AIA Billing Night: How G702/G703 Processing Consumed Your Weekend and What to Do About It

It is the last Thursday of the month. For most people, this is an ordinary day. For a construction project manager named Karen who runs three active commercial projects for a mid-size GC in Atlanta, this is billing night. And billing night is going to consume her Thursday evening, most of Friday, and a portion of Saturday morning.

I know this because I sat next to Karen through an entire billing cycle as part of a workflow assessment. What I witnessed was not inefficiency — Karen is sharp, organized, and fast. What I witnessed was a process that was designed in an era of carbon paper and typewriters, administered using tools that were not built for it, and held together by the sheer force of one person’s willpower and institutional knowledge.

This is what a single monthly billing cycle looks like, step by step, on one of Karen’s three projects.

Thursday, 5:00 PM: The Collection Phase Begins

Karen’s billing cutoff is the 25th of each month. That means all work performed through the 25th can be included in this month’s pay application. By the 25th, she needs every subcontractor’s pay application in hand, verified, and incorporated into the master billing.

She sent the first reminder email on the 15th — ten days before cutoff. “Monthly pay apps due by the 23rd. Please submit your application reflecting work through the 25th, along with conditional lien waivers for the current period and unconditional lien waivers for the prior period’s payment.”

By the 20th, she has received pay applications from 4 of the 14 subcontractors on this project. The mechanical sub, the electrician, the drywall contractor, and one of the two concrete subs. The other ten have not responded.

She sends a second reminder on the 20th. By the 22nd, she has 9 of 14. She spends Thursday morning on the phone calling the remaining five: the roofer (promises to have it by end of day), the painting sub (did not realize it was due), the fire protection contractor (their office manager is on vacation), the structural steel erector (submitted theirs to the wrong email address two days ago), and the sitework sub (wants to discuss a disputed back-charge before submitting).

By Thursday at 5 PM, she has 12 of 14 applications. The painting sub’s application arrives at 7:30 PM. The fire protection contractor’s application will not arrive until Friday morning.

Friday, 7:00 AM: Verification and Reconciliation

Karen starts verifying each subcontractor’s pay application against her own field observations and the approved Schedule of Values.

The mechanical sub claims 65% complete on the ductwork installation. Karen was on site Tuesday and estimates it at closer to 58%. She calls the mechanical foreman to discuss. They agree on 61% after walking through the building areas where work has been completed. Karen adjusts the number.

The electrician’s pay application includes a line item for a change order that Karen has not seen approved. She checks the change order log — the CO was submitted three weeks ago and is still pending architect review. She cannot bill for unapproved change order work. She removes the line item and calls the electrician’s office to explain why the billing amount is lower than what they submitted.

The drywall contractor’s application references stored materials — $18,000 in drywall board delivered to the site but not yet installed. Karen needs the material invoice and a photo of the stored materials to support billing for stored materials. She emails the drywall contractor requesting both documents.

The sitework sub’s application does not include the retainage adjustment for the phase of work they completed last month. Karen recalculates the retainage release amount and adds it to the master billing.

This verification process takes roughly four hours for one project. Karen has three projects. She will do this for the other two projects on Saturday.

Friday, 1:00 PM: The G703 Update

With verified numbers in hand, Karen updates the G703 Continuation Sheet — the Schedule of Values that tracks every line item of the contract.

This project has 47 line items on the G703, plus 6 approved change orders that were added as supplementary line items. For each line item, Karen enters:

• Work completed this period (the dollar amount of work done in the current billing month)
• Materials presently stored (materials on site or in bonded storage not yet installed)
• Total completed and stored to date (cumulative billing)
• Percentage complete (total billed divided by scheduled value)
• Balance to finish (contract amount minus total billed)
• Retainage (5% of total billed, per the contract terms)

Karen does this in a spreadsheet. Some GCs use Sage’s billing module. Some use Procore’s prime contract billing tool. Karen uses an Excel template because she has used it for twelve years and it has never failed her.

