Agreeing it, without a dispute
Most final accounts contain a hundred items that nobody disagrees about and three that decide the outcome. Treating all hundred and three the same way is what makes it take six months.
QScope Team · 27 January 2026 · 6 min read
A final account becomes a dispute in a predictable way. It is submitted as one document, reviewed as one document, and responded to as one document, so a disagreement about three items holds up agreement on everything.
The alternative is unglamorous and works better.
Separate what is agreed from what is not
The first response to a submitted account should not be a counter-offer. It should be a categorisation:
- Agreed. Items where the value is accepted. Close them and record them closed.
- Agreed in principle, value to confirm. Entitlement accepted, arithmetic or evidence outstanding.
- Not agreed, evidence needed. The other side may be right; you cannot yet tell.
- Not agreed, position taken. Genuine disagreement on entitlement or principle.
On a typical account the first category will hold most of the items and most of the value. Closing it immediately shrinks the argument to something a meeting can finish.
Close items during the job, not at the end
The single most effective practice is agreeing variations as they are valued rather than accumulating them.
A variation agreed in March, with the instruction fresh and the people who did the work still available, takes twenty minutes. The same variation agreed in November requires both sides to reconstruct what happened, and the reconstruction costs more than the difference between the positions.
Where a variation cannot be agreed, record the two positions and the reason, and move on. A documented disagreement is a much better starting point than an unexamined one.
The three that are usually contentious
Loss and expense
Almost always the largest single item and the least well evidenced. It is not resolved by splitting the difference; it is resolved by going head by head and asking what was caused and what is the evidence.
Dayworks
Contentious where the rule itself is in question rather than the arithmetic. Deal with the rule first. Arguing about hours on a sheet that should not have been dayworks at all is wasted effort.
Liquidated damages against extension of time
These two are one argument, however separately they are presented. Neither side can settle damages without settling time, and attempting it produces an agreement that unravels.
Practical sequencing
- Confirm the contract sum and the starting point. It is worth ten minutes to be certain both sides start from the same figure
- Agree the measured work and remeasurement
- Agree provisional sums, each as an omission and an expenditure
- Agree variations in blocks, starting with the uncontentious
- Deal with time, then with damages
- Deal with loss and expense last, when everything it interacts with is settled
- Reconcile: certificates issued, plus balance, plus retention, against the adjusted contract sum
Recording the agreement
When agreement is reached, write it down properly on the day. Not a figure in an email, but a schedule showing what was agreed item by item, signed or confirmed by both sides.
Accounts agreed verbally at a meeting and confirmed by nobody are re-argued surprisingly often, usually because one party's note of the meeting differs from the other's, and neither is contemporaneous enough to prevail.
Where agreement is not possible
Sometimes it is not, and recognising that early is better than a further four months of correspondence. What makes the next stage manageable is having narrowed it: an agreed account except for three identified items, with each side's position recorded and the evidence collected.
An adjudication on three defined issues is a different proposition from an adjudication on a whole final account, in cost, in duration and in how much of the relationship survives it.
QScope tracks each variation and adjustment with its own status, so what is agreed and what is outstanding are separate lists rather than one long argument.