A pay request is a periodic payment application against a construction project. For a chosen pay period, it bills the item quantities placed and inspected during that period, holds back a retainage percentage, applies any adjustments, and produces a document that the engineer and owner review and approve.
How pay requests fit into Oversite
Pay requests live on a project, and on a group when several projects bill together. You open them from Pay Requests in the project navigation, or from Pay Requests in the group navigation.
A pay request pulls its billed work from the completed daily inspections in the pay period, item by item. It connects to several other parts of Oversite:
Items are billed line by line, using the placed quantities from daily inspections.
Retainage holds back a percentage set in the project's settings. See Project Retainage.
Item withholding is set on daily inspection quantities, then released on a pay request when the work is ready to bill. See Item Withholding.
Adjustments add a positive or negative amount outside the billed line items.
Material certifications can cap how much of an item you bill, and can be attached to the exported pay request.
Reports track held retainage and withheld work across the project or group.
What is on a pay request
Field | What it shows |
Start Date and End Date | The pay period. Work placed and inspected between these dates is billed on this pay request. |
Payment Request # | The sequential number of the pay request on the project. |
Amount | The value of the billed work for the period, including any adjustments. |
Retainage | The amount held back on this pay request. |
Retainage % | The retainage rate applied to participating work. |
Net Pay | The amount due for the period after retainage is held back and any held retainage is released. |
Status | The current state of the pay request. |
Created By and Created Date | Who started the pay request and when. |
Viewing pay requests
The Pay Requests page lists pay requests in a table, newest pay period first. In a group or cross-project view, a Project column shows which project each pay request belongs to.
Use the filter tabs above the table to narrow the list to All, Draft, Pending Approval, Approved, or Paid.
To download the list, use the export buttons above the table for a PDF or a CSV. The exported columns match what you see on screen.
The statuses a pay request moves through
A pay request moves through five states. For the full lifecycle, the buttons that move it, and the pay-period ordering rules, see Pay Request Rules and Workflow.
Draft is an editable working copy.
Pending Approval is submitted and waiting for the engineer.
Approved is approved by the engineer, which locks the daily inspections it billed.
Paid is marked paid by the owner.
Completed is finalized and closed.
Who can work with pay requests
All users can view and export pay requests. Only Administrators and Project Managers can create, edit, change the status of, or delete a pay request, and those actions apply only to the most recent pay request while it is a Draft. The full permissions table is in Pay Request Rules and Workflow.
Common pay request tasks
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a pay request and a daily inspection? A daily inspection records the work placed and inspected on a given day. A pay request bills the quantities from those inspections for a pay period and applies retainage and adjustments. The pay request depends on the daily inspections, but they serve different purposes.
Where does the retainage percentage come from? It comes from your project's settings. If retainage is turned off for the project, no retainage is held.
Is there a limit to how much retainage can be held? No. Retainage is applied to participating billed work on every pay request and does not stop at a threshold. To return held retainage, release it on a pay request.
Why do some items show on a pay request with a zero amount? Those are withheld items. They are shown for context but not billed until you release them. Use View Withheld Items to release the quantity when it is ready to bill.
Can I create one pay request for a whole group of projects? Yes. From a group's Pay Requests page, use Create New Group Pay Request to bill the same pay period across every project in the group. Oversite creates one pay request per project.
Who gets notified when I submit or approve a pay request? Submitting, approving, and marking a pay request paid do not send automatic emails. The only email Oversite sends is a download link when a large PDF export finishes in the background. Communicate approvals to your team directly.
Can I edit a daily inspection after it has been billed on a pay request? No. Once a pay request captures an inspection and moves past draft, that inspection is locked so its billing stays in sync with the pay request.
Troubleshooting
I cannot see the Create New Pay Request button. Confirm you are an Administrator or Project Manager, and check whether the project is completed, since completed projects do not allow new pay requests.
There are no items to bill for the period. Confirm the Start Date and End Date cover the days the work was inspected, confirm the daily inspections for the period are complete, and check whether the placed quantity is withheld or waiting on material certification.
The total looks slightly different while I am editing. The final amounts are calculated when the pay request is saved. Trust the totals shown on the saved pay request.