G702 vs G703: what each form is and how they tie together

The short answer: the AIA G702 is the one-page Application and Certificate for Payment. It states the contract sum, retainage held, and the payment now due. The AIA G703 is its Continuation Sheet, the line-by-line schedule of values behind those summary numbers. They are two halves of one document, and one number has to match exactly: the total of the G703’s Column G (total completed and stored to date) must equal the G702’s Line 4. If Column G sums to $95,000, Line 4 must read $95,000 too, not approximately but to the cent. When they disagree, the payment amount on Line 8 cannot be trusted until you find which document is wrong. That single cross-form check, more than any per-line arithmetic, is why a G702 and G703 have to be read together rather than as two separate filings.

What is the AIA G702?

The G702, the Application and Certificate for Payment, is the one-page summary a contractor submits to request payment. The top block identifies the project and the parties: owner, contractor, architect, project name and address, application number, application date, period covered, and contract date. Below that sit nine numbered lines of money math, and every one of them is either a stated fact or an arithmetic result:

• Line 1: original contract sum. Fixed for the life of the project.
• Line 2: net change by change orders. The signed net of approved additions minus deductions from the change order summary block.
• Line 3: contract sum to date. Line 3 = Line 1 + Line 2.
• Line 4: total completed and stored to date. Carried from the G703: it must equal the grand total of Column G.
• Line 5: retainage. Line 5a = the retainage rate x completed work, Line 5b = the rate x stored material, and Line 5 = 5a + 5b.
• Line 6: total earned less retainage. Line 6 = Line 4 - Line 5.
• Line 7: less previous certificates for payment. Equal to Line 6 of the prior application.
• Line 8: current payment due. Line 8 = Line 6 - Line 7. This is the check.
• Line 9: balance to finish, including retainage. Line 9 = Line 3 - Line 6.

The page ends with the contractor’s signed certification, notarized where the contract requires it, and the architect’s certificate, which can certify a different amount than the contractor applied for. For the receiver, the G702 is the face of the application: the page that gets certified, and the page that states the amount of the check.

What is the AIA G703?

The G703 Continuation Sheet is the detail behind that certificate: the schedule of values broken into line items, one row per work package, across nine columns lettered A through I.

• Column A: item number. Sequential, or a CSI MasterFormat code.
• Column B: description of work.
• Column C: scheduled value. The agreed value of that line of work.
• Column D: work completed from previous applications. The prior cumulative, equal to last period’s D + E for that row.
• Column E: work completed this period.
• Column F: materials presently stored. On site but not yet installed, and not already counted in D or E.
• Column G: total completed and stored to date. On every row, G = D + E + F.
• Column H: percent complete. H = G / C.
• Column I: balance to finish. I = C - G.

Some custom sheets add a retainage column; it appears when retainage varies per line item and stays blank when a single rate is computed on the G702. Real continuation sheets run from 15 rows to more than 150, across multiple pages, with the grand totals printed only on the final page. To see a filled-in sheet with every column populated, open a worked line-by-line example.

How does the G703 tie to the G702?

Bottom-up. Each G703 row computes its own Column G, the rows sum into grand totals, and those grand totals become the G702’s stated facts. Follow one set of numbers through the whole chain.

A schedule of values totals $500,000 in Column C, so Line 3 must read $500,000, built from a $480,000 original contract (Line 1) plus $20,000 in approved change orders (Line 2). Completed work to date, the D + E base across all rows, is $80,000, and stored material, the F base, is $15,000, so Column G sums to $95,000 and Line 4 must read $95,000. At 10% retainage, 5a = $8,000 and 5b = $1,500, so Line 5 = $9,500. Line 6 = $95,000 - $9,500 = $85,500. If last month’s application certified $58,500 on its Line 6, then Line 7 = $58,500 and Line 8, the payment due, = $85,500 - $58,500 = $27,000. Line 9 = $500,000 - $85,500 = $414,500 left to finish, retainage included.

Every figure after Line 3 depends on Column G’s total. A wrong Column G flows into Line 4, then Line 6, then the check on Line 8, then the balance on Line 9. To see both forms wired together as live formulas, open the free G702/G703 Excel template, an AIA-style workbook rather than an official AIA form.

Which numbers have to match, exactly?

Each tie is a rule you can check without judgment:

• The sum of G703 Column C must equal G702 Line 3, the contract sum to date.
• The sum of G703 Column G must equal G702 Line 4, total completed and stored to date. This is the single most important check on the document.
• On every G703 row, G = D + E + F, H = G / C, and I = C - G.
• Line 3 = Line 1 + Line 2, so unapproved change-order money cannot hide in the contract sum.
• Line 5a = the retainage rate x completed work, Line 5b = the rate x stored material, and Line 5 = 5a + 5b.
• Line 6 = Line 4 - Line 5, Line 8 = Line 6 - Line 7, and Line 9 = Line 3 - Line 6.
• Line 7 must equal the prior application’s Line 6, and each row’s Column D must equal the prior application’s D + E for that item.
• Where a per-line retainage column exists, its sum must equal Line 5.

The contract sets the retainage rate, commonly 5% or 10%, but the identities hold at any rate. The identities themselves are exact. The only slack a receiver should accept is nearest-dollar rounding: a sheet that prints whole dollars can drift by about a dollar across a long schedule. Anything larger is an error, not rounding.

What happens when they disagree?

When the sum of Column G and Line 4 differ, one of the two documents is wrong, and nothing downstream of Line 4 can be certified until you know which. The size of the gap is a fingerprint. A difference equal to one row’s value points at a missing or double-counted line. A round percentage of the total points at retainage taken on the wrong base. A digit-swap-shaped number ($900 against $90, or $1,200 against $2,100) points at transcription. The frequent causes are a missing continuation page (grand totals print only on the last one), a row where G no longer equals D + E + F because a number was typed over a formula, a stale printed total after a row was inserted, and stored material counted in both F and E. What to do when the two totals don’t agree walks through each cause and the check that isolates it.

The redundancy is also why the document can be trusted at all. The same figures appear more than once: across each row, down each column, and again on the certificate. A single wrong digit breaks a predictable set of identities, and the pattern of which ones broke points at the cell. That matters twice for receivers, once on paper and again when the numbers are retyped or extracted into a spreadsheet, where every keystroke is a fresh chance for the forms to stop tying. Recomputing the identities after extraction is how a misread digit announces itself; that approach is covered in how to convert a PDF pay application to Excel.

A cross-form mismatch also costs real time: the application bounces, the subcontractor resubmits, and a pay period is lost. That cycle is covered in why pay applications get rejected, and the full eight-step pre-certification sequence, of which the Column G tie is one step, is the review checklist. PayAppCheck runs every identity on this page automatically: upload a G702/G703 and each row, column total, and cross-form tie is recomputed to the cent, with any figure that does not tie flagged to the exact cell.

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