BlueCollar Projects provides a single billing interface for construction progress billing. It supports fixed fee progress billing (the most common form in construction), unit price billing (common in heavy highway and DOT work), and AIA-style billing (G702/G703 forms) — and it also handles retainage, credit memos, and draw requests for developers.
Billing is driven by Contracts (Sales Orders). Each line on a contract is a Schedule of Values (SOV) item that gets billed in proportion to the completion of work. From the project's Billing tab you enter work completed, create invoices, and optionally print AIA documents — all in one place. This is valuable because progress billing, retainage, and AIA paperwork that would otherwise span several disconnected steps are handled from a single grid tied directly to the contract.
The billing interface is available in English and French. It follows each user's NetSuite language preference automatically, so teams working in either language see the screen in their own.
A Contract (Sales Order) must exist for the project before billing. The contract defines the Schedule of Values and the billing terms — including each line's value, units, and Retention %.
Under BlueCollar → Preferences → Global Preferences, these settings shape billing behavior:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Lump Sum Unit of Measure | Defines which UOM BlueCollar treats as "Lump Sum." This is the single most important billing setting — it determines whether a line is billed by percentage (lump sum) or by units (unit price), which in turn drives the calculations, change-order rules, and projections. |
| Do Not Bill $0 Lines When Invoicing | Includes only lines with billing amounts on the invoice — helpful to prevent accidental edits to lines that shouldn't be billed in a period. |
| Group AIA G702 and G703 in One PDF | Prints the two AIA documents as a single combined PDF on the invoice. |
| Subcontractor Retainage Account | The credit account for subcontract retainage withheld from vendor bills. |
| Exclude Contract Retainage from Actual Cost | For developers submitting bank draw requests — keeps subcontract retainage out of actual cost so it isn't treated as an expense needing immediate cash coverage. |
| Custom AIA Templates | Optional document fields for uploading your own AIA forms — see Custom AIA Templates below. |
Each project can be set with a Billing Driver (on the project's Preferences tab) that controls what the Progress column on the billing grid shows — see Core Concepts below.
Billing access is controlled through BlueCollar Global Permissions:
| Feature | Application | Action | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| View the Billing UI from the project's tab | BILLING | BILLING_VIEW_BILLING | VIEW |
| View the Billing UI and create invoices (regular or retentions) | BILLING | BILLING_CREATE_INVOICES | FULL |
| Aggregate vendor-bill PDFs for loan draw packages | LOAN_DRAW_SUPPORT_PACKAGE | BILLING_VIEW_BILLING | FULL |
| View vendor-bill PDFs for loan draw packages | LOAN_DRAW_SUPPORT_PACKAGE | BILLING_VIEW_BILLING | VIEW |
BlueCollar supports four scenarios:
The UOM configured as "Lump Sum" in Global Preferences controls how the billing engine interprets each line. A line whose UOM matches the lump-sum UOM is billed by percentage; everything else is billed by units.
| Behavior | Lump Sum | Unit Price |
|---|---|---|
| Billing entry | Quantity = percentage of scheduled value | Quantity = actual units at the contract rate |
| Value | (Scheduled Value × %) / 100 |
Unit Rate × Units |
| Change orders | Dollar-value changes only (no unit changes) | Unit quantity changes allowed (rate stays the same) |
| Projections | Unit projections not allowed | Unit projections allowed |
| Progress display | Shown with a % suffix |
Shown as a raw value |
| Maximum | Capped at 100% (unless Allow Overbilling is on) | Capped at current units (unless Allow Overbilling is on) |
The Billing Driver is a per-project setting that controls the Progress column — a guide for how much to bill:
| Billing Driver | Progress shows | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Projected % Complete | 100 × (Actual Cost / Projected Estimate) − (Previous Applications / Scheduled Value) |
Percentage |
| Current % Complete | 100 × (Actual Cost / Current Estimate) − (Previous Applications / Scheduled Value) |
Percentage |
| Actual Cost | Actual Cost to Date − Total Previous Applications |
Dollar amount |
| Work Complete | Total Work Quantity − Total Previous Quantities |
Raw value |
When the driver is Actual Cost or Work Complete and the Work Performed module is in use, the billing grid also pulls in field-reported work quantities.
