QScope

Final account

The final account is the last word on what the contract is worth: every variation, provisional sum, remeasure, loss and expense and fluctuation settled. These guides cover building it, agreeing it and the timetable to the final certificate.

Latest

Final account21/05/2026
Prolongation costs, and the weeks they belong to

Prolongation is the time-related cost of a longer job. The recurring error is calculating it at the tender rate over the wrong period.

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Final account15/05/2026
How do you close out a job and agree the final figure?

A final account is not an invoice with a bigger number. It is the contract sum, adjusted line by line for everything that changed, each line carrying its own paper. Built as you go it takes an afternoon; reconstructed at the end it takes a month and loses money.

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Final account14/05/2026
The heads of a loss and expense claim

Loss and expense is reimbursement of actual loss, proved. The recognised heads are narrower than most claims assume.

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Final account07/05/2026
The final account has a timetable, and it starts at practical completion

JCT sets a period for the contractor to submit documents and a period for the account to be agreed. Both are routinely ignored until the account is two years old.

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Final account24/03/2026
Surviving an audit of the final account

An auditor is not looking for fraud. They are looking for figures that cannot be traced to a document, and every account has some.

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Final account17/03/2026
Value engineering savings, and who keeps them

A saving found by the contractor and a saving instructed by the client are different things. The contract rarely says so.

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Final account10/03/2026
When the final account will not close

Most accounts are not disputed, they are abandoned. Two or three items stall and the whole document sits there for two years.

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Final account24/02/2026
The documents a final account has to stand on

An account is only as good as what supports it, and those documents are created during the job or they are not created at all.

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Final account27/01/2026
Agreeing the final account without turning it into a dispute

How to get from a submitted account to an agreed one. Sequencing the items, dealing with the three that are genuinely contentious, and why one meeting rarely does it.

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UK19/01/2026
Closing the final account in QScope under JCT and NEC4

QScope carries the contract sum, variation register, remeasurement, provisional sums and retention into a final account that closes because it was kept live throughout.

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