When should the final account be submitted?
Build your final account as the job runs, and submit it when your own signed subcontract says, in the form it asks for.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
The answer
Do not wait to gather your evidence, even if some amounts are still open. Check your signed subcontract, its edition and amendments, and any statement or schedule it requires. Do not rely on a general description of JCT or NEC. Mark estimates, disputed items and missing records clearly. Then diarise your main contractor's assessment and any challenge steps separately. The subcontract's timetable, a finality clause or the statutory payment rules may change what happens if you submit late. Take advice on your actual documents.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A fit-out subcontractor reaches practical completion and believes its subcontract allows 6 months to submit the final account. Nobody has yet checked that against the signed subcontract.
What happens
- The subcontractor keeps the account schedule current, labels a £90,000 extras estimate as an estimate and keeps the signed daywork sheets.
- The signed edition is checked before the submission date is worked out.
- If the clause asks for a different statement or date, the schedule is corrected and the response steps are diarised.
The outcome
The submission date comes from the signed clause, not from memory. The example shows good record keeping, not a universal deadline or a promise of how fast agreement will follow.
To have your account reviewed the way the other side's surveyor will read it before you submit, see our Final Account Dispute Prevention service.