Pay Application Guide, Forms & Resources
What a pay application is, how progress billing and retainage work, and an AIA-style application for payment with its G703 continuation sheet.
A pay application is the document a contractor submits to request payment on a progress-billing job. On commercial work it usually arrives as a pair: an application for payment summarizing the contract, the work completed, and the balance due, plus a continuation sheet listing each line item’s scheduled value, work to date, and percentage complete.
The AIA’s G702 and G703 are the standard pair. The official AIA forms are copyrighted, so the equivalent is AIA-style: same structure, same field math, original layout.
The package moves through the same hands on most commercial jobs: the contractor assembles it from the schedule of values and the site records, the architect or the owner’s representative reviews it against the work in place, and the owner pays against the certified amount. Because every application carries the previous payments forward, the pair doubles as a running record of what the job has earned — which is also why the totals have to tie back to the continuation sheet rather than to a separate spreadsheet.
Progress billing and retainage
Progress billing
Instead of one invoice at the end, the contract value is billed in stages as work completes. Each pay application reports work completed to date, less previous payments, less retainage, plus the current amount due. The continuation sheet carries the line-item detail, and the application’s totals are computed from it.
Retainage
A percentage of each progress payment, withheld until the job reaches the contract’s completion threshold — the rate is set by the contract. Retainage has its own notice deadline in Texas: the earlier of 30 days after the claimant’s own contract is completed, terminated, or abandoned, or 30 days after the original contract is terminated or abandoned (§53.057(a-1)).
How retainage is calculated
Retainage is withheld line by line: the contract rate is applied to the work completed and stored in each application, the withheld amount is carried as its own calculated line, and the current payment due is what remains after previous certificates are deducted. The rate is a contract term — 10% is the common commercial default — and the release schedule is a contract term too, often half at substantial completion and the rest at final. Changing the rate or adding a change order re-computes the whole chain, which is why the application tracks retainage separately from the work it was withheld against.
Pay application vs. invoice
An invoice asks for a specific amount; a pay application documents how that amount was earned. The invoice is a single request for payment, while the application carries the contract sum, the approved change orders, the schedule of values, the work in place, the retainage withheld, and the previous payments — a package the owner or architect can check line by line before certifying it. On jobs that require the G702/G703 pair, the invoice usually travels behind the application as the accounting document, not in place of it.
Payment paperwork and lien deadlines by state
The pay application exchange and the lien paperwork travel together — a progress billing dispute becomes a lien question at the next deadline. The lien windows for each state we cover:
Texas
Texas gives retainage its own notice deadline on the 30-day cycle cited above (§53.057(a-1)).
See the Texas rules →California
The 90-day claim window runs from completion; the 20-day preliminary notice still gates the lien.
See the California rules →Florida
The claim of lien runs from final furnishing — the same event that closes out the last pay application.
See the Florida rules →Statute references verified 10/09/2026. Rules change — confirm the current text with the official state source before relying on a date.
Pay applications questions, answered straight.
What is a pay application?
The formal request for payment on a progress-billing construction job. It summarizes the contract amount, the work completed to date, previous payments, retainage, and the amount currently due, backed by a line-item continuation sheet.
What are G702 and G703?
The standard AIA form pair for progress billing: G702 is the application for payment, G703 the continuation sheet. The official AIA forms are copyrighted, so the equivalent is AIA-style with the same structure across the two pages.
What is retainage?
A contract-set percentage withheld from each progress payment until the job nears completion. Texas gives retainage its own notice deadline — the earlier of two 30-day windows measured from the end of the claimant’s contract or of the original contract (§53.057(a-1)).
What is a schedule of values?
The line-item breakdown of the contract sum that the pay application is measured against: one row per trade or phase, each with a scheduled value, and the rows totaling the contract sum to date. The G703 continuation sheet copies those rows, records the work completed against each one, and feeds the totals back to the summary page. A schedule that does not add up to the contract sum to date is a common reason an application gets sent back — the percentages and balances on every row depend on the scheduled values being right in the first place.
Who reviews and certifies a pay application?
On most commercial jobs the contractor prepares it, the architect or the owner’s representative reviews it against the work in place, and the owner pays the certified amount. The review is a document check: do the line items match the schedule of values, does the reported work match what is on site, are the previous certificates deducted, and is retainage applied at the contract rate. The signature block is where the contractor certifies the numbers; the approval is what turns the application into a payment obligation under the contract.
What happens if a pay application goes unpaid?
The application is a payment request, not a lien. When a certified amount goes unpaid, the deadlines that decide what happens next come from the state lien statute rather than from the application — the notice that preserves the right, the deadline to record a claim, and a separate window to enforce it that runs on its own clock. The state pages carry those three windows with statute citations, and the demand letter generator covers the written request that usually comes before any filing.
Pages in this section
State-specific forms and generators
Free forms, generators, and the deadline rules for every state we cover.