How long should agreeing a final account take when it is run properly?

There is no fixed period, and the contract's own timetable sets the outer frame, but the honest answer is that a well-run account agrees in weeks and a badly-run one drags for the better part of a year, decided by how it was built rather than how hard it is negotiated. An account compiled as the job ran arrives mostly pre-agreed: measured sections closed with the other surveyor as they finished, variations priced and signed off in the month each happened, the total reconciling to what was certified all along. What is left is a handful of differences, so the meetings are short and the signatures come quickly. An account excavated at the end arrives as one enormous unknown: nothing agreed while fresh, so every line is decided cold, months later, from archived paper, which is slow by nature and slides toward dispute as cold decisions harden into positions. Two further things pace it. Submission quality: an account structured the way the contract sums are structured, cross-referenced to its evidence and summarised so the other side can check it in an afternoon, gets checked promptly, while a confusing one sits in a drawer. And momentum: agreeing the uncontentious ninety per cent early and keeping a running schedule of what is open stops each meeting reopening the last, the commonest reason accounts stall. Run those well and the timetable is a few meetings; run them badly and it is measured in reminders.

Consider a drylining subcontractor with two similar jobs finishing months apart. On the first, the account was left to the end: a single large spreadsheet, no cross-referencing, variations unpriced until submission. The main contractor's surveyor could not follow it, checked it in fits and starts between other work, and each meeting reopened lines the last had seemed to settle; it was still open eleven months after completion. On the second, nothing about the work differed, but the account had been compiled as the job ran and submitted structured to the contract sum, evidence attached, with a one-page summary. The surveyor checked it inside a fortnight, they agreed the uncontentious majority in the first meeting, resolved three real differences in the second, and signed in the third, all inside six weeks.