Resolve payment exceptions before balances grow.
Failed installment payments are noticed late.
Est. deploy 4–6 weeksSee the walkthrough
Back Office & Finance · Construction
Reconcile pay applications before submission.
Retainage and progress percentages create avoidable rework.
For: Project accountants and the team responsible for back office & finance in construction.
01 · The outcome
What good looks like.
The team has a reviewed pay-application exception checklist, with source evidence and an explicit approval before any external action. Track pay applications returned for administrative errors against a baseline; do not assume automation improves it.
A connected workflow that uses schedule of values, approved progress, prior billing, and retainage terms to check arithmetic deterministically and flag unsupported progress or duplicate billing. It produces a reviewed pay-application exception checklist.
Where AI helps, and where a person decides.
AI can check arithmetic deterministically and flag unsupported progress or duplicate billing. It drafts and organizes; it does not authorize spending, commitments, clinical decisions or customer communication. The project accountant verifies the source facts and approves the final action.
Project accountant is accountable. People approve customer-facing, sensitive, financial, and legally binding actions.
- Project accountant: Capture the source and scope
- Project accountant: Review the proposed outcome
- Project accountant: Release only the approved version
- Project accountant: Check the result and exceptions
A named person approves customer-facing messages, spending, record changes and binding commitments before release. Pre-approved scripts are versioned; exceptions stop for review.
02 · The handoffs
How the work moves.
Every handoff has an owner. Select a step to open or close its detail.
Start when: A monthly pay application is drafted. Connect only schedule of values, approved progress, prior billing, and retainage terms. The project accountant confirms the request is authorized and in scope.
Ready when: The source reference, permissions and accountable owner are recorded.
Use the authorized records to check arithmetic deterministically and flag unsupported progress or duplicate billing. Preserve the original language alongside the draft and label uncertain fields.
Ready when: Each proposed fact links back to a source, and missing information is visible.
Check a reviewed pay-application exception checklist against the original records and current policy. Correct errors and escalate exceptions to the qualified specialist; do not auto-approve.
Ready when: Project accountant has recorded approval or a reason to hold the item.
After explicit approval, save a reviewed pay-application exception checklist in the system of record. Send only approved messages to verified recipients. Record the version and prevent duplicate delivery.
Ready when: The approved record is saved; any delivery is confirmed or placed in the retry queue.
Review pay applications returned for administrative errors each week, sample completed records for quality, and resolve held items. Change the rules only after reviewing actual errors and staff feedback.
Ready when: Exceptions have owners, the metric has a baseline, and corrective actions are assigned.
Sample record.
$ david run --workflow=construction-pay-application
ILLUSTRATIVE RECORD / NOT LIVE CUSTOMER DATA
- Example
- Illustrative only — not a real client record
- Reference
- CONSTRUCTION-PAY-APPLICA-DEMO-001
- Trigger
- A monthly pay application is drafted.
- Owner
- Project accountant
- Prepared output
- a reviewed pay-application exception checklist
- Review status
- Awaiting human approval — no external action taken
- Missing information
- Owner to verify source completeness
- Measure
- Pay applications returned for administrative errors
Start with your tools.
Connect Procore, QuickBooks, Microsoft 365 through approved APIs or controlled exports. Map record identifiers first; test permissions and field updates in a sandbox. Vendor names describe possible connections, not a guarantee of an available integration or license.
When things go wrong.
- A named person approves customer-facing messages, spending, record changes and binding commitments before release. Pre-approved scripts are versioned; exceptions stop for review.
- Use only authorized sources and role-based access. Keep an audit trail of source records, drafts, approvals and delivery status; deduplicate retries.
- If an integration fails, a source is missing or confidence is low, pause the action and assign the original request to the accountable owner.
Try this week / no DAVID required
A useful first step.
This week, have your project accountant time five examples of this work. Use redacted copies of schedule of values, approved progress, prior billing, and retainage terms to make a reviewed pay-application exception checklist manually, then list which fields required judgment.
What to measure.
- Pay applications returned for administrative errors
- Minutes of human handling per completed item
- Drafts needing substantive correction
- Exceptions unresolved beyond the agreed review window
Estimate your time back.
20.8
$11,232
03 · More workflows to consider
Related workflows.
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