Final Account Review
ForensicFixed FeeFor Subcontractors10 working days
I review your final account position before you submit or settle and tell you where entitlement is unproven, time-barred or at risk.
The problem
A final account gets one proper hearing. Submit it with unproven variations, unnotified claims and unanswered deductions inside it, and each weakness becomes the other side's reason to discount the whole account, not just the item it sits in. Most accounts settle below their worth not because the entitlement wasn't there, but because nobody tested the account before it went in.
The solution
I review the account the way the other side's surveyor will: item by item, each variation, claim and contra-charge tested against the contract and the records behind it. Every item gets a verdict: proven as it stands, provable with the evidence named, time-barred, or at risk and why. You get the review as a worked schedule with the account's real range on your own figures, and where an item can still be repaired, I set out exactly what the repair is.
What you receive
You submit or settle knowing exactly what your account is worth and why: the strong items forward, the repairable items repaired first, and nothing left inside that hands the other side a reason to discount the rest. It lands as a worked schedule with a written report behind it: every item, its verdict, its evidence, the repair where one exists, and the realistic range on your own figures.
The Handover Pack accompanies the work with its dates and sources, likely outcomes and responses, scope boundaries and ready-to-send correspondence where needed.
Turnaround: ten working days.
The working days start when the agreed scope and required inputs are available. Optional items do not hold the start unless the agreed scope says otherwise.
Need it faster? Ask on the first call: an express turnaround is quoted in writing where the diary allows it.
Illustrative worked example
Every instruction closes with a written report. This is the format, on a worked example: See a worked example (PDF)
How it works
You send me the paperwork
You send everything in the list below in one go, so the build-up behind each figure is in front of me.
- A
The account as submitted or assessed
EssentialWithout it: There is nothing to review, so the exercise cannot start.
Where to find it: Whoever drafted it, your QS or your accounts team, holds the working file.
Why I need it: What is being reviewed
- B
The executed contract and every amendment
EssentialWithout it: The account cannot be tested against anything, so every head is reviewed against guesswork instead of its own contract.
Where to find it: The job's commercial folder or the order email.
Why I need it: The rules the account has to satisfy
- C
The variation account and register
EssentialWithout it: The biggest part of the account cannot be checked, and it is the part most likely to carry an error.
Where to find it: Your QS's variation tracker or the schedule attached to the account itself. Where the two disagree, send both.
Why I need it: The largest moving part
- D
Every valuation and certificate
EssentialWithout it: The account cannot be reconciled to what has actually been paid, and a certificate missing from the middle is exactly where a variation goes unaccounted for.
Where to find it: Your QS's file of applications and the certificates returned against them, from the first valuation to the last.
Why I need it: The payment history the account reconciles to
- E
The correspondence
ImportantWithout it: No head can be marked as agreed, even where it plainly was, and a position you actually won might get treated as still open.
Where to find it: The project inbox; forward the threads with the other side's commercial team whole.
Why I need it: What was conceded or established along the way
- F
The records behind each head
ImportantWithout it: That head is graded weak or unsupportable on its own say so, whatever the truth of it.
Where to find it: Wherever each head's backup normally sits: your QS's measures, the site diary, or the folder where day sheets and delivery tickets are kept.
Why I need it: An unevidenced head is a discounted head
Copies are fine. Send what you have and I'll tell you what's missing. Download the client request PDF or editable Word version to pass to whoever holds the files.
- A
You walk me through the job
One call on how the project actually ran and where you expect the resistance.
Account Reconciled First
The account is reconciled to the contract sum and the payment history before any item is reviewed, so the review starts from figures that add up.
I test every item against the contract
The clause each item relies on, the notice it needed, and whether it got it.
I test every item against the records
What the item needs to prove and whether the records you hold prove it, with the gap named where they don't.
I give every item its verdict
Proven as it stands, provable with the evidence named, time-barred, or at risk and why: the repair set out where one exists, and a realistic range on the account as a whole.
Position Fully Traced
Every figure traces to its worked schedule and every clause cited is verified against the executed contract before the position is stated.
You decide what goes in
The account is yours: you decide what gets submitted, repaired or dropped on the back of the review.
I hand over the worked schedule and the range
Free Service Pack
A step-by-step Handbook, with the templates and working documents you need to carry out the work it covers yourself. You supply your own project information and records.
Follow the Handbook's scope and stopping points, and obtain independent advice where required. The pack is not project-specific advice or independent sign-off.
My products used
Tips that raise your odds of success
Questions I get asked often
Accounts are easiest to prove when the records were kept while the job ran. Records & Monthly Check puts that discipline in place on your next project, so the account builds its evidence as it goes.