Progress claims
Claim the stage, and get the variations in with it
Why this one matters
A progress claim is the only part of a building job where the paperwork is the money. Get the stage wrong, leave a variation out, or send it late, and the cost is immediate and entirely yours.
Most builders write them from a template and a memory of what has been approved since last time. The approved variations are right there in the job; they should not need remembering.
What you will see
- A stage claimed against the contract, at the percentage agreed
- Variations approved since the last claim carried in automatically
- What has been claimed, what has been paid and what is outstanding
- The claim produced as a document, ready to send
What was said
The narration, word for word, for anyone who would rather read it than watch it — or who is on a train.
A progress claim asks the client to pay for work done. It's made against your contract stages, or a percentage complete.
The figures along the top show how the claim adds up. The contract completed so far, plus the variations, is the total work completed. Take away what was claimed before, and what is left is this claim.
Start a new claim. Then, on the Stages tab, say how much of each contract stage it bills.
Add the approved variations. They're claimable themselves, and they change the contract sum the claim is worked out on.
Check the invoice number and your bank details. Those are what the client pays against.
The Notes tab has two boxes. The claim note prints on the claim, and your standard payment terms can be loaded into it from a saved template. The internal comment is for your team only: it never prints and the client never sees it.
Generate the PDF, and send it, by email or through the client portal.
Approve the claim once the client has agreed it, and the header shows what is still owing. Down the left, the Show filter picks out claims by where they are up to, such as approved, and the search finds one by name or number.
Once a claim is approved it's frozen, so what you sent is what stays on record.
Record the client's payment when it lands. Claim promptly: every week a claim waits is a week the money is in someone else's account.
Doing it, rather than watching it
This page is the tour. When you are in SmarteBuild with a job open and need the detail — every option, every exception, the things the video had no time for — the help centre has the full article.
Raising a claim — the full reference
Read about it instead: Progress Claims · Variations · Cash Flow
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