Keep a running final account from the first valuation
Build your final account month by month as the job runs, and the final submission becomes a check, not an archaeology project. A final account is only the subcontract sum plus every adjustment: variations, provisional sums, fluctuations, claims and omissions.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
If you are asking when the account should go in at all, see when the final account should be submitted.
Why it matters
Build the account at the end and someone is reading other people's paperwork months after the event, with half of it missing. The instruction emailed but never logged, the provisional sum spent but never recorded, the omission nobody priced: each becomes a search, not a line. Your main contractor, meanwhile, has certified totals and a clean paper trail. So it becomes your memory against their ledger. A running account records each adjustment while the person who knows it is still there and the document is to hand.
How to do it
- Open a running account spreadsheet in month one, with a section for each kind of adjustment: variations, provisional sums, fluctuations, claims, omissions.
- Add a line for each instruction, provisional sum spend or claim event in the month it arises, with its document reference.
- Update the value of each line at every interim application, marking it as applied for, certified or disputed.
- Reconcile the running total against the certified total each month and note any gap.
- Issue the running account at practical completion as the first version of your final account, with the reconciliation attached.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A mechanical subcontractor on an £800,000 package receives 40 instructions over a 14-month programme. The main contractor's surveyor changes twice during the job. The subcontractor's surveyor keeps a running account from the first valuation.
What happens
- Each instruction is logged the week it arrives, priced within the month and included in the next application.
- The running account shows variations at £96,000, provisional sums spent at £41,000 against a £50,000 allowance, and omissions of £12,000.
- Within 3 weeks of practical completion, the surveyor issues the running account as the final account.
- The main contractor's new surveyor checks each line against its logged instruction and queries four.
Final account build-up
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Contract sum | £800,000 |
| Variations added | £96,000 |
| Provisional sums, allowance less expended | -£9,000 |
| Omissions | -£12,000 |
| Final account | £875,000 |
The outcome
The account settles at £869,000 within 2 months of practical completion. The four queried lines are conceded or agreed from their instructions. Nobody spends a week piecing together what the first surveyor knew.
To have this set up for you, see our Final Account Dispute Prevention service.