Why do final accounts settle so low?

Accounts settle low for reasons that are mostly structural rather than moral. By the time the account is tabled the work is finished, so the payer holds the money and the payee holds only paper; every month of delay costs the subcontractor financing and costs the payer nothing, which is exactly what a low offer prices. Into that imbalance go the technical discounts: variations notified late or not at all, so each carries a time bar argument; records that prove the work happened but not what it cost, inviting a global claim, a lump sum claim that cannot tie causes to amounts and gets discounted accordingly; contra charges saved up all job and dumped into the assessment at the end; and retention quietly ageing past its release triggers. Each weakness is worth a percentage to the assessor, and the percentages compound. What moves the number is rarely a better argument at the settlement meeting: it is the file built while the job ran, notices in time, variations priced as they happened, records that put costs against causes, because an account the payer knows would survive adjudication gets a different offer from one it knows would not.

Picture a facade subcontractor tabling a £300,000 account: £90,000 of it variations first written down at month 11, a delay claim rolled into one global figure, and dayworks signed by nobody. The assessor prices each weakness, half the variations behind a time bar argument, the global claim discounted for causation, the dayworks to zero, and offers £190,000 knowing the subcontractor's overdraft cannot fund a fight. On the next job the same subcontractor notifies every change in the week it happens and prices it inside the month, and the account goes from tabled to agreed in six weeks close to the submission. The lesson is that final accounts are won during the job; the settlement meeting just reads out the score.