QScope

Dashboard

Reading the project dashboard

Four figures and a cash position. Every one of them is calculated from certificates actually issued, so nothing on this screen is a figure somebody typed in.

QScope Team·4 min read

The four headline figures

They read left to right in the order the money moves: what the job is worth, what has been certified, what is retained, what is left to certify.

  1. Adjusted contract sum is the contract sum plus approved variations, less omissions, plus final account adjustments.
  2. Certified to date is the cumulative gross value on the certificates you have issued.
  3. Retention held is what is currently withheld, at whatever rate applies today.
  4. Remaining to certify is the difference between the first two.
If certified to date looks wrong, open the last certificate rather than the settings. The dashboard never holds a figure of its own; it only totals what the certificates say.

The cash position

This is the one people look at last and should look at first. It is money in from the client against money out to subcontractors, on the dates each is due.

A job can be profitable and still be draining cash, because the client pays on a fourteen day final date and the subcontractors were paid a fortnight earlier.

Certified is not received. The cash position shows what has been certified and what has actually landed. A gap that keeps widening is the earliest warning you get that a client has stopped paying, and it shows here before it shows anywhere else.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure is derived. Nothing on the dashboard can be edited, because a dashboard you can type into is a dashboard that can disagree with the documents you issued.

  1. Change a valuation and the dashboard changes with it.
  2. Approve a variation and the adjusted contract sum moves.
  3. Enter the completion date, practical completion or Taking-Over on FIDIC, and the retention figure halves.
This is also why the dashboard and the retention notice can never drift apart. They are two views of one set of certificates.

The project list

Above the dashboard sits the list of all your projects, and it carries the warnings: valuations due, payment notice deadlines approaching, retention release dates coming up.

That list is the reason to open QScope on a Monday morning even when you are not valuing anything.

Keep reading

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