The spreadsheet calculates the G702 summary automatically: total contract value including change orders, total completed and stored to date, retainage held, previous certificates for payment, and the current payment due.

This month’s application: $387,000 net, after deducting $20,368 in retainage and $2.1 million in prior billings.

Friday, 3:00 PM: The Supporting Document Package

The pay application is not just the G702/G703. The architect and owner require a supporting document package that typically includes:

Conditional lien waivers from every subcontractor for the current period’s billing. These state that the sub waives lien rights for work billed in this period, conditional on receiving payment. Karen has waivers from 10 of the 14 subs. She needs to chase the other four.

Unconditional lien waivers from every subcontractor for the prior period’s payment (the payment they received last month). These confirm that the sub was paid and unconditionally waives lien rights for that period. Three subs have not submitted their unconditional waivers because — Karen discovers with two phone calls — they have not actually received last month’s payment yet. The owner’s AP department is running behind.

Stored material documentation. The drywall contractor sent the material invoice but not the photo. Karen emails again. The HVAC sub has $42,000 in equipment stored at their warehouse — Karen needs a photo and a letter confirming the materials are dedicated to this project and stored in a secure location.

Progress photos. Karen selects photos from the job site folder that support the percentage-complete claims in the pay application. She needs photos showing the mechanical rough-in progress, the drywall completion areas, and the exterior envelope status.

Change order backup. For each approved change order billed this period, Karen includes a copy of the executed CO document and any relevant backup (T&M tags, architect direction letters, owner approvals).

Assembling this package takes two hours. Most of that time is spent tracking down lien waivers from subcontractors who treat them as an afterthought.

Saturday, 9:00 AM: The Weekend Tax

Karen is at home with her laptop. She is doing the billing for her second project — another 14 subcontractors, another 52 line items on the G703, another round of verification calls and lien waiver collection. She will finish this project by noon and start the third project after lunch.

Karen’s spouse asks if she is coming to their daughter’s soccer game at 2 PM. Karen says she will try.

This is AIA billing night. It happens every month. It consumes 2-3 days of a skilled project manager’s time per project. For a PM running three projects, that is 6-9 days per month — nearly half the working month — spent on billing administration rather than project management, quality control, or the kind of proactive coordination that actually prevents problems.

And the billing cycle is not even over. After Karen submits the pay applications to the architects on Monday, she will wait 5-10 business days for certification. She will field questions from the architects about specific line items. She will deal with the architect on Project 2 who always disputes the mechanical sub’s percentage-complete claims. She will track whether the certified applications have been forwarded to the owners’ AP departments. And she will start the collection follow-up for pay applications that were certified last month but have not yet resulted in a check.

The Automation That Gets Karen Her Saturdays Back

The monthly billing cycle has three phases that can be substantially automated: collection, compilation, and tracking. The fourth phase — verification of percentage complete — requires human judgment and field knowledge. Automation does not replace the PM’s expertise in reviewing what work has actually been done. It replaces the 60-70% of the billing cycle spent on administrative coordination.

What Sage, QuickBooks, and Procore Handle in Billing

Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate is purpose-built for construction billing. Its Accounts Receivable module handles AIA-format billing, Schedule of Values management, retainage tracking, and integration with the job cost ledger. For contractors using Sage, the G703 update itself is well-handled within the system. The gap is everything around the system — the sub pay app collection, the lien waiver tracking, the supporting document assembly, and the architect certification follow-up all happen outside Sage via email and phone calls.

QuickBooks handles basic invoicing but does not natively support AIA-format billing, Schedules of Values, or retainage tracking. Most contractors using QuickBooks for billing maintain a separate Excel spreadsheet for the G703 and manually enter the billing totals into QuickBooks for accounting purposes. This creates a reconciliation burden and a risk of discrepancy between the billing records (in Excel) and the accounting records (in QuickBooks).

