Does QuickBooks do AIA-style billing? What it can and can't do
Short answer: QuickBooks can do progress invoicing, but it does not produce G702/G703-style pay applications, and it does not track retainage out of the box. If your GC requires a pay application with a schedule of values and a continuation sheet, and most commercial GCs do, QuickBooks alone won’t get you there.
What QuickBooks actually does
QuickBooks Online’s progress invoicing lets you invoice a percentage of an estimate. That covers the simplest version of billing a job over time: estimate $100,000, invoice 30% this month, 20% next month.
That is genuinely useful, but it’s a fraction of what a commercial pay application requires.
What a GC’s pay application needs that QuickBooks doesn’t have
- A schedule of values. Commercial billing is broken down line by line, rough-in, panels, fixtures, each with its own scheduled value, previous billings, and percent complete. QuickBooks has no SOV concept.
- A continuation sheet. The line-by-line breakdown (the G703-style part) with columns for previous applications, work this period, stored materials, total completed, percent, balance to finish, and retainage.
- Retainage. Most commercial contracts hold 5–10% of every payment. QuickBooks has no native retainage handling, you’d track “retainage receivable” with manual journal entries, and most small subs simply lose sight of it.
- Carryforward math. This month’s “previous applications” column must exactly equal what was certified before. Get it a cent wrong and the pay app comes back rejected.
The workarounds people use
- Excel next to QuickBooks. The most common setup: pay apps live in a spreadsheet, and a summary invoice goes into QuickBooks for accounting. Works, but the spreadsheet math is on you, and one formula overwrite can cost a billing cycle. (This is exactly why we made a free template with locked, verified formulas.)
- A billing tool that syncs to QuickBooks. Purpose-built pay-app software produces the G702/G703-style documents and pushes the invoice into QuickBooks for accounting. This is the category Misthora is being built in.
Bottom line
Keep QuickBooks for what it’s good at, accounting. Do your pay applications in something that understands schedules of values and retainage, and make sure the two talk to each other so nothing is entered twice.