Keep your books in Foundation? Test AP automation on invoices already posted.

Today your clerk opens a new invoice in Foundation, picks the vendor, and either posts it against a PO or subcontract or codes it straight to a job. Conditional defaults fill some fields. The rest is a choice of phase where you use them, cost code and cost class, plus any retainage and tax. Then someone decides whether it sits close enough to the PO to post.

In the proof of concept, AI reads copies of invoices your team has already posted and drafts each one the way Foundation would hold it, with the reason behind every field. It posts nothing and pays nobody. Your reviewer puts each draft beside the entry your clerk actually made and marks where the two part ways.

Control files decide the defaults. Foundation keeps company-wide settings in control files. Integration guides for Foundation point to the A/P control file, under System, Controls, A/P, for the default A/P, cash and retainage G/L accounts and terms, and to the job cost control file for whether phases are turned on at all. Foundation's own guide describes phases as the broad steps every project goes through in the same order, with cost codes as the tasks inside them. The draft follows your settings: a phase on every line if you use phases, none if you don't.

The cost class reaches the ledger. Foundation's cost classes carry an A/P expense G/L field, and an invoice posted against a PO or subcontract line can pick up its expense account from that line. Sync documentation for Procore and Foundation leans on both, and fails a line outright when its cost class has no A/P expense G/L. So a cost class is more than a job cost label in Foundation: it ties into the general ledger. The draft shows the expense account each line would take and where that account came from.

POs and subcontracts carry variance limits. Foundation's purchase order and subcontract module lets a company set allowable variance limits for construction expenses and for sales and use tax, and A/P invoices posted against them are kept within the limits you define. Commitments are tracked from pending status through approval, together with their change orders. That is where a desk stops: an invoice over its PO by more than the limit, tax that doesn't agree, or a billing against a change order still pending. The draft measures each invoice against its PO or subcontract line and your stated limits, and names any pending change order it touches.

Insurance dates and waivers decide the check run. Foundation's subcontract module sends alerts for expired insurance certificates, and Foundation's own AP guide says it tracks when a sub's general liability and workers' compensation coverage lapses and holds payments until lien waivers are signed. Accounts Payable creates and prints lien waivers alongside credit memos. At check time, invoices and retainage are picked by due date, discount and hold, and a pre-check register previews the run. The draft never pays; it reads the coverage dates and waiver status you export and marks every invoice whose vendor would be on hold at the next run.

Retainage, reversals and Procore. Retainage is entered with the invoice, where the subcontract sets it aside, and comes back up later when retainage is picked for payment. A mistake found after posting is fixed with a reversal, which Foundation does in one step; checking the coding before anything posts leaves less to reverse. Where PMs work in Procore, sync documentation links Foundation cost classes to Procore cost types, and PO and subcontract change orders to Procore commitment change orders; the test reads copies and touches neither system. Your reviewer, usually the AP clerk or project accountant, watches phase and cost class on each line, variance against the PO, tax, retainage, and vendors on hold.

If your reviewer says yes, the same drafts run on new invoices for about 30 days.

Your clerk or project accountant approves, edits or rejects every draft before it is entered in Foundation, by hand from the draft or through an import your company already uses. Check runs, holds and lien waivers stay with your team, and nobody outside it pays anyone.