Prepare a Payment claim for your project.
Adding the Correct Retention Amount to Your Claim
Prepare and send your Payment claim
Introduction
With Lentune, creating a payment claim is straightforward and ensures you’re invoicing your receivable customers for completed work — whether that’s at the end of the month or after hitting a major project milestone.
Here’s how it works:
- You’ll prepare the payment claim and send it to your customer for approval.
- If the claim is approved, you’re ready to invoice.
- If there’s a dispute, you can easily adjust the claim and resend it.
Creating Your Payment Claim
Every payment claim pulls in costs, labour and subcontractor invoices that have already been approved in Lentune.
By using the correct cost codes on purchase orders, invoices, and timesheets, the system matches expenses to the Trade Summary lines in your Head Contract — making the process smooth and accurate.
NOTE: The importance of getting your cost codes right.
Accurate cost codes are essential here because they act as the link between your project expenses and the claim lines in the Head Contract. Without accurate coding, the claim won’t reflect the true value of work completed, which could delay approvals or payment.
Steps to Create a Payment Claim:
Start Your Claim
- Go to Payment Claims > Head Contracts and select the contract that you would like to create a claim for.
- Click Add Claim to create a new claim.
Set the Claim Period:
- In the Create Receivable Claim screen, enter the start and end dates for the claim period.
- Click Save to finalise the claim setup. The modal where you can edit the claim will now open for you.
Steps to Edit a Payment Claim
When you open the claim, the modal will take you directly to the Trade Summary tab, where you can edit the claimed amounts for each trade summary line.
Trade Summary
In the bottom half of the Trade Summary screen, you’ll see a table containing all the relevant details you need to prepare your claim. To adjust values:
- Click into the Completed % or Completed Amount fields to make updates directly from this screen.
- Under the Claimable Amount column, Lentune suggests a value you can claim based on the spent costs assigned to that specific head contract line. Learn more here about how Lentune calculates the claimable amount.
- For more detailed edits, double-click on any trade summary line to open the Edit Head Contract Claim Line screen.
In the Edit Head Contract Claim Line screen, you can drill down into the details that make up the claimable amount. This includes:
- Reviewing the values for chargeable labour, onsite/offsite costs, and other spent costs per cost code.
- Setting specific values for the current claim, the total completed amount, or the total completed percentage.
Once you’re happy with your updates, click Save to return to the Trade Summary screen.
Note: You can update these values as often as you need until you invoice the claim.
Variations
If your Head Contract includes Variations, you’ll find them in the Variations tab. Updating the claimed amounts for Variations works just like editing trade summary lines, following the same workflow.
Supporting Documents
The Support Docs tab is where you can manage documents related to the claim:
- Any cost-plus supporting documents you generate for a cost-plus contract are stored here. To generate these, go to Trade Summary > Actions > Generate Cost Plus Supporting Documents. Learn more about cost-plus claims here.
- You can also upload additional supporting documents you’d like to keep with the claim.
Note: Manually uploaded documents are not automatically included in client emails sent from Lentune.
Details
The Details tab contains additional claim information. Here, you can:
- Update the claim reference number.
- Adjust the final claim date.
- Set payment due dates.
Retentions
Basic retention information is displayed in the Retentions tab. This is where you can manage the release of retentions for the contract. Learn more about releasing retentions here.
By using these tabs, you can make detailed edits to your claims, ensuring all the information is accurate and ready to go before invoicing.
Adding the Correct Retention Amount to Your Claim
While you add the claimed amounts to your progress claim, Lentune automatically calculates retention amounts based on the retention policy set for your Head Contract.
The retentions held for the claim (not the total accumulation) are displayed in the following modal that appears when you edit the claim:
When to Use Manual Retentions
Sometimes, the auto-calculated retention might not fit your specific situation. Lentune gives you the flexibility to override the retention amount manually. Here are a few scenarios where this can be helpful:
- Correcting past mistakes: If a previous claim used the wrong retention policy, you can manually adjust the retention amount. Normally, completed tiers are locked, but the manual override bypasses this, letting you fix the claim without changing the policy.
- Out-of-Order Claims: If claims are submitted or edited out of order, the auto-calculated figures might not reflect the actual situation.
- Excluding Variations: You may want to exclude retentions on variations within the Head Contract.
- Retention Release: Once you’ve started releasing retentions, you might prefer to stop auto-calculations for remaining claims.
Before You Start
Here are a few things to keep in mind when manually adjusting retentions:
- The manual retention amount can be more or less than the auto-calculated retention amount. It can be 0, and it can even be a negative value
- It is possible to add a retention amount manually, that exceeds the retention cap set in the retention policy.
Tip: Changing the retention manually only applies to the specific claim. Future claims will default to the retention policy unless adjusted again.
Prepare and send your Payment claim
Once you’ve updated all the relevant lines in your progress claim and adjusted any retentions, it’s time to prepare and send it to your client.
Prepare Your Claim
1. Navigate to Payment Claims > Head Contracts.
2. Select your Head Contract, then go to the Claims tab.
3. Double-click on the Payment Claim you’re working on.
4. Click Mark as Prepared.
At this stage, Lentune allows you to review the claim:
- Preview, Print, Download, or Email the Payment Claim PDF directly from the Claim Prepared screen.
Tip: If you don’t print or send the Payment Claim at this stage, you’ll see a warning when moving to the approval step. Don’t worry — you can still send or print it later using the Actions menu on the Payment Claim screen.
5. Once you’ve reviewed the claim, click Close to save your progress.
Now, the Mark as Prepared button is replaced with an Approve button, giving you more options in the Actions menu (e.g., send, mark as in dispute, or roll back to a previous status).
Send Your Claim
When your claim is ready, follow these steps to send it to your client:
1. Click Actions > Send.
2. In the Email Claim screen:
- Select the email address for your client.
- Edit the subject line if needed (it defaults to the Payment Claim number).
- Add or edit the email message to include any details your client might need.
Your claim is now on its way to your client for approval!
Other Actions on the Payment Claim
Once your claim is prepared, the Actions button becomes your go-to tool for managing and adjusting the claim. From here, you can perform a variety of actions to address specific situations or make updates as needed:
Mark a Claim as In Dispute
If your client raises concerns, you can mark the claim as In Dispute. This flags the claim for review, allowing you to investigate and make updates before resending it.
Roll Back to a Previous Status
Need to make changes after preparing your claim? The Roll Back to Previous Status option allows you to return the claim to an earlier state so you can make edits and reprocess it.
Set Selected Claimed Amounts from Spent Amounts
This option calculates the claim amount automatically based on spent amounts.
- Select the specific lines you want to update by ticking the box next to them.
- Click Actions > Set Selected Claimed Amounts from Spent Amounts.
This is a quick way to ensure your claim reflects the most accurate project costs without manual calculations.
What's next?
When your client approves the claim, mark it as Approved and create the invoice to finalise it. Keep in mind that invoicing locks the claim, preventing further edits.
For detailed on instructions the next seps, refer to this article: Approve and Invoice your Payment Claim.
Need more help? We’re here! We hope our article was helpful! If you need more info or want to connect, drop us an email at support@lentune.com.
Thank you. We love to hear from you!
Last updated: 26 February 2024