Work out the retainage held on Lines 5a and 5b and what a release adds to the payment, then check what the pay app printed.
From the three G703 column totals, Line 7 and the contract rate:
The reverse, what was held when you only know the net: divide the net by 1 minus the rate for the gross, then take the net away. A $90,000 check at 10% retainage is $90,000 ÷ 0.90 = $100,000 gross, so $10,000 was held. That holds when one rate applies to everything billed.
Retainage is money earned and held back. Line 4 is Columns D + E + F. Line 5a is the contract rate on completed work, D + E. Line 5b is the rate on stored materials, Column F, where the contract holds retainage on them. Line 5 is 5a + 5b, Line 6 is Line 4 less Line 5, and Line 8 is Line 6 less Line 7. Give the five figures at the top and every line below Line 4 has one correct value. More in how retainage is calculated on a pay application.
Disagreements are rarely about the percentage. Line 5a is retainage on all completed work, D + E, not on Column E alone. Doing it on this period only understates Line 5 and pays the difference out on Line 8. Leaving 5b blank while Column F carries a balance pays stored material at full value.
This page checks the certificate against the rate and three column totals, not against itself. The G702 and G703 checker runs the rest over a whole schedule of values, and the pay application review checklist is the order to run them in. If you bill from a spreadsheet, the free G702/G703 Excel template works 5a and 5b out from one rate cell.
The contract rate times two bases from the continuation sheet. Line 5a is the rate on completed work, Columns D + E, and Line 5b is the rate on stored materials, Column F. Line 5 is 5a + 5b. Enter the rate in the executed contract, not the one printed on the application, as a percentage, so 10 means 10%.
Divide the net by 1 minus the rate to get the gross, then subtract the net. A $90,000 check at 10% is $100,000 gross with $10,000 held. It works when one rate applies to everything billed; after a reduction, start from Line 4 and the rates instead.
Enter the rate after the release. At 0% Line 5 drops to zero, Line 6 rises to Line 4, and Line 8 carries the released retainage on top of this period’s work: on the example, $135,000 instead of $86,500. A reduction that applies only to work after a date takes two rates, the retainage already held plus the new rate on later work, so work that Line 5a out by hand.
Read the payment clause. Line 5b is its own step so both readings can be compared against what the sheet prints.
No. It is arithmetic, run by the engine PayAppCheck uses on uploaded pay apps. No account and no upload.
The reverse error folds stored materials into the 5a base on a form that splits the two, which leaves 5b at zero while Line 5 still adds correctly. Some contracts hold retainage on stored materials and some exclude them, which is why the form splits 5a from 5b at all, and why both lines come back as readings to confirm rather than as errors. When a reduction clause steps the rate down partway through the job, the correct Line 5a is the retainage already held plus the new rate on work since the step, not the new rate on everything to date. Approved change orders belong inside the base. Sales tax and bond premiums are handled contract by contract.
Line 4 also has to equal the Column G total printed on the continuation sheet, Line 5 has to equal 5a plus 5b as printed, Line 3 has to equal Line 1 plus Line 2, and Line 9 has to equal Line 3 less Line 6. Line 7 cannot be verified from the form: it has to match the certificates actually issued, which means reading the previous application. So does Column D, and so does the change order log behind Line 2. Those run in PayAppCheck, where prior pay apps are on file.
A spreadsheet holds a rate as the fraction 0.10. On a $300,000 base, reading that as a percentage is $300 of retainage against $30,000, so the figure is taken as you type it. Where the contract holds a different rate on stored material than on completed work, enter the rate the application declares and read 5b as a difference against it rather than as an error.