Free AIA G702 & G703 Template
A blank, AIA-style pay application in Excel and PDF — the G703 continuation sheet and the G702 cover sheet, with the retainage, balance, and payment-due formulas already built in.
No email required. Free to use. Not an official AIA® Contract Document.
What’s in the template
Three tabs. Start with the continuation sheet — it drives everything else. The cover sheet pulls from it automatically.
How to use it, and the three things that get pay applications rejected. Read this one first.
One row per Schedule of Values line item. Enter scheduled value and what you’ve billed; percent complete, balance, and retainage calculate themselves.
The nine lines, from original contract sum through current payment due. Line 4 pulls straight from the G703 totals.
The formulas are real, not placeholders:
- Percent complete = (Prev App + This App + Materials) ÷ Scheduled Value
- Balance to finish = Scheduled Value − (Prev App + This App + Materials)
- Retainage this application = (This App + Materials) × your retainage rate
- Current payment due = Earned less retainage − previous certificates
Yellow cells are yours to fill in. White cells calculate. There’s also a tie-out check on the cover sheet that flags the single most common error — more on that below.
What this template will and won’t do
A blank form is genuinely useful, and this one has working math. But it is worth being straight with you about what a spreadsheet structurally cannot do — because these three things are what actually get pay applications kicked back, and no template will warn you when they go wrong.
Every month you must manually copy the approved totals from your last pay application into the Prev App column. If that figure drifts even slightly from what the GC approved — a copied file, an overwritten cell, a formula that shifted — your application gets returned, even when this month’s work is perfectly correct. This is the most common rejection there is.
Retainage is withheld on what you bill each period and adds to a running total. Line 5 is the cumulative amount held across every application to date. Recalculate it from scratch each month and it will quietly drift from what the general contractor is actually holding. See how to calculate retainage on G702/G703.
Line 7 is what was certified for payment on prior applications — not what was earned. Prior work completed minus prior retainage held equals prior certificates. Enter the earned figure by mistake and you will silently understate what you are owed. The template’s tie-out check catches exactly this.
How to fill it out
Work from the continuation sheet up, not the cover sheet down. The G703 is where the actual billing lives; the G702 is a summary of it.
- Set your retainage rate in the yellow cell at the top of the G703 (10% is typical, but use whatever your contract says).
- Enter one row per Schedule of Values line item. Scheduled value, what you billed in previous applications, what you’re billing now, and any materials. If you don’t have an SOV yet, start with the free SOV template or the SOV builder.
- Fill the yellow cells on the G702. Original contract sum, approved change orders, previous certificates, and the retainage already held. Everything else pulls from the G703.
- Check the tie-out box. If it’s flagging a problem, your prior-period numbers don’t reconcile — fix that before you submit, not after the GC finds it.
Want to see one already filled in?
The filled-out G702 example walks through a complete application with a matching continuation sheet, and explains where every number comes from. There’s also a free G702 calculator if you just want to check your payment-due math, and a step-by-step guide to filling out G702/G703.
When a template stops being enough
For a single project with a handful of line items and no surprises, a spreadsheet is fine. Plenty of contractors bill that way for years.
It gets harder in month three or four, and it usually gets harder in the same order. A change order gets approved and the contract sum moves. Stored materials get installed and have to shift out of the materials column into completed work — without double-counting. Retainage on one line gets released early. Someone emails a copy of the spreadsheet and now there are two versions and nobody is certain which one the GC approved.
None of that is a formatting problem, which is why a better template doesn’t solve it. It’s a memory problem — the spreadsheet has no idea what last month said. Most rejections trace back to exactly this: the work was fine, but the paperwork contradicted itself.
That’s the gap PayAppPro fills. Prior periods carry forward automatically, retainage accumulates correctly, the continuation sheet and cover sheet cannot disagree, and you get a clean PDF the GC can actually approve.
FAQ
Is this an official AIA G702 form?
No. This is an AIA-style template — it follows the same structure and calculations, but official AIA Contract Documents must be licensed from the American Institute of Architects. Many general contractors accept AIA-style pay applications; check your contract before you rely on it.
Will it carry my numbers forward each month?
No — and that’s true of every spreadsheet template, not just this one. You have to copy last month’s approved totals into the Prev App column by hand each period. It’s the step most rejections trace back to.
Do I need the Schedule of Values first?
Yes. The G703 is your Schedule of Values with billing columns added. If you don’t have one, build it first — what a Schedule of Values is, or grab the free SOV template.
Can I edit the formulas?
Yes, it’s an unlocked workbook. The formulas match how a real pay application is calculated, so if you change them, change them deliberately. The G703 instructions explain what each column is doing.