AIA billing,
without the headache.

The short answer

On most commercial jobs you don't send an invoice — you submit a payment application ("pay app") showing how much of the job is complete and how much you're owed for the period. The industry-standard format comes from the American Institute of Architects: the G702 (the one-page summary you sign) and the G703 (the line-by-line detail behind it). Owner or architect reviews it, certifies it, and payment follows — usually 30 days later.

Getting the pay app right isn't paperwork; it's how the job produces cash. A rejected or late pay app doesn't just delay one check — it pushes you into the next month's billing cycle, so a single sloppy submission can cost 30–60 days of cash on the whole month's work.

The three pieces

The schedule of values (SOV)

Before the first pay app, the job's contract price gets broken into line items — sitework, concrete, framing, electrical rough-in, and so on — each with a dollar value. That's the schedule of values, and it becomes the skeleton of every pay app on the job. How you structure it matters: front-loading value into early line items (within reason) improves early cash flow; a lazy SOV with a few giant lines invites arguments about percent complete on every single draw.

The G703 — continuation sheet

Each period, every SOV line gets updated: work completed in prior periods, work completed this period, materials stored on site, total completed to date, and the percent complete that implies. The G703 does the arithmetic line by line and rolls it up.

The G702 — application and certificate for payment

The summary page: total completed and stored to date, minus retainage, minus everything you've billed before, equals current payment due. You sign it (often notarized), the architect or owner certifies it, and it becomes the basis for the check.

How the math flows

Every number ties to the G703 detail — and to your books, if your billing process is honest.

The mistakes that delay your money

• Percent complete nobody can defend. If the G703 says framing is 80% done and the architect's site walk says 60%, the whole application stalls. Tie claimed progress to something real — your cost-based percent complete is a good sanity check.
• Unapproved change orders billed as if approved. Instant rejection on most jobs. Track pending change orders separately and chase approval before billing — this is also the classic source of hidden under-billing.
• Stored materials without backup. Billing for materials on site usually requires invoices and sometimes photos or bills of sale. Missing backup = deleted line.
• Lien waiver mix-ups. Most GCs require a conditional waiver with the application and an unconditional one after payment. Signing the wrong one — or an unconditional waiver before the check clears — is a mistake you only make once.
• Missing the billing deadline. Most contracts set a monthly cutoff (the 20th, the 25th). Miss it and the entire month's work waits a full extra cycle for payment.
• Pay apps that don't tie to the books. When billings live in spreadsheets and never reconcile to your accounting system, your WIP schedule and revenue are fiction — and cleanup is expensive.

Can this be automated?

Largely, yes. Platforms like Adaptive generate draw-ready pay applications from your schedule of values and sync them to QuickBooks, so billed-to-date, retainage, and revenue stay consistent between your pay apps and your books. Our Blackline Command AR agent takes it a step further — handling AIA billing and AR processing inside Adaptive automatically, so the monthly draw goes out on time without anyone re-typing a G703 at 9 p.m. on deadline day.