Procore provides a prime contract billing module that handles Schedule of Values, progress billing, and change order integration. For contractors on Procore, the G703 update can be done within the platform, and subcontractor pay apps can be collected through Procore’s subcontractor billing tools. The limitation is subcontractor adoption — the pay app collection workflow only works if the subs actually submit through Procore. For subs who email their pay apps as PDF or Excel attachments (the majority of small subs), the data still needs to be manually entered into Procore.

Buildertrend handles progress billing well for residential builders with its draw schedule and payment tracking features. The workflow is simpler than commercial AIA billing — typically a percentage-based draw schedule rather than a line-by-line Schedule of Values — but the core problem of tracking what has been billed, what has been paid, and what retainage is owed applies equally.

The common gap across all these tools is the connective tissue: the reminders that go out to subs, the tracking of who has submitted and who has not, the collection of lien waivers that every sub treats as an afterthought, and the follow-up with the architect that determines whether you get paid this month or next month. That connective tissue is email-based workflow, and it is precisely the kind of repetitive, deadline-driven, multi-party coordination that automation handles better than humans.

The Monthly Billing Calendar: A Day-in-the-Life View

To understand where automation creates value, here is the monthly billing calendar with and without automation:

Day 1 (15th of month) — Notification:

• Without automation: PM sends reminder email to subs, sometimes forgets a project, sometimes sends it on the 17th because the 15th was busy.
• With automation: System sends personalized reminders to all subs on all projects at 8:00 AM, including project-specific requirements and deadlines.

Day 5 (20th) — First follow-up:

• Without automation: PM realizes some subs have not submitted, starts making phone calls between other tasks.
• With automation: System identifies non-responders and sends follow-up with CC to superintendent. PM receives a dashboard showing submission status.

Day 7 (22nd) — Final follow-up:

• Without automation: PM escalates to superintendent for the last holdouts, makes urgent calls.
• With automation: System sends final urgent reminder. PM focuses only on the 1-2 subs who consistently submit late, instead of chasing all of them.

Day 8-9 (23rd-24th) — Verification:

• Without automation: PM reviews each sub’s application, manually cross-references with field observations and last month’s billing.
• With automation: System flags anomalies (percentage jumps over 15 points, amounts exceeding remaining contract balance) for PM review. PM focuses on the flagged items rather than reviewing every line item.

Day 10 (25th) — Compilation:

• Without automation: PM manually updates G703, assembles supporting documents, identifies missing lien waivers and stored material documentation.
• With automation: System compiles billing data from approved sub applications, generates a checklist of missing documents, and drafts the package summary for PM review.

Day 11-12 (26th-27th) — Submission and tracking:

• Without automation: PM emails completed package to architect, adds a mental note to follow up.
• With automation: System submits package and starts the certification tracking timer. PM receives a notification when the architect opens the submission.

The PM’s time in this automated workflow drops from 2-3 days per project to approximately 4-6 hours per project — most of it spent on the verification step, which is the part that actually requires their expertise. The collection, compilation, and tracking phases — which represent the majority of the manual effort — run on autopilot.

What Karen’s Saturday Looks Like Now

Karen does not do billing on Saturdays anymore. Her billing cycle starts automatically on the 15th. By the 23rd, she has a submission tracking dashboard showing which subs have submitted, which are outstanding, and which submissions have been flagged for review. She spends Thursday afternoon on verification — the part of the process that requires her project knowledge and professional judgment. Friday morning is compilation and submission. Friday afternoon she reviews the second project. Monday morning, the third.

Total billing time: roughly 15 hours per month across three projects, down from 50-plus hours. The quality of the billing is better because Karen is not rushing through verification at 10 PM on Thursday to hit a Friday submission deadline. The submissions are more complete because the automated reminders and follow-ups ensure that subcontractors submit on time — or are flagged early enough that Karen can intervene before the deadline passes.

Karen went to the soccer game. Her daughter scored two goals. Karen did not check her email once.

That is what progress billing automation is actually about. Not replacing the project manager. Not eliminating the AIA forms that the industry relies on. Just removing the 60-70% of the process that consists of chasing paper, entering data, and tracking deadlines — so the people who manage construction projects can spend their time managing construction projects.