with the right conditional or unconditional form for that state, chased until they land.
- What stays human
- Your controller reviews and signs the pay app. Nothing is submitted to an owner or an architect by software.
Writes to ProcorePay-app and SOV records with the waiver status attached.
Station 02 · Sub payments and compliance
- Today
- COIs expire quietly, W-9s go missing, and payments are held against paperwork that nobody is tracking, so the sub phones your AP clerk instead.
- What we automate
- A sub and vendor portal that collects COIs, W-9s, waivers and certifications, checks expiry dates, gates payment until the file is clean, and shows each sub exactly what's missing without a phone call. This is the shape we built for WorkMateAI.
- What stays human
- Your AP clerk releases every payment. It gates and evidences; it never moves money on its own.
Writes to ProcoreCompliance and vendor records with document status attached.
Station 03 · Job cost and WIP
- Today
- Your CFO rebuilds job cost, WIP and over-under billing in a spreadsheet from the ERP and the field app, and the number is a month old by the time anyone reads it.
- What we automate
- Read-only dashboards across the ERP, the field app and the schedule: cost against budget by cost code, WIP, over and under billing, cash by project, and the fade on a job while there's still time to act.
- What stays human
- Your controller and CFO own the accounting. We read from the ERP and present; we never post to it.
Writes to ProcoreProject financial data read for the dashboard, nothing written back.
Before these come the daily report and the T&M ticket. Our construction hub walks the whole chain.
Four workflows we automate, and what each one plugs into
Pay-app assembly from approved quantities and your SOV
G702 and G703 come out of the same numbers every month, and someone still types them. We assemble the application from approved quantities against your schedule of values, calculate retention, attach the backup, and hand your controller a package to check. A person signs it, and a person sends it to the owner or the architect.
How to automate AIA billing and pay apps →
Lien-waiver collection and tracking, conditional and unconditional
Whether a waiver is conditional or unconditional, who has to sign it, and what it must say all change at the state line. We put jurisdiction on the project record rather than in code, request the right form from every tier, chase the ones outstanding, and track each waiver against the payment it belongs to.
How to automate AIA billing and pay apps →
A sub portal where compliance gates the payment
COIs expire, W-9s go missing, and your AP clerk finds out when a sub calls. We build a portal that collects the documents, watches the expiry dates, gates payment on a clean file, and shows each sub what's missing. WorkMateAI runs held payments this way, and TankAware's vendor portal is the same idea for a site operator.
WorkMateAI: contracts, held payments, disputes →
WIP and over-under billing dashboards, read-only
Your CFO shouldn't be rebuilding WIP in Excel from an ERP that already holds the data. We build read-only views across Sage, Foundation, Viewpoint or whatever you run: cost against budget by cost code, over and under billing, cash by project, and the fade on a job while there's still time to do something about it.
Custom software for contractors →
Sage, Foundation, Procore and the waiver services each own a piece. None of them owns your month.
Your ERP knows the contract and the retention. Your project platform knows the approved quantities. A waiver service knows the forms. Your AP ledger knows who's been paid. Contractors describe the same month to us anyway, because nobody owns the joins between those four. So a person becomes the integration, and that person is usually your controller in the last week of every month.
We build the joins, to what your account actually exposes. Sage 300 CRE, Sage Intacct Construction, Foundation and Viewpoint Vista each have their own routes, some gated by plan or partner status. Procore runs a developer programme and a marketplace. We confirm what's really available on your contract during the audit, never on a call. Where access stops, your office gets a reviewed queue it accepts with one click.
Two things we won't do. We won't move money, and we won't post to your ledger. The book of record stays where your accountant expects to find it.
- 01Pay-app, waiver and compliance status written back to the depth your account exposes.
- 02Your ERP stays the book of record. We read job cost and WIP; we never post to it.
- 03Where the API stops, a reviewed queue your office accepts with one click, not a retype.
Jurisdiction decides the rules, the record has to survive a dispute, and nothing gets paid without the paperwork and a person
Construction software sits under rules that change at the state line: lien and retention law, prompt-payment statutes, what a lien waiver has to say and when it's conditional, who can sign a T&M ticket. And the argument about the work arrives long after the work, so the site record has to survive it: who was there, what was done, what the weather was, what the photo shows, who signed. So every build starts with a one-page map of what the software records, what it only proposes, and where a person signs.
What follows is simple to state, and we put it in writing. Field records are timestamped, photo-backed and immutable, with a gap shown as a gap. Pay apps, change orders and sub payments are approved by the person who owns them; the software assembles and chases, it doesn't release money. Jurisdiction is a field on the project, not an assumption in the code. And every automated touch is logged so an auditor, an owner's rep or a lawyer can read what happened, and when.
- 01Pay apps, change orders and payments released by a person; the software assembles, routes and chases.
- 02Field records immutable and gap-honest, offline-first, with jurisdiction as a project field.
