Budget Payment Application

When a billing period is activated, you can create the budget payment application to send to an owner. Payment applications can be generated in the Budget tool.

In this article:

Create a Budget Payment Application
Export Budget Payment Application Reports
Related Articles

Create a Budget Payment Application

Before working with the budget payment applications, make sure that you have managed permissions for this workflow. As a project administrator, set the:

Full Control option for the general contractor
Collaborate option for the owner in the Budget Payment Application column

To create a budget payment application as a general contractor:

Select the Budget tool from the left navigation.
Switch to the Budget Payment Application tab.
Once a billing period is activated, you can click Create Payment Application.
Select the main contract by using the drop-down menu.
Select the correct billing period or use the arrows to navigate between periods.
The budget payment application is created with the Draft status.

After creating a budget payment application, you can add any necessary documents or associated costs. To do that, click View Associated Costs. The details panel opens. In the Associated Costs section, you can adjust your budget payment application before sending it to an owner. You can:

Aggregate cost, which will overwrite the value in the Work Completed or Materials Stored column from associated costs. Learn more about materials in payment applications.

Note: To use this feature in the Budget Payment Application, ensure that all Main Contract schedules of value are linked with budgets.

Note: To learn more about how data aggregation works, see Payment Application Data Aggregation.
Create a new or add existing cost payment application. See the Link Budget and Cost Payment Applications section in the Cost Payment Application article.
Add an existing expense. To learn more, see the Add Expenses to Budget Payment Applications section.
Add a change order.
Use the More menu to detach associated costs.

Tip: You can also update the main contract SOVs at this stage. For example, you can add more budget lines. Make sure that the main contract is unlocked. See the Main Contract article to learn more.

To learn how to add a change order to a budget payment application, see Add Change Orders to Payment Applications.

Create a Budget Payment Application Document

You can generate a document and add it to the budget payment application. The Document Packages in Cost Management article includes detailed step-by-step instructions. It's helpful to collate document package from associated cost payment applications and expenses. What's more, budget payment applications should be associated with contracts before generating the document. Associated contracts allow the sharing of documents.

After adding documents, you can proceed to complete your payment application.

Add Owner, Architect, and Collaborator Details

Before submitting the budget payment application, you can specify contacts in the flyout panel:

Owner Details: Select the owner company and contact.
Architect Details: Select the architect company and contact. These fields inherit from the Main Contract by default.
Additional Collaborators: Add external companies and contacts who should review the payment application.

Tip: Collaborators specified in these sections receive email notifications when the item is submitted. Learn more in Collaborate in Cost Management.

Complete a Budget Payment Application

As a general contractor, after filling out information for your payment application and adding documents and relative attachments, you can click:

Submit and send an email to an owner, architect, and collaborators.
Set as Submitted to change the status without sending a notification. Click Set as Approved when the payment application gets approved. The next step is to click Set as Paid when it's paid. You can learn more about payment application statuses.

When you click Submit, the email is sent to reviewers if an approval workflow is configured. Otherwise, the email is sent to the owner, architect, and additional collaborators specified in the flyout panel.

Note: If you have multiple budget payment application workflows configured based on main contract conditions, the appropriate workflow is automatically selected based on the main contract used in the payment application. Learn more about approval workflows.

The From Previous Applications section in the active billing period is updated after the approval of the application.

Note: The Reject option is not available for budget payment applications. Reviewers should use Revise and include comments if they need to reject an application.

Export Budget Payment Application Reports

You can generate reports for budget payment applications to share information with owners. For detailed instructions on exporting payment reports, including PDF and Excel options, see Export Payment Reports.