General Contractors, Milestone Draw Payment & Progress Verification

General contractors and renovation companies running multiple projects at once (typically doing $500k-5M in annual project volume) who are tired of chasing draw payments held up by vague milestone language or verbal disagreements about what's actually done.

The contractor sets up a project with a clear draw schedule: specific dollar amounts tied to specific milestones, each with explicit completion criteria the client agreed to upfront. As work reaches each milestone, the contractor photographs proof against those exact criteria and submits it. The client reviews the photos criterion by criterion, right from a text link, approving or flagging each one individually rather than one blanket sign-off.

Approved milestones generate a payment request automatically. Flagged issues pause that milestone's payment until resolved, with a simple log tracking the fix, so disagreements get handled explicitly instead of becoming a verbal dispute weeks later.

The core photo-and-approval flow is straightforward to build. The part that takes real care is the milestone criteria builder: resist the urge to ship with generic template criteria like 'demo complete,' since vague language is exactly what causes the disputes this tool exists to prevent. Push contractors during setup to write specific, checkable criteria for their actual project (what exactly counts as demo being done, rough-in being done, and so on), since a criterion a client can verify by looking at a photo is the whole value proposition here.

Test the flagged-issue pause logic carefully, since a milestone that keeps requesting payment without anyone noticing an unresolved flag defeats the entire point. Once the base build works, common follow-up requests include a simple change-order flow for scope changes mid-project (since renovations rarely go exactly as planned), a shared photo timeline the client can look back through after the project's done, and integration with the contractor's existing accounting software for the payment records this tool generates.