Retainage (retention) is the portion of each billing the owner withholds until completion or a contractual milestone. It's defined as a percentage on each contract line.
The retention amount on any line must be between 0 and that line's "This Application: Value," and the retention percentage must be between 0% and 100%.
The grid is an interactive, spreadsheet-style view of the contract's Schedule of Values. Header controls sit above it:
| Control | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Billing Date | Date for this application |
| Period Start / End Date | The billing period (required for AIA forms) |
| Through Date | Limits the grid to activity dated on or before this date — handy when you want to bill as of a cutoff that differs from the billing date |
| Sales Orders (Contracts) | Picks which of the project's contracts appear in the grid; select more than one to bill several at once (see Multi-Contract Billing) |
| Bill Retentions (toggle) | Switches the grid into retainage-release mode |
| Allow Overbilling (toggle) | Disables the overbilling checks for this session |
| Bill Progress (toggle) | Auto-populates progress values from project data |
Key columns (left to right): Line Item #, Item / Description (item and work description shown together in one locked column), UOM, Current Units, Unit Rate, Scheduled Value, Previous Applications Total, Work Completed: This Application (Value, % / Qty, Progress), Work Completed: Total (Value, % / Qty, Progress), Balance to Finish, Retentions %, Current Retentions Amount, and Total Unbilled Retentions. A pinned Grand Total row at the bottom totals the numeric columns so you can see the application and cumulative totals at a glance.
Cascading edits. The grid recalculates automatically as you type. Enter a dollar amount in This Application: Value and the percentage/quantity, totals, progress, balance, and retention amount all update — or enter the percentage/quantity and the value is derived. You can work from whichever number you have.
Editability. A line is editable while it has a remaining balance. A fully billed ($0 balance) line is locked unless Allow Overbilling is on, or Bill Retentions is on and the line still has unbilled retentions. Parent (grouped) rows only allow editing the %/Qty and Retention, which then distribute proportionally to their child lines.
A project can carry more than one contract. The Sales Orders (Contracts) picker lets you choose a single contract to bill on its own, or select several and bill them together. When you select more than one, the grid becomes an expand/collapse tree — each contract is a top-level group with its Schedule of Values nested beneath it, and expand all / collapse all buttons open or close every group at once. Enter billing across as many contracts as you like in a single pass; when you create the invoice, BlueCollar produces one invoice per contract that has billable lines, and the results screen lists each invoice (and its AIA documents) grouped by contract.
You can save the grid layout as a named View and switch between them from the View dropdown:
Use the Export button to download the grid in either format:
In the exported file, the Item and the Description of Work are listed as separate columns, even though they share the single "Item / Description" column on screen.
By default the grid prevents billing more than a line's scheduled value: if (This Application + Previous) ÷ Scheduled Value would exceed 1, the entry is capped and an error explains why. Lump-sum lines cap at 100%; unit-price lines cap at current units.
Toggling Allow Overbilling on removes the cap for that session — useful when work has exceeded the original SOV line but a change order hasn't been processed yet. Use it with care: it doesn't update the Sales Order, so it can't be relied on repeatedly, and it isn't advisable where controls around original vs. current contract values matter.
Out of the box, BlueCollar generates standard AIA documents. If you'd rather your payment applications come out on your own forms, an administrator can upload custom AIA templates on the Global Preferences record. This is a one-time setup choice, not a control on the billing screen. The available template slots are:
Leave a slot empty to use the standard BlueCollar form for that document; upload a template to use your own instead. Once configured, AIA documents generated from the billing tool follow your templates automatically.
For billing to work end to end, these transaction forms should be set up and verified: Invoice, Credit Memo, Sales Order, Journal Entry, BlueCollar Revenue Journal, BlueCollar Subc Retainage Journal, Purchase Order, Vendor Bill, Vendor Credit, Item Receipt, Item Fulfillment, Cash Sale, Check, Credit Card, Expense Report, Deposit, Track Time, and BlueCollar Resource Cost Journal.