Construction Accounting & Surety Reporting
Construction WIP Schedule & Over/Under Billing Calculator
Build the work in progress schedule a surety, bank or auditor asks for. Enter contract value, estimated cost, costs incurred and billings for each open job, and get percentage of completion, earned revenue, over- and under-billings, margin fade and backlog — with the two balance sheet lines stated separately, as GAAP requires.
Every figure is calculated in your browser. No contract values, job names or cost data are transmitted or stored.
1. Contractor & reporting period
Percentage of completion, cost-to-cost (ASC 606-10-55-20)
2. Open jobs
Enter contract, estimate, costs incurred and billings. Everything right of the divider is calculated.| Job | Orig. contract | Approved COs | Orig. est. cost | CO cost | Costs to date | Billings to date | Prior GP % | % Cmp | Earned rev. | Over-bill | Under-bill | Fade | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80% | $2,103,147 | — | $53,147 | +5.2 | |||||||||
| 65% | $767,000 | — | $177,000 | +0.0 | |||||||||
| 90% | $815,721 | — | $95,721 | +0.5 | |||||||||
| 35% | $1,365,540 | $134,460 | — | -7.4 | |||||||||
| 63% | $262,479 | $2,521 | — | -17.0 | |||||||||
| Total | $8,805,000 | $227,500 | $7,825,000 | $190,000 | $4,638,850 | $5,125,000 | 58% | $5,313,887 | $136,981 | $325,868 |
3. What an underwriter will ask about
Eastgate Warehouse Shell
- Under-billed — unbilled work is financing the client
Route 9 Bridge Deck Repair
- Under-billed — unbilled work is financing the client
Lakeview Apartments Phase II
- Margin fade -7.4 pts
Old Mill Road Culvert
- Loss job — provision required
- Margin fade -17.0 pts
4. Balance sheet presentation
Current liability
Billings in excess of costs and estimated earnings
$136,981.20
Current asset
Costs and estimated earnings in excess of billings
$325,868.48
These two are summed job by job and never offset against each other. Netting a job that is over-billed against one that is under-billed understates both the asset and the liability, and it is the most common error in a spreadsheet-built WIP.
Provision for anticipated losses: -$19,478.63. A contract expected to finish at a loss recognises that loss in full as soon as it is foreseen, not spread across the remaining percentage of completion.
5. Export
The PDF is laid out landscape on one page for a surety or bank submission. The CSV carries every derived column, including cost to complete and the loss provision.
How to use this tool
Name the contractor and the period end
The period end is the date the costs and billings are measured at. A WIP schedule is always as at a date, and a surety will reject one that does not say which.
Enter the contract value for each open job
Original contract amount plus approved change orders only. Change orders performed but not yet approved belong in a separate schedule — putting them here is how margin fade gets hidden.
Enter the current total estimated cost
Not the bid estimate — the cost you now expect to finish for, including the cost of those approved change orders. This is the assumption the entire report rests on.
Enter costs incurred and billings to date
Job cost from the ledger, and the cumulative amount invoiced. Be consistent about whether billings include retainage.
Read the percentage complete and the two billing columns
Percentage complete is costs to date over total estimated cost. Earned revenue is that percentage of the contract value. Anything billed above it is a liability; anything below it is an asset.
Add last period’s gross margin to see fade
Enter the estimated gross margin this job carried last period and the fade column shows the movement. Two points down is the conventional point at which an underwriter asks what changed.
Export the schedule
The PDF is a one-page landscape schedule for a surety or bank submission. The CSV carries every derived column including cost to complete and any loss provision.
The arithmetic
How percentage of completion produces these numbers
The cost-to-cost method measures progress by money spent rather than by calendar time or by a superintendent’s judgement of how the job looks. Percentage complete is costs incurred to date divided by the total cost now estimated to finish. That percentage is applied to the contract value — original amount plus approved change orders — to give revenue earned.
Compare earned revenue with what has actually been invoiced and one of two things is true. Bill ahead of the work and the difference is a liability: you hold the client’s money for work not yet performed. Bill behind it and the difference is an asset: you have performed work you have not asked to be paid for, and you are financing the client out of working capital.
