Whether you are half way through a project, or you are processing your final accounts, WebContractor provides an easy way to hold, track, and release retention. This article will outline the step's you'll need to take when submitting an application for payment that will include retention release.
Creating an application for retention release
To start, you will need to start raising an application for payment as you normally would by going to quick add, clicking 'Add Application for Payment', and selecting the order you wish to apply against:
When applying for retention release, you don't need to include the amount you're trying to have released in the 'Contract to Date' field, as technically you have already applied for this amount in previous completed works.
If your application is only for retention release, you'll need to enter the Contract to Date as the same as the Prev. Contract to Date value so that the 'Amount this Application' field shows 0.00
If you are applying for both retention release, and works done, for example if you have a longer/multi-year project where retention is being released prior to final accounts, then you will need to put a Contract to Date value for the works done in the current valuation period + the Prev. Contract to Date figure.
If you are applying just for retention release, you application will look as follows:
If you are applying for both retention release, and new works done, for example for the value of 500, your application will look as follows:
To make it clear to the contractor that the application is for retention release, we recommend highlighting this in both the Application Reference, and in your application document. For example:
From this point, you just need to submit the application as normal to the contractor, and they will be able to release retention into that applications subsequent payment.
How does the contractor release retention
To help demonstrate how retention will be released when the contractor reviews your application, let's take a look at what the contractor see's:
When a contractor certifies your application, they can see how much retention they've held to date (highlighted in blue), and enter an amount to release in the field highlighted in orange, and added to the gross payment field (highlighted in red).
Checking how much retention has been held by the contractor
You can find out how much retention has been held to date by checking the most recent payment certificate on your subcontract order. On your subcontract order's page, go to the payment certificates tab:
In our example, we only have 1 payment certificate, but as you will likely have several from over the course of your project, you'll need to make sure you click into the most recent payment certificate. To do this you may need to check both the 'Current' and 'Completed' sub-tabs:
In the payment certificate, there is a breakdown of both the payment for that individual payment certificate, and the cumulative amounts for the order. Here you will see both how much retention has been held back by the contractor (highlighted in red) and how much has been released to date (highlighted in blue):
