CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Progress Claims

A progress claim is how money moves on a construction contract: you claim for the period's work, the certifier assesses it, and a payment follows — or doesn't. Alloovium keeps a register of claims in both directions per project, records every move as a receipt, and shows where the money actually is.

Overview

In Australian contracting the claim cycle is the heartbeat of cash flow. Each period you submit a claim to the principal, the superintendent or certifier responds with an assessment (a payment schedule under security-of-payment legislation), and payment lands — usually for less than was claimed, sometimes late, occasionally disputed. Meanwhile your subcontractors are running the same cycle against you.

Alloovium models both directions. An outgoing claim is one you make on the principal; an incoming claim is one a subcontractor makes on you. Both live in one register per project, each carrying three separate money states — claimed, certified and paid — because on a real job those are three different numbers, and the gaps between them are where margin leaks.

Why receipts matter

Payment disputes are won on records. Because every lifecycle move on a claim writes an immutable event to the project timeline — who moved it, when, and for how much — the history of a claim can be replayed months later without reconstructing it from an inbox.

Video · ~3 min

Run a claim from raise to receipt

A full pass over one claim: raising a draft from the register, submitting it with a response-due date, certifying it at a lower figure, marking it paid — and then reading the receipts it left on the project timeline and the change in the cost position strip.

The claims register

Every project has a Claims page — the register of progress claims in both directions, and where the money actually is. Across the top sits the cost position strip (covered below); beneath it, the register lists each claim with its number and title, the counterparty, the claim period, the three amounts — claimed, certified, paid — and a status badge.

Claim numbers are minted automatically per project: PC-001, PC-002… for outgoing claims and SC-001… for incoming ones, with a direction arrow on each row so the two streams read apart at a glance. A submitted claim that carries a statutory response deadline shows Response due under its status, so the payment-schedule clock stays visible while it runs.

The Claims register for a project — the six-cell cost position strip across the top, then rows of claims showing PC- and SC-numbered claims with direction arrows, claimed/certified/paid amounts, a mix of submitted, certified and paid status badges, and one submitted row showing its response-due date.

Raising a claim

A claim starts as a draft raised from the register. The form is deliberately light — a claim can be raised the moment the period closes and filled out as the detail firms up.

Open the register and choose New claim
From the project's Claims page, the New claim button opens a panel on the right.
Title it and set the direction
Give the claim a title such as "Progress Claim 06 — March works", and choose the direction: "We claim them" for a claim on the principal, "They claim us" for a subcontractor claim on you.
Add the commercial details
Counterparty, contract reference, the claim period's start and end dates, the amount claimed, and — for submitted claims under security-of-payment legislation — the date a response is due.
Create the draft
The claim lands in the register as a draft with its number minted and a created event logged on the timeline. Draft is a working state — nothing has been asserted to the counterparty yet.
Submit when ready
Moving the claim to submitted stamps the submission time and writes the submission receipt to the project timeline. From there the claim follows the assessment cycle below.

The New claim panel slid over the register — the title field filled with 'Progress Claim 06 — March works', the direction toggle set to 'We claim them', counterparty and contract reference completed, and the period, amount claimed and response-due fields beneath the Create draft claim button.

The claim document itself — the per-trade breakdown with its supporting evidence — can be drafted with help from the assistant. A monthly routine can gather the period’s site diaries, records and the variations register and draft the claim with each movement cited to the evidence behind it, leaving you to review and adjust before anything goes out. See Claim Evidence and Routines.

Status & receipts

A claim moves through a fixed set of statuses, and every transition writes a receipt — an immutable event on the project timeline recording the move and the amounts at that moment, such as “Progress claim PC-001 submitted ($200,000.00)”. A short note can be attached to any move and is kept on the receipt.

Status	What it means	Where it can go next
Draft	Being prepared — not yet asserted against anyone.	Submitted
Submitted	Formally made on the counterparty. The response-due clock, if set, runs from here.	Certified · Disputed
Certified	Assessed by the certifier — the certified amount is recorded, and is often lower than the claimed amount.	Scheduled · Paid · Disputed
Scheduled	A payment schedule has been issued; payment is committed but not yet made.	Paid · Disputed
Paid	Money received (or paid, for incoming claims). The paid amount is recorded. Terminal.	—
Disputed	Contested by either side. A disputed claim can be re-submitted, certified, or settled directly to paid.	Submitted · Certified · Paid

Amounts attach to the transition that establishes them: certifying a claim records the certified amount, and marking it paid records the paid amount. The first time a claim is submitted, certified or paid, the date is stamped and kept — re-walking a disputed claim through the cycle never rewrites its history.

The project timeline filtered to a claim's receipts — consecutive events reading 'Progress claim PC-005 submitted ($200,000.00)', 'Progress claim PC-005 certified ($185,000.00)' and 'Progress claim PC-005 paid ($185,000.00)', each with its actor and date on the day-grouped feed.

Receipts land on the timeline

Claim receipts appear alongside everything else on the project timeline, and the assistant can cite them in answers — asking “what happened with claim 5?” returns the receipts, linked back to the timeline records.

Cost position

The strip across the top of the register answers the commercial question directly: where is the money? It rolls up the project’s outgoing claims and its variations into six figures:

Figure	What it rolls up
Approved variations	The value of variations the client has approved.
Pending variations	Draft and submitted variations — money asked for but not yet secured.
Claimed to date	Everything claimed across the project's outgoing claims.
Certified to date	What the certifier has assessed as due.
Paid to date	What has actually been paid.
Certified, unpaid	Certified minus paid — money owed to you right now. Highlighted whenever it is above zero.

The gap between claimed and certified is your under-certification exposure; the gap between certified and paid is cash owed and outstanding. Because the figures are computed from the register itself, they move the moment a claim does — certify a claim and Certified, unpaid rises until the payment lands.