Solutions · Progress payments
The month’s work is already recorded. The quantities backup still gets built by hand.
Every line of a progress payment has to be backed up: how much of each item was done, in the period, and with what evidence. That is already in the crew’s forms, and still somebody types it again on the 3rd. PAIR builds the backup from those records.
What breaks when building the month’s backup
- The crew wrote metres, units and hours in their daily report. At month end somebody writes those same figures again in a spreadsheet, item by item, reading papers from three weeks back.
- The sum adds up to itself and work is still missing: the bottom two rows of a form with several sections that nobody counted, or the item written «M-14» where the contract says «M-014». Nothing warns, because the file comes out arithmetically perfect.
- When the client returns the sheet with a lower quantity, answering where they cut you, by how much and with which records it is argued costs another whole day.
Five things that change at month-end close
- 01
The bill of quantities comes in pasted from your Excel
- Who does it today
- The contract administrator, once, when the contract starts.
- What is left
- The items with their code, their unit and the contracted quantity if the contract sets one. And a list of objections stated on pasting and not a month later: the repeated code and the line without a code stay out; the line without a unit of measure comes in anyway and is flagged, so the work charged to it does not vanish from the backup.
- 02
The quantity is declared where the work was done
- Who does it today
- Whoever fills in the form in the field, picking the item from the dropdown.
- What is left
- Every quantity tied to its contract item and its record, with the fill date. Three sections written on the same form count as three and not as one.
- 03
The month comes out with contracted, previous, period and cumulative
- Who does it today
- The contract administrator, the day they build the submission.
- What is left
- The Excel with the figures as numbers —so the column can be summed—, the same content as PDF and CSV, and the lines that were left out written inside the file itself.
- 04
What cannot be billed does not slip into the total
- Who does it today
- Nobody. It is the rule of the count.
- What is left
- What was rejected at approval, out and declared. An «approx 3» counted as illegible and not as zero. And the warning, on screen and in the file, if the month falls outside the contract term.
- 05
The sheet the client returns, crossed against yours
- Who does it today
- The contract administrator, when the answer comes in.
- What is left
- Where they cut and by how much, ordered by the largest cut, with the records that added up to each cut quantity inside the file you take to the meeting.
What lies behind a quantity being billed
A progress payment is not argued with a spreadsheet: it is argued with what backs it up. This is what the rule asks for and what the system produces.
| What the regulation requires | What evidence PAIR produces |
|---|---|
| MOP Supreme Decree 75/2004 arts. 153 and 154 What you need before a progress payment is processed It is a prerequisite to hand the fiscal inspector the documents proving there are no debts to workers for wages, social security, Law 16.744 contributions and withheld taxes, extended to subcontractors and service providers. And the progress payment is reported on a site progress signed and dated by the fiscal inspector. | The period’s progress by item —contracted, previous, period and cumulative— in the attached file, with what was left out and its records written inside the same file. The breakdown of which record contributed how much to each item travels in the closed month’s backup. PAIR does not price or issue the progress payment: it produces the progress backup. |
| Law 19.799 art. 5 Electronic documents and signatures An electronic private instrument does not attest to its own date without an electronic timestamp from an accredited provider. | The sequential number and the closing time are set by the server, not by the exporter’s computer, and the content keeps its hash. It is not an accredited timestamp. |
The bodies named are the regulators. PAIR neither represents them nor carries their endorsement.
What you start with
No new form is needed if the one your crew already fills in has the item in a dropdown and the quantity in a numeric field: there you mark which is which and bring the items of the bill of quantities into the dropdown. If the item is written by hand today, that field has to be changed to a dropdown.
- Contract bill of quantities, pasted from your Excel
- Daily progress report, with item and quantity
- Field measurement by bill-of-quantities item
- Executed-work slip, signed in the field
- Period quantities backup, as Excel, PDF or CSV
- Comparison with the sheet the client returned
- Closed month’s backup, with sequential number and hash
Demo
Bring us your bill of quantities and a daily report
The bill of quantities of one of your contracts and the form the crew uses to note progress: in thirty minutes you see the month’s backup coming out as Excel, with what was left out written inside.
- Would you rather look at the plans first? See pricing.
- Still have questions? Check the FAQ.