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Applications for payment

Assembled from the
work itself.

Most applications are put together by hand every month from a tender document, a folder of variation instructions and last month's spreadsheet. Unibuild holds them against the project, records what came back and what was retained, and shows the outstanding position without anybody reconciling anything.

Discuss your payment cycle → Where the measure comes from
one ledger per project retention accumulated cash allocated line by line ageing by manager
Where the month end goes

Assembled by hand, from four
sources, by one person who
cannot take that week off.

Day one
Somebody rebuilds the measure from the tender, the diary, a folder of instructions and last month's file.
≈ 3 days
The variation from week two
Agreed verbally on site. It never appears on an application, and surfaces at final account as an argument.
Written off
Or worse
The same variation gets claimed twice in consecutive applications, because nothing tracks what was billed.
Credibility
Retention
Half should have come back at practical completion. Nobody asked. It is still with the client two years later.
Cash stuck
The bank
One transfer arrives covering three applications. It gets applied to the oldest. The aged position is fiction within two months.
Unreliable
Nobody chases
Because assembling the evidence to chase with takes half a day, and the person who could do it is doing the application.
Debt ages
The mechanism Build the application from work already measured and signed The month end becomes assembly
What is in the module

Six things the ledger does,
and does properly.

One ledger
per project

01

Applications and receipts in one list, in date order, with total requested, total received, retention held and total outstanding across the top.

  • Numbered in the project's own sequence
  • The first application is recognised as the first
  • No question which version was issued
  • A branded A4 application document per entry
A list, not a folder of filesLive

Priced from
the tender

02

Where the project was quoted through the platform, the works schedule draws on the priced sections of that quotation with their tendered values.

  • The client sees a structure matching the tender
  • The valuation cannot drift away from what was priced
  • Your client's quantity surveyor and order number on the face
  • Custom lines where the job needs them
Starts from what was pricedLive

Cash allocated
properly

03

One receipt split across the applications it actually covers, with every open application and its live balance on screen and the unallocated figure updating as you type.

  • The mechanism a quantity surveyor recognises instantly
  • The outstanding position stays true
  • Remittance advice attached to the receipt
  • Rather than drifting within two months
Split at the point of entryLive

Retention
that adds up

04

Retention withheld is captured against the receipt it came off, so the cumulative figure held is arithmetic rather than archaeology.

  • Released through a dedicated retention application
  • Which then drops out of the running total
  • So the same retention cannot be claimed twice
  • Shown separately in the ageing
Recorded, and accumulatedLive

The position
at any date

05

Gross applied and gross balance are calculated as at each row's own date rather than only as at today.

  • Read where the project stood in March
  • Without rebuilding it
  • Applications and receipts interleaved
  • Which is the statement a client's QS asks for
History, not just todayLive

Ageing with
names on it

06

Outstanding application value bucketed into current, thirty, sixty, ninety and one hundred and twenty plus days, grouped by the manager responsible.

  • Chasing becomes a list rather than a feeling
  • Turnover by manager over any period
  • Correspondence logged against the project
  • The next conversation starts from the last one
Directed, not undirectedLive
The most important thing on this page

The Construction Act payment
mechanism runs one way,
and we are not going to
bury that in a footnote.

This is the question a main contractor should ask about any system claiming to handle applications, so here is the answer before you ask it.

What is built, on the payable side
The subcontract order the platform issues carries a compliant payment mechanism as printed contract terms: the application date as the due date, a final date for payment 35 days after it, a Payment Notice required within 10 days of an application, a Pay Less Notice permitted not less than 2 days before the final date, interest at 4% over Bank of England base rate on late payment, and an adjudication route. Because the order, the variation, the invoice and the payment are all dated records against one order number, the trail behind those notices is reconstructable.
What is not built, on the receivable side
There is no field, record or document for a due date, a final date for payment, a payment notice, a pay less notice or a notified sum against your own client. An application carries a valuation date and a total. A business using Unibuild to raise applications would still track its own notice dates and any notices received outside the system today.
What that means practically
If a pay less notice arrives four days before the final date for payment and knocks a five figure sum off, the platform holds the application and the evidence behind it, and it does not hold the notice, the dates or the notified sum. You would manage that part elsewhere.
Why we think this is a strong position rather than a weak one
Because the framework is plainly understood: it is written into the deed the platform already issues. Building it on the receivable side is an extension of something proven rather than a new design, and for a main contractor or fit-out firm it is usually the first thing worth adding. We would rather tell you this on a public page than have a quantity surveyor find it in the second demonstration.
Put plainly You can pay your supply chain provably. Serving notices to your client is scoped work Priced honestly, at the start
The month end, in order

Six steps, and nobody
rebuilds anything.

