Work on construction projects can be subcontracted out in a pyramid fashion. If, somewhere along the line, a subcontractor runs into trouble, legislation exists to protect their subcontractors.
If your construction project is located in a jurisdiction that has Builder’s Lien legislation, you may be legally required to hold back part of your invoice payments, usually 10%.
On each invoice, you can specify the holdback percent.
If you specify a holdback %, the invoice amount will be split into a net amount and a holdback amount.
When you approve payment for the vendor, Abio’s default behaviour is to disregard the holdback when selecting which vendors should be paid. In this way, the holdback amount is kept separate from the rest of the invoice.
When you transact the invoice, the holdback amount is posted to the control account.
The holdback is held in trust until the job completes. If there are any builder’s liens against the project, the money retained in the holdback account will be apportioned to the lien holders according to the legislation.
If there are no builder’s liens against the project, the holdback can be released to the original vendors.
To release holdback, navigate to [a] Payables, then [j] Release Holdback.
Select the vendors, jobs, and invoice items to release holdback for.
A window displays that lets you select the invoices to release holdback for. Use the middle buttons to select.
Click <Apply> to release the holdback amounts. Abio will prompt you before it creates the invoices to release the holdback.
A summary report displays the invoices that were created.
In the above example, we withheld $18.00 from invoice item 5. When Abio releases the holdback, it starts by creating an invoice to reverse out the holdback amount that was withheld.
It then creates a second invoice to move the $18.00 into the net amount.
Because the net outstanding is non-zero, this invoice will be offered up the next time you process payments for Sleggs. You can pay them their holdback, and the invoice will be fully paid.