For subcontractors
General contractor rejected my invoice in their payment portal — what now?
The pay app cleared AP, the GC portal rejected the row, and your QuickBooks ledger still shows the invoice as "submitted." The dollar gap is real, and the evidence you need to collect is already on your desktop.
What the rejection actually does
The five ways a GC pay-app rejection quietly kills your cash flow.
You see a rejected row today and assume the next pay cycle fixes it. Most of the time you wire the difference yourself, the books drift, and AR ages on a job you already finished.
The portal accepted, then rejected — and QuickBooks never saw the rejection.
Your pay app walks in, the portal shows "submitted," and then AP kicks the row back for a reason that has nothing to do with your work — a missing line, a stale template, a rounding difference. QuickBooks still treats the invoice as live AP. AR keeps aging.
The change order that justified the line never made it back to the portal.
You signed the CO months ago. The GC portal schedule of values still runs the original scope. The pay app pays against the old SOV and your delta disappears into a bundled line — you do not see it as a separate disputed row.
The "missing line" you have to assemble by hand.
The GC AP clerk asks for the signed PO, the change order, daily logs, photos if the row was rejected. You put it together this morning on the kitchen counter. You do it again next month on the next rejected row.
AR ages every pay cycle the rejected row stays open.
Every cycle the rejection sits open, the books say one number and the pay app says another. Retainage piles up next to the unpaid rejection. Cash flow tightens on jobs you already finished.
You are the only one who knows the gap exists.
Your PM does not see the portal log. Your bookkeeper does not see the rejection note. The link between the forwarded AP email, the PO, the change order, and the QuickBooks row lives in your inbox — and the gap only closes if you stay on it.
What Drumtap does about it
Drumtap labels the rejection, drafts the package, you send.
Drumtap does not submit to the GC portal and does not edit your books. The value is the discrepancy label, the evidence package the rejection reason actually needs, and a forwarded-AP workflow your office can run.
Drumtap labels the gap after the records are reconciled.
Drumtap compares the pay-app message, your QuickBooks invoice, and the project PO, then applies an internal reconciliation label (G-01..G-06) to the row — QuickBooks-only / missing portal, portal-only / missing QuickBooks, short payment, portal rejection, aged over 60 days / no portal record, or small reconciliation delta. The GC portal keeps its own status and message; Drumtap adds this category after the comparison.
Drumtap assembles the evidence package the rejection reason requires.
For each tagged row Drumtap builds the package the AP clerk actually needs: signed PO + change order for a partial; PO + CO + daily logs for a missing line; PO + CO + daily logs + photos for a rejected row. You open it, you decide what to send, the email goes out under your letterhead.
Request early access, share the AP email, and Drumtap can draft the dispute.
Join the waitlist to discuss the CSV upload from QuickBooks and the CSV export from the GC portal. The forwarded AP rejections can become new tickets in the planned workflow. Drumtap drafts the dispute / refile packet and parks it in your approval queue — no portal submission, no auto-send, no edit to your books.
What Drumtap does
Drumtap never submits to a GC portal and never edits your books — it labels the rejection, drafts the dispute package, and you send.
Drumtap sends nothing to the GC portal and writes nothing to QuickBooks on its own. The dispute / refile packet is a drafted document you open, review, and send under your letterhead.
Next step
Ready to stop reconciling the rejection by hand?
Join the private beta waitlist. Timing, fit, and final terms are reviewed before any access opens.