Managing Claims in Mastt: Less Admin, More Data-driven Decision Making

Hop Dao
Hop Dao
January 19, 2022

Late payment has long been the norm in the Construction industry. While subcontractors depend on timely payments of their invoices to operate their businesses, it is not always possible due to complex process and procedure for claim review, certification, and release of money.  

Once the claim is submitted for payment, it must be evaluated. If the sub-contractors have completed the jobs but did not meet the milestones, or industry standards, they may be paid a different amount. This process can be time-consuming and complicated without a way to properly record changes and collaborate between the parties involved.  

Traditionally claims are managed in Excel spreadsheets. Project managers could spend hours to go through hundreds or thousands of sheets or tabs every month to manage claims and payments. However, Excel has limited ability to provide historical context behind the claims, and is a poor environment to collaborate for internal and external players.  

Claims recorded in Excel.

We feel that pain at Mastt, which is why our cost module is designed to reduce the long admin hours and give you a transparent view of your projects’ financial state. Less time is spent on updating and checking Excel columns, rows, tabs and formulas. More time will be given to review reports and make important decisions.

See how the claim process could be done in Mastt within a few steps:

Step 1 - Navigating to the Claims Page via the Cost module.

Step 2 - Adding a Claim: click + Add Claim, and a smart form will appear where you are able to select the contract/s you wish to claim against.

Step 3 - Add Claim Form:  

First, you want to put in a Title for the Claim.  

You can also add a Payment Claim Reference (the reference to the payment claims from your contractor) and an Invoice Number (the invoice associated with the claim).

Once you’ve finished adding the claim form, it should look something like this:

Step 4 - Add Claim Form: Additional Fields

You can also add Additional Fields to the claim if required, including the Payment Statement No., Period From and Period To.

Step 5 - Add Claim Form: Claim Amounts

To Add a Contract to a Claim, this is visible in the Claims Amount area (underneath Additional Fields).  

Click ' + Add a contract' or you can search for a contract. This will automatically add the selected contract to be claimed. You can now add multiple claims to the one contract.

Claims can be populated in Mastt using two fields, % Completed and This Claim. Entering data into either field will populate the other giving you more flexibility when adding claims into Mastt. This Claim amount is the amount you are certifying to be paid. You can also click remove on any contract if you want it removed from the claim.

Record original amount claimed vs actual claim paid

Where your certified amount (This Claim) varies from that on the submitted claim, Mastt allows you to record both values and add supporting justification using the Original Claim column. Once you click Add you are able to add the value, and a field will pop up to populate a reason for variance between claimed amounts and certified amounts.  

Easily manage Cashflow  

There are 5 options for status of a claim. Rejected, Draft, Submitted, Approved, and Paid. If the status is Paid, you are required to populate the Cash Flow Month.

Cash Flow Month is the month that the claim is paid, or when this is unknown it is generally assumed to be the month following the claim month. Payments made will be automatically reflected in Cashflow.

Changes made in the Claims page are immediately reflected in the Claims/Payments and Balances section of the Overall page, which tells us how much we've paid and still have to pay. This gives you a % indicator for progress:

Paid to Date - The data for Payment Claims that are both APPROVED and PAID status. Despite the title of the column as 'Paid' to date, we currently include APPROVED status in here as a better representation of progress.

To Be Claim = Current Contract - Paid To date, which gives us the balance of payments still to be claimed.

Complete % = Paid to Date / Final Forecast Cost

From time to time our Product team are working hard to bring innovation to your everyday tasks and improve your experience with the software. We always love to hear your feedback so that our solutions are more customised to your needs. Have a play around and please share your feedback directly back to us by booking a time with us here.

See how Capital Projects & Portfolios achieve the best for less