Progress payment software
Progress payment software for residential builders
A progress payment run touches the owner, the bank, the certifier, every subcontractor on the stage, and every supplier who delivered to it. Most builders coordinate that across a spreadsheet, a phone, and their own bank balance.
A progress payment looks simple written down: reach the stage, claim it, get paid. In practice one claim sets off a chain of dependent events, and the builder is the only person who can see all of them at once. Evidence has to be gathered from site. The claim has to go to the owner or the owner's lender. A response window runs. Payment lands, or does not. Then the trades who did the work three to six weeks ago have to be paid out of it, in some order, with whatever is left.
Progress payment software is worth having only if it manages that whole chain rather than the invoice at the front of it. Here is what the run involves, what usually goes wrong, and how BuildFair handles each step.
What a progress payment run actually involves
Five things have to happen for one stage payment to reach the people who earned it. Each is a place the run can stall.
Evidence that the stage was reached
Photos, certificates, inspection sign-offs. Gathered after the fact, this is the step that quietly adds a week. Gathered as the work happens, it costs nothing.
A claim the owner or lender can act on
A progress claim that arrives without its evidence attached invites questions, and questions restart the clock. If a construction loan is funding the build, a bank valuation may sit between the claim and the money.
A response window that someone is tracking
Contracts set a period for the owner to pay or dispute, typically fourteen days. State Security of Payment legislation sets its own deadlines on top. Missing either has consequences, and both are usually tracked in someone's head.
Payment into an account, then out again
In the standard arrangement the stage payment lands in the builder's operating account alongside every other job, and leaves it in whatever order that week's obligations demand.
Trades and suppliers paid for that stage
The subcontractors who framed the house did the work weeks before the frame stage payment cleared. The gap between those two dates is the part no contract covers and the builder funds personally.
Where a progress payment run stalls
The most common failure is not a refusal to pay. It is a claim that goes out thin, comes back with a query, and sits for another fortnight while somebody finds the photos. The money was always going to be paid. The delay was manufactured at the point the claim was assembled.
The second is ordering. When one account funds several jobs, the trades on this stage are competing with the trades on somebody else's stage, with supplier accounts that will stop delivering if they age, and with wages. Nobody decides to pay a subcontractor late. The account simply runs out before their turn, and the payment chain pushes them to the back.
The third is scope drift. Work gets done that was never priced, or a variation is agreed on site and never written up. At claim time the numbers do not reconcile against the contract sum, and the whole stage is held up while two parties reconstruct a conversation from months earlier.
How BuildFair runs a progress payment
The same five steps, with the manual coordination taken out of each one.
Evidence is captured as the work happens
Every invoice raised on the project carries geo-tagged photo evidence of the work completed or the materials delivered. By the time a stage is reached, the evidence for it already exists.
The claim is compiled for you
When the builder raises the progress claim, BuildFair gathers the photo evidence already submitted against that stage and sends it with the claim, so the owner is looking at the work and the invoice together.
Approvals are recorded, not remembered
Variations need both builder and owner to approve before they move the contract sum. Nobody can invoice past their quoted value plus approved variations, so the arithmetic still reconciles at stage time.
Funds land in a project account, not an operating account
Progress payments are deposited into the project account held with our banking partner Kobble in the owner's name, so the money for this job is not competing with any other job.
Trades are paid from that account on a clock
Approved subcontractor and supplier invoices are paid from project funds seven days from approval. The builder also draws a fixed weekly overhead amount, set at quote time, so business costs do not depend on when the next stage lands.
What this changes for builder cashflow
The structural problem with staged payments is that costs are continuous and income is lumpy. Trades, materials, and overheads run every week. Payments arrive five or six times across a build. Every builder covers that mismatch somehow, and for most it is personal savings, an overdraft, or supplier credit.
Paying trades and suppliers from the project account, and drawing a fixed weekly overhead from it, closes that gap without changing the contract. The stage schedule stays exactly as negotiated. What changes is which account the outgoings come from between stages, and whether the builder's own balance sheet has to absorb the timing.
One progress payment, two ways
| The current system | On BuildFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Assembling the claim | Photos and certificates gathered after the stage is reached, often from several phones. | Evidence attached to every invoice as the work happens, compiled into the claim automatically. |
| Owner review | An invoice, then questions, then a wait while the answers are found. | The claim and the evidence for it arrive together, so the review is about the work rather than the paperwork. |
| Where the payment lands | The builder's operating account, pooled with every other job. | The project account held with our banking partner Kobble, in the owner's name. |
| Order trades get paid in | Whatever that week's cashflow allows, with the most persistent creditor first. | Seven days from invoice approval, from funds already set aside for the project. |
| Builder overheads between stages | Funded personally until the next stage payment clears. | A fixed weekly draw from the project account, set at quote time and locked once the owner accepts. |
| Claim limits | Checked manually against the contract, if checked at all. | Enforced. Quoted value plus approved variations is a hard ceiling on what anyone can invoice. |
How BuildFair changes this
Managing a residential build? See how BuildFair manages construction payments, so owners, builders, and trades all work from the same record of what has been claimed, approved, and paid.
For builders
Run jobs without bankrolling them out of your own account
How BuildFair works
The payment flow end to end, from deposit to final release
Construction payment software
What payment software actually has to do on a residential job
Pricing
Role-based plans with builder pricing tied to annual project count
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Does this change my contract's payment schedule?
No. The stage schedule, the percentages, and the timing stay exactly as you negotiated them. What changes is which account the money sits in between stages and how it is released to trades. See payment schedule explained for how the ladder itself is built.
Does it work if the build is funded by a construction loan?
Yes. Lender drawdowns are deposited into the project account in the same way an owner deposit is. The lender's own valuation and drawdown process runs as it normally would. See bank drawdown process.
How quickly do subcontractors get paid?
Seven days from approval of their invoice, paid from the project account. Approval requires the geo-tagged photo evidence to be attached, so the clock starts once the work is evidenced rather than once cashflow allows.
What stops a subcontractor over-claiming?
A hard cap. Nobody can invoice more than their quoted value plus variations that both builder and owner have approved. The cap is enforced by the platform rather than by whoever is checking invoices that week.
Does this replace Security of Payment rights?
No. Your statutory rights under state Security of Payment legislation are unaffected. BuildFair works upstream of them, to make the disputes that trigger a payment claim less likely to arise.
Run your next stage through it
Bring the stage schedule from a live job and we will walk the whole run through: evidence, claim, approval, release, and where your cash gaps currently land. Book a call, or see BuildFair pricing plans first.
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