Construction & Contractors Edition
For GCs, subs, and remodelers who need to know — per job — what's been spent, what's been billed, and what the owner is still holding. Spend gets tagged to jobs by cost code, owners get billed with proper schedule-of-values pay applications, and retainage is tracked from the first withholding to the final release.
Switching It On
Bundled with Pro and above. 🏗️ Construction lives in the top navigation whenever your license includes it, and joins the sidebar automatically once the company has jobs (or a contractor-sounding industry). Starter plans upgrade under Settings → License Management.
Opening a Job
+ New Job takes the essentials: the owner (a customer record), a name, the contract amount, and the retainage percentage the contract specifies — 10% by default. Numbers issue themselves per year (JOB-2026-0001) unless you type your own. The jobs table then tracks contract, cost to date, billed to date, and retainage held for every open project side by side.
Your Cost-Code List
Spend means nothing in a lump — cost codes break it into the categories you estimate with. The Cost Codes tab ships a one-click starter list in the CSI spirit (site work, concrete, framing, roofing, finishes, plumbing/HVAC, electrical, equipment, permits) and takes custom codes any time. Each carries a type: labor, material, subcontractor, equipment, or other.
Tracking Spend by Job
No new data entry habits: bills go into Vendor Hub as always. Then, on the job, 💵 Tag Bill to Job assigns the bill and its cost code. The job page keeps three numbers honest from that point on:
- Costs by code — where the money actually went, category by category.
- Cost to date vs. billed to date — with the difference colored green or red. Red means the job is burning cash faster than you're invoicing it.
- Remaining to bill against the contract.
Billing with Pay Apps
Owners and their architects expect progress billing on a schedule of values, and that's what 🧾 New Pay App produces:
- Your SOV lines carry over from the previous application with the previously billed column already rolled forward — only this period's figures need typing.
- Enter work completed this period and any materials stored on site. Kantivo refuses a line billed beyond its scheduled value.
- The running footer shows work + stored, the retainage coming off, and the net due.
- Submitting creates the application and drafts the owner's invoice for the net — every SOV line itemized, the retainage deduction shown explicitly — ready in the Invoice Center.
The Payment Certificate
Each application prints a landscape G702/G703-style PDF: project and application header, the continuation table (scheduled value, previous applications, this period, stored materials, completed-and-stored, % complete per line), the retainage computation, current payment due, and signature blocks for contractor and owner/architect. Any past application reprints from the job page.
Watching Retainage
Withheld retainage accumulates per job and stays visible on the jobs list — it's receivable money the owner is holding, and books that forget it understate what you're owed. Kantivo never lets it slip out of sight.
The Final Release
Job done, punch list cleared, owner approves: 🔓 Release Retainage drafts the final invoice for everything withheld across all applications and closes retainage on the job. One release per job, and no further pay applications can follow it — the billing ends where the contract said.
Sub 1099s
Subcontractors are vendors, so their bills accrue to 1099-NEC totals all year without extra steps. The job tags are for costing; the tax trail was already there. Reports Studio → 1099 Summary closes out January.