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Can QuickBooks do AIA billing?
Partly. QuickBooks Online has progress invoicing: you create an estimate, then invoice part of it at a time, by percentage or amount. That covers the idea of billing as you go.
What it doesn’t do, as far as we know as of October 2026, is produce the pay application your GC asks for: a G702 cover sheet with lines 1 to 9, a G703 continuation sheet with From Previous, This Period and Stored Materials on every line, and retainage held line by line at the contract rate. It also won’t fill in a GC’s own Excel template or portal. So most subs end up keeping the pay app somewhere else and the books in QuickBooks.
Three ways subs do it
1. An Excel template next to QuickBooks
The most common setup. A spreadsheet per job holds the G702 and G703, and each month someone copies last month’s file, updates the progress, and types the result into a QuickBooks invoice. It costs nothing, but every number gets typed at least twice, and the copy step is where most rejected pay apps start.
2. AIA billing software that syncs
Construction accounting and billing tools can produce AIA-style forms and sync invoices to QuickBooks. They save retyping, but you still set up each job and enter the month’s numbers yourself, and the subscriptions add up. See AIA billing options compared.
3. Have the pay app prepared
Send last month’s pay app and get this month’s back, checked, with the three numbers your books need. That’s what Arvelo does.
Keep QuickBooks. Skip the spreadsheet.
Send last month’s pay app. Get this month’s on your GC’s form, plus the numbers for your invoice. The first one is free.
Recording a pay app in QuickBooks
A pay app bills progress to date, but your books need what changed this period. Take it from the cover sheet: this month’s line 4 minus last month’s line 4 is the gross amount billed, and the change in line 5 is the retainage held this period. Here’s pay app #5 from our guides’ example job.
From the pay app
- Line 4, this month
- 425,440.00
- Line 4, last month
- 342,455.00
- Line 5, this month
- 42,544.00
- Line 5, last month
- 34,245.50
The invoice in your books
- Work and stored materials this period
- 82,985.00
- Retainage held, 10%
- −8,298.50
- Invoice total
- 74,686.50
The invoice total, 74,686.50, matches line 8 on the cover sheet, the current payment due. If it doesn’t, something changed between the pay app you sent and the one the GC approved, and it’s worth finding out what before the next one.
Retainage in your books
If you invoice only the payment due, the retainage disappears from your books until the end of the job. A common fix is a retainage item that posts to a retainage receivable account. Each month’s invoice carries it as a negative line, as above, so the receivable grows with the job. When the GC releases retainage, you invoice that item back.
Ask your accountant
How retainage is recorded affects your balance sheet and, for some contractors, how revenue is reported. The setup above is common, but your accountant should decide how it’s done for your company.
For how retainage is held, reduced and released on the pay app itself, see retainage on pay applications.
With Arvelo
Arvelo prepares your pay app on your GC’s form each month and checks it before you see it. With it, you get the three numbers above for your invoice. Nothing to install, nothing to connect, and your books stay in QuickBooks. First pay app free, then $149 a month.