QScope

Final account

Building and agreeing the final account

Most final accounts are not disputed. They are simply never finished, and the money sits there while everyone waits for somebody else to start.

QScope Team·5 min read

The adjustment lines

QScope follows the RICS structure, so the account reads the same way every time and nothing is left out by accident.

  1. Provisional sums, adjusted against the actual cost of the work instructed.
  2. Prime cost sums, adjusted with their profit and attendance.
  3. Remeasurement of approximate quantities.
  4. Dayworks, from the agreed sheets.
  5. Fluctuations, where the contract provides for them.
  6. Loss and expense, from the ascertained heads.
  7. Overheads and profit adjustment.
Each line has a source elsewhere in the program. Dayworks and loss and expense both carry across with one click rather than being retyped.

Start it at practical completion

Under JCT the contractor has a period from practical completion to provide the documents, and the quantity surveyor a further period to prepare the account. Both are contractual obligations on identified people, not aspirations.

Do not wait for the documents to start. Most of the account is already known: measured work, agreed variations, retention. What is genuinely outstanding is usually a handful of contested items, and identifying them early is what makes them agreeable.

Closing it

  1. Print the statement of final account.
  2. Print the agreement letter and get it signed.
  3. Issue the final certificate from the Completion tab.
The final certificate is conclusive as to the matters set out in the contract unless proceedings follow within a short period. That is a reason to issue it deliberately rather than as an afterthought.

Why the figure might differ from your spreadsheet

QScope reconciles everything back to the contract sum. If a variation was approved but never certified, it is in the adjusted contract sum and not in the certified value, and both figures are correct.

A spreadsheet that mixes the two produces a total that cannot be traced, which is precisely the thing a final account has to survive.

Closing out on FIDIC

Outside the UK the account often runs on FIDIC rather than JCT, and it does not close on a final certificate. It closes through three documents in Clause 14.

The adjustment lines are the same. What changes is the closing sequence, and that the dates are counted in calendar days rather than working days.

  1. The Contractor submits the Statement at completion under Sub-Clause 14.11.
  2. The Final Statement follows under 14.12, once the parties agree the figures.
  3. The Engineer issues the Final Payment Certificate under 14.13, and the Employer pays within the contractual period.
The counting is in calendar days. On the 1999 Red Book the Engineer certifies within 28 days and the Employer pays within 56 days of the Statement, and there is no pay-less notice. The statutory dates and taxes are published starting points that need local verification.

Keep reading

Related

Final account and reports From the adjusted contract sum to the final balance under JCT, or the FIDIC Final Statement and Final Payment Certificate, every adjustment on its own line. Read this next Your first project, start to issued certificate Set up one live job in QScope, UK or international, and produce a payment certificate the same afternoon. What to enter, what to skip, what to check. Read this next The instruction register Logging instructions in the order they were given, on JCT or FIDIC, confirming verbal ones, and finding those that never became variations. Read this next