  1. 01

    Already measured

    Weekly, on siteClient signedPhotographed
  2. 02

    Assembled

    Tendered sectionsApproved variationsMarked as billed
  3. 03

    Issued

    Branded A4Client QS namedTheir order number on it
  4. 04

    Retained

    Withheld against the receiptCumulative balanceReleased with a flag
  5. 05

    Received

    One paymentSeveral applicationsUnallocated shown live
  6. 06

    Chased

    Aged in bandsGrouped by managerCorrespondence logged
What it does not do

Five things, stated plainly,
because a quantity surveyor
will find every one of them.

01
No payment notices to your client
Covered in full in its own section above rather than hidden here. The Construction Act mechanism is implemented on the payable side as contract wording, and the receivable side is a defined extension.
02
Retention is recorded, not calculated contractually
Unibuild records the retention your client actually withheld against each payment, accumulates it, and lets you claim it back through a dedicated retention application which then drops out of the running total. What it does not do is hold a contractual retention percentage against a project and deduct it automatically, or diarise the release of the first and second moieties. If your contracts need that, it is defined development and we would scope it rather than pretend.
03
Variations do not yet flow in automatically
The structure for bringing approved variations into an application exists, including the protection against the same variation being claimed twice, which is the part most spreadsheets get wrong. In its current state that route is wired to an older variation record and is not exposed in the live form, so variations recorded against the project do not yet flow through. Reconnecting it is contained work and it is on the list. We would rather tell you than let you find it in month two.
04
Nothing chases an overdue application
The ageing report shows you what is old, and you have to go and look at it. There is no alert and no escalation from this module. The reminders engine exists elsewhere in the platform and does send scheduled emails, so joining the two is straightforward work with an obvious cash flow benefit, and it is not done today.
05
Your client cannot see the ledger
The client portal shows projects, documents, certificates and asset registers, not your application ledger or your outstanding position. Most contractors prefer it that way. If you want a client facing view of certified value, it can be built and scoped, and it is a deliberate decision rather than an oversight.

The ledger, the allocation and the retention accumulation are proven in a business that has applied for payment this way since 2016. These five are the honest boundary.

Questions

The two a fit-out firm
always asks, and four more.

Does it deal with payment notices and pay less notices?+
Not on the receivable side, and this is the honest answer to the most important question you could ask about this module. Unibuild holds the application, the valuation date, the value, the receipt and the retention. It does not hold the due date, the final date for payment, or records of notices served or received against your own client. What is interesting is that the platform already sets out a compliant payment mechanism in the subcontract deed it issues, so the framework is understood; it simply has not been built on the receivable side. For a main contractor that is usually the first thing worth adding, and we would treat it as early tailoring rather than a roadmap item.
Does it handle retention?+
Yes, and you should know exactly how. Unibuild records the retention your client actually withheld against each payment, accumulates it into a running balance, shows it separately in the aged debt report, and lets you claim it back through a dedicated retention application which is then excluded from the running figure so it cannot be claimed twice. What it does not do today is hold a contractual percentage against a project and deduct it automatically, or diarise the release of the first and second moieties. If you carry meaningful retention, that difference matters and it is scoped work.
How does the application actually get built?+
From work that already exists in the system. Where the project was quoted through the platform, the works schedule draws on the priced sections of that quotation with their tendered values, so the client sees a billing structure matching the tender. The measured element comes from valuations your site captured and your client signed. The commercial team is assembling rather than reconstructing, which is the difference between three days and an afternoon.
One payment arrives covering four applications. What happens?+
The allocation screen shows every open application with its live balance and lets you type an allocation against each, with the unallocated figure updating as you go. This is the specific mechanism that keeps the outstanding position true when a client pays in lumps, which they always do. Without it, cash gets applied to whichever application is oldest and the aged position becomes guesswork within two months.
Will it tell us when an application is overdue?+
Not at present. Nothing in this module sends a notification. The ageing report will show you what is old, bucketed and grouped by the manager responsible, but somebody has to open it. The reminders engine elsewhere in the platform does send scheduled emails for certificates, insurances and service dates, so joining the two is straightforward work with an obvious cash flow benefit.
How proven is this, honestly?+
The ledger half is proven in the site services deployment, where the full engine including retention, aged debt by manager, turnover and statements of account has been running since 2016. In the construction deployment it holds only a handful of records, because that business assembles most of its valuation work elsewhere. So we would demonstrate this in the deployment where it carries a decade of use, and we are collecting the counted volumes for that system properly rather than quoting the other one's numbers against a capability it barely uses.
Next step

Bring us your
worst month end.

The point The mechanics are built. The commercial layer on top of them is what we would scope Which is exactly what this engagement is for
Discuss your payment cycle → The cost side of the same job
Phone · UK hours
+44 7587 557546
Email
[email protected]
Where the measure comes from
Rate valuations
Demo calendar
unibuild.co.uk/demo