How should I submit a final account so it gets agreed quickly?

Submit it to be checked, not to be admired. The surveyor on the other side has other jobs and limited patience, and an account that is hard to follow gets put off, so the whole aim is to make agreeing with you the path of least resistance. That means structuring the account the way the contract sum is structured, so measured work, variations, provisional sums, dayworks, claims and contra-charges each sit where the reader expects them and reconcile back to the original tender and the certificates already issued. It means cross-referencing every line to its evidence: the measure to the marked-up drawing, the variation to its instruction, the daywork to its signed sheet, so a claim can be verified without a request for more information. It means a clear front summary that lets the reader see the shape of the whole thing and reconcile the total in an afternoon, then drill into detail only where needed. And it means positioning the honest difficulties honestly: a claim overstated to leave negotiating room poisons trust in every other line, whereas one presented at a defensible figure with its evidence invites agreement. The discipline is not presentational polish; it is removing every reason the checker has to stall. An account that is easy to check gets checked, gets queried on its genuine differences rather than resisted wholesale, and is then one meeting from a signature.

Take a small M and E subcontractor whose first final account was a hundred-line spreadsheet with no references, one lump for all variations, and a total that did not obviously tie to anything certified. The main contractor's surveyor asked for substantiation, got a folder of loose photos, and the account stalled for months in requests for information. The rebuild changed only the presentation: a one-page summary reconciling to the contract sum and the certificates; measured work against the bill sections; each of the eleven variations on its own line with the instruction reference and evidence beside it; dayworks carrying their signed sheets. The surveyor checked it in two sittings, queried three lines that genuinely differed, and agreed the rest. The money owed was much the same either way; only the second was built to be checked rather than waded through.