- 03Retention, waiver form and prompt-payment timing come from the project's jurisdiction, never from an assumption baked into the code.
“They will treat your vision like their own and build it that way.”
Ron Klabunde · Founder, SmartREI ↗
“TankAware has revolutionized how we manage petroleum sites. The real-time data and automation have exceeded expectations.”
Blake Sutherland · President, Sutherland Excavating Ltd.
Some of the systems we have shipped
- AuditOne month of billing, traced end to end: the pay app, the waivers, the sub payments and the WIP report, and how much of it a person retyped. You keep the written map either way.
- DiagnoseWe map the path into your ERP, your field app and accounting, and sit with a super and your billing desk for an afternoon.
- BuildFixed price from the diagnostic. Tested on your real projects, real pay apps and real tickets, offline-first, under NDA.
- RunMonitoring, a named engineer, and the first two months of maintenance free.
Best fit: a contractor with several active projects, a field-to-office gap you can feel at month end, and systems you've outgrown in places. Not a fit yet: a two-person remodeler who needs an estimating app, and we'll say so. You can stop after any stage; the audit note is yours either way.
Before you book
01Will this replace Sage, Foundation or whatever we run for accounting?+
No. Your ERP stays the book of record, and we'd argue against changing that. We read job cost, contracts and retention from it and present them, and we assemble the pay app and the waiver package around it. Posting stays with your accounting team. If your ERP already produces something you're paying for and not using, the audit note says so and you keep your money.
02Can software send our pay applications?+
It assembles them. Your controller reviews and signs, and a person submits to the owner or the architect. Same rule on the other side: the portal gates a sub's payment on a clean file and shows what's missing, and your AP clerk releases the money. We write that down before the build rather than leaving it as a setting somebody can flip, and every automated touch is logged.
03We work in several states. Do lien waivers break this?+
They're the reason jurisdiction goes on the project record rather than into code. Whether a waiver is conditional or unconditional, who signs it, what it must say and how prompt-payment timing runs all change at the state line. We store those values per project and request the right form per tier. Nothing here is legal advice; your counsel decides what you owe, and we build the system that produces the evidence.
04How does a sub actually use the portal?+
They log in and see one list: what's on file, what's expired, and what's blocking the payment they're waiting for. That's most of the phone calls your AP clerk fields every week. Documents get collected once and reused across jobs, expiry dates are watched rather than remembered, and a sub who fixes their file sees the block clear without ringing anyone.
05We're a sub sending pay apps up, not down. Does this fit?+
Yes, and it's often the sharper pain. You're producing the waiver and the billing package for several GCs, each wanting a different format in a different portal, and your office retypes the same job three times. We map that in the audit and build the assembly once, so a single approved set of quantities feeds whichever format each GC insists on.
06Can you integrate with Procore, Buildertrend, Sage or Foundation?+
To the depth your account exposes, confirmed during the audit rather than promised on a call. Procore runs a developer programme and a marketplace, Buildertrend publishes an API, and Sage, Foundation and Viewpoint each have their own routes, some gated by plan or partner status. Where access stops, we build a reviewed queue your office accepts with one click instead of retyping the package.
07What does the free audit cover on the billing side?+
One month, traced end to end. How the pay app gets built and who touches it. Where the schedule of values actually lives, and whether two copies disagree. How waivers are requested, chased and stored. What holds a sub payment, and who knows it's held. Then how your WIP and over-under billing numbers get made. You keep the written map whether or not we work together.
A senior engineer, not a sales rep
Abdul Basit founded Hashlogics in 2017, and the team runs from Lahore with a US LLC. Clients rate the work 5.0 on Clutch, and in 2026 it was named Best AI-Native Software House of the Year at TechNova. WorkMateAI, the trust-and-payments system for an Australian trades marketplace, and TankAware, the offline field-records platform for a petroleum operator in Canada, are two of the systems we built and can show you.
Your audit call is with an engineer who has read daily reports, pay apps and job-cost reports like yours. Bring last month's numbers if you have them, and we'll work from those.
- NDA before the first conversation.
- No pitch on the call. A note you could hand to another firm.
- Fixed price after the diagnostic, so the number isn't a guess.
Go deeper
- AI, automation and custom software for construction →Our whole chain, from the bid invitation to the WIP report.
- Field-to-office automation for contractors →What happens before the pay app: daily reports, tickets and change orders.
- Custom software for contractors →Bids, submittals and RFIs, integration, and the dashboards nobody sells.
- How to automate AIA billing and pay apps →G702, G703, your SOV and where a person still signs.
- Invoices, permits and inspections: the paperwork worth automating first →Where to start when everything in your office is manual.
- Best construction management software for mid-size contractors →Real platforms, ranked, with us last as the layer on top.
- WorkMateAI: contracts, held payments and disputes →Where the held-payment and compliance shape came from.
- AI agents →Our service behind the chasing and the document work.