Under-billing is the number that ends contractors. It rarely appears as a loss — the job may be perfectly profitable — but it consumes cash at exactly the point in a growth cycle when cash is scarcest, and it is invisible on a profit and loss statement.
Margin fade
Why a surety reads the fade column first
Fade is this period’s estimated gross margin minus last period’s on the same job. A job bid at 18% now estimated at 14% has faded four points, and those four points came from somewhere: an estimate that was wrong, change orders performed but not approved, or productivity below plan.
Underwriters treat consistent fade as a bidding problem rather than a job problem, because it predicts the next bid as well as it describes the last one. Two points is the conventional threshold at which the question gets asked. Leave the prior period column blank on a job that is new this period.
Limits
What this does not do
This is a schedule, not an audit. It computes from the figures you enter and cannot tell you whether the cost to complete is honest — which is the single assumption the whole report rests on. An estimate that has not been revised since the bid will produce a schedule that looks orderly and is wrong.
It also uses cost-to-cost only. Contracts measured by units delivered, labour hours or milestones need a different input for progress, and retainage is deliberately excluded from billings here: include it or not, but be consistent with how your balance sheet carries it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a WIP schedule and who asks for one?
A work in progress schedule reports, for every open contract, how much revenue has been earned against how much has been billed. Sureties require it before extending bonding capacity, banks require it for a credit line, and it is the supporting schedule behind percentage-of-completion revenue under ASC 606. Most contractors produce one monthly or quarterly.
How is percentage of completion calculated?
By the cost-to-cost method: costs incurred to date divided by the total cost currently estimated to complete the job. That percentage is multiplied by the total contract value — original amount plus approved change orders — to give revenue earned to date. Progress is measured by money spent, not by calendar time or by how finished the job looks.
What is the difference between over-billing and under-billing?
Over-billing means you have invoiced more than you have earned, so the excess is a current liability called billings in excess of costs and estimated earnings. Under-billing means you have earned more than you have invoiced, so the shortfall is a current asset called costs and estimated earnings in excess of billings. Over-billing helps cash flow; under-billing consumes it.
Can I net over-billings against under-billings?
No. They are reported separately on the balance sheet, one as a liability and one as an asset, and offsetting a job that is over-billed against a different job that is under-billed understates both figures. This is the single most common error in a spreadsheet-built WIP schedule. This tool sums the two columns independently and never nets them.
How is a job expected to finish at a loss treated?
The entire anticipated loss is recognised as soon as it is foreseeable, not spread across the remaining percentage of completion. Cost-to-cost alone would only book the completed fraction of the loss, so the remainder is accrued immediately as a provision. This tool calculates that provision and shows it separately, because a schedule that pro-rates a known loss overstates current period profit.
What is margin fade and why does it matter?
Fade is the drop in a job’s estimated gross margin from one reporting period to the next. A job bid at 18% and now estimated at 14% has faded four points. Underwriters read it as a bidding accuracy signal rather than a single-job problem, because it predicts the next bid as well as it describes the last one. Around two points is the conventional threshold for a question.
Why does a job show more than 100% complete?
Because costs incurred have exceeded the total estimated cost, which means the estimate is out of date rather than the job being more than finished. This tool deliberately does not clamp the figure to 100% — hiding the overrun behind a cap is how a job runs off the end of its budget unnoticed. Revenue recognition itself is still capped at the contract value.
Should billings include retainage?
Either convention works provided it matches how your balance sheet carries retainage receivable, but it must be consistent across every job and every period. Mixing the two is what makes a WIP schedule fail to tie to the general ledger. This tool takes the billings figure exactly as you enter it and makes no retainage assumption.
Is my contract and cost data uploaded anywhere?
No. Every calculation, the PDF and the CSV are all generated inside your browser using client-side JavaScript. No job names, contract values, cost figures or billing amounts are transmitted to any server or stored anywhere.
Billing the job this schedule reports on? The AIA G702 and G703 progress billing calculator produces the payment application whose billings-to-date figure feeds this report, and the contractor quoting estimator builds the cost estimate the percentage of completion is measured against.
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