Payment applications

What payment applications are for

A payment application (in Bulgarian practice also called „акт“ or „искане за плащане“; in BuildColab always Report / Отчет) records how much of the contracted work was done in a period. It is built on the signed contract: every position of the contract's BoQ is already listed with its contracted quantity and unit price. The company that did the work only enters the quantity for the period. BuildColab multiplies by the contract unit price, keeps the running total, and checks that a fixed-price contract is not billed beyond its quantities.

Every payment application has two sides, taken from the contract:

• The contractor (изпълнител) is the company that receives the contract and does the work. It creates the report, fills in the quantities, attaches documents and submits it.
• The client (възложител) is the company that awarded the contract and pays. It reviews the submitted report and approves it, sends a counter-proposal or rejects it.

A general contractor is usually on both sides at once: it is the contractor in its contract with the investor and the client in its contracts with subcontractors. In the registers, reports where you bill your client have the type Budget (Бюджет); reports where a subcontractor bills you have the type Cost (Разход).

When the subcontractor is a self-managed company that does not use BuildColab, the client records and finalizes the report on its behalf. See External payment applications.

Typical sequence

1. The contract is signed. Reports can only be made on a signed contract. See Contracts: signing, details and history.
2. Learn how statuses, turns, rounds and cumulative quantities work. See How a payment application works.
3. The contractor opens the contract's Reports panel and clicks Create report (Създай отчет). It enters the quantities for the period by hand, imports them from Excel or, as a general contractor, pulls them from its subcontractors' approved reports. It adds remarks and files, picks an assignee and clicks Submit for Approval (Изпрати за одобрение). See Creating and submitting.
4. If work was done that is not in the contract, the contractor adds it to the report as new positions and prices them. See Positions outside the contract.
5. The client gets an e-mail and a notification. It reviews the report and clicks Approve (Одобри), Counter (Насрещно предложение) or Reject (Отхвърли). Counter-proposals go back and forth until one side approves or rejects. The side that sent the last proposal can Withdraw (Оттегли) it. See Reviewing, approving, countering, rejecting.
6. A rejected report can be revised into a new draft. The next period gets a new report.
7. For a self-managed subcontractor, the client records the report itself and finalizes it in one step. See External payment applications.
8. Both sides follow all reports in the project or company register, break them down by resource type in the reports summary and export them to Excel. See Register, summary and exports.

The Reports panel of a contract

1. The Related (Свързани) menu in the action bar of the contract's BoQ holds Reports (Отчети), which opens the panel on the right.
2. The Create report (Създай отчет) button starts a new draft. Only the contractor side sees it, and only on a signed contract.
3. Each card is one report: Report (Отчет) with its number, the status pill, the total, the creation date and the assignee.
4. The Your turn (Вашият ред) or Counterparty's turn (Ред на контрагента) badge on a submitted report shows who has to act next.
5. The Preview (Прегледай) button opens the report.
6. The Report history (История на отчетите) timeline lists every event: created, sent to the client, new quantities proposed, approved, rejected, withdrawn.

Working with BORO

The AI assistant BORO can do the same steps for you in chat: list and open reports, create a draft, fill quantities, add positions outside the contract, attach files, set the assignee, submit, counter, approve, reject or withdraw, record and finalize reports for a self-managed subcontractor, and export a report or the reports summary. In the BORO panel, binding steps such as submitting, approving and finalizing are shown to you as an approval card first by default. See What BORO can do.

Pages in this section

• How a payment application works: the two sides, statuses, turns and rounds, how cumulative quantities and the contract cap work, what approval changes, e-mails and permissions.
• Creating and submitting: the Reports panel, creating a report, entering quantities, Excel import, pulling from subcontractor reports, remarks, files, assignee, submitting, deleting a draft and revising a rejected report.
• Reviewing, approving, countering, rejecting: the client's review, comparing versions, approving, counter-proposals, rejecting with a reason and withdrawing.
• Positions outside the contract: billing extra work in a report, pricing it in the resource analysis and how it joins the contract when the report is approved.
• External payment applications: recording, finalizing and voiding reports for a self-managed subcontractor.
• Register, summary and exports: the project and company report registers, the reports summary by resource type, and the Excel exports.

Common questions

Related

• Contracts: signing, details and history
• Change orders and extensions
• Self-managed subcontractors and self-contracts
• Financial dashboard: committed, certified, margin
• End-to-end: from BoQ to payment