Progress claims that do not restart the argument

An invoice for a finished job asks one question: will you pay this. A progress claim asks a harder one. Has the stage you are claiming actually arrived?

The person reading it is usually looking for a reason to hold it, and a claim that makes that easy will be held.

Claim against the stages in the contract, not the work you did

The contract sets out the stages and what each is worth. A claim that reorganises them into the way the site actually ran gives the reader something to reconcile before they can approve anything.

The contract's own stage names and amounts are the ones to use. Where you have done work that crosses two stages, claim the stage that is complete and leave the other until it is.

Show the arithmetic from the start of the job

Every claim should carry the running totals, because the reader's real question is not what this claim is worth but where the job now stands.

1. Contract sum, including every variation approved so far.
2. Claimed to date, the total of the previous claims.
3. This claim, the stage or stages now complete.
4. Retention held, the amount withheld on this claim and in total.
5. Balance to complete, what is left in the contract after this one.

Those five lines answer most of the questions that otherwise arrive by email a week later. A week later is a week without payment.

Variations are the usual reason a claim is short paid

A variation claimed inside a stage, with no approval attached, is the single most common cause of a claim being cut. The assessor cannot approve what they cannot trace, so they approve the stage and drop the variation.

Variations stay on their own numbered lines, each pointing at the written instruction behind it. A builder's variations register covers how to record them when they arrive, which is the only time the detail is available.

The evidence an assessor would request

Photographs of the completed stage, dated, do more than any covering letter. So do the delivery dockets for materials on site but not yet installed, where the contract lets you claim them.

It travels as one link rather than six attachments. The assessor opens one page and sees the lines, the totals and the photographs together. Nothing sends them back to you for the rest.

Claim on the day the contract says

Progress claims run on a cycle, and a claim three days late usually waits a full cycle for assessment. That turns a small administrative slip into a month of cashflow.

The claim date sits as a recurring task with the site manager as owner. Preparing it is then a job in somebody's week rather than a memory on the day. Being ready early costs nothing and being late costs a month.

Then track what was claimed against what was certified

The number that matters to a builder is not what you claimed, it is the gap between claimed and certified across the whole job. A single short payment looks like a dispute. Four in a row on the same category is a pattern you can take to a meeting.

Both figures sit against each claim, and the gap becomes a column rather than a feeling. It also tells you which parts of your own claims are weakest, which is usually the variations.

What to do first

• Claim in the contract's stage names, at the contract's amounts
• Every claim carries contract sum, claimed to date, this claim, retention and balance
• Every variation takes its own line, with the instruction behind it attached
• Photograph each completed stage on the day it completes
• The claim date sits in somebody's week as a repeating task
• The certified figure records beside the claimed one, and the gap gets watched