What changed, and
what proves it.
A running job raises several different questions. They need different records and different measures. Keeping them separate helps your team see what changed without mistaking an early order for a loss.
Not one question, and not one number
Each of these needs different evidence. The pack keeps them apart and says which one it is answering.
What have we recorded?
Actual cost as booked, with its source and date. Its completeness and attribution still need checking.
What have we ordered but not been invoiced for?
Outstanding commitments, net of what has already been invoiced, returned or cancelled. Ordered, not yet invoiced. Some of it may already have been delivered or incurred.
What work has actually been done?
Progress, assessed rather than inferred. Where completion only ever follows what has been claimed, it reports billing rather than build — and the pack says so rather than quietly using it.
What will this job cost to finish?
Recorded cost, plus anything accrued and not yet recorded, plus future commitments, plus the remaining work nobody has committed to yet. Each counted once. That last input is a judgement a person makes, and there is no honest way around it.
What can we claim?
Against the contract, the approved scope and what has gone before. A draft to check, never an entitlement.
Which of these is on the screen?
Said explicitly, every time. Most of the trouble in cost reporting comes from one of these wearing another one’s label.
Ordering early is not a loss. A job that has committed most of its material in month one looks alarming on an exposure measure and can be perfectly healthy on a forecast. Those are different readings and they get different words.
What moves before the invoices land
A month-end cost report describes a month that has closed, and the supplier invoices behind it are further behind again. Only a few things move earlier than that.
Hours against what was planned
Known weekly, once hours are approved and attributed to the task they were spent on. The earliest honest signal on the labour side.
Commitment against work done
A purchase order is a decision already made. It is visible the day it is raised, not the day the invoice arrives.
Claims against work recorded
Independently assessed work can prompt a check against what has been claimed. Timing and entitlement still depend on the contract, approved scope and evidence.
Variations being delivered unapproved
Scope going in against paperwork that has not come back.
What it will not do
Invent a figure so a warning lands
“This receipt has no confirmed price” is more useful than a number nobody can trace. A warning can be material without being precise.
Infer a cause from a total moving
Knowing a number changed is not knowing why. Explaining a movement needs the records underneath it, not arithmetic on the summary.
Repeat itself into the background
It alerts on a change in position, not on a state. Overdue items and unresolved exceptions are the exception — those keep asking, with an owner and a reason they closed.
Score a job on data that cannot carry it
Each measure reports its own status. A missing input blocks the conclusion that depends on it, and nothing else.
Start with the job, not the tool
If you want to see how this reads against a real job, the useful first step is one project — its break-up, its orders and its claims.
Or email hello@contractable.co.