A final account that closes
A final account is not a valuation of the finished building. It is a reconciliation from the contract sum, adjustment by adjustment, and every shortcut taken along the way surfaces here.
QScope Team · 6 December 2025 · 7 min read
The most useful thing to understand about a final account is that it starts from the contract sum, not from the works.
It is a reconciliation. Every pound of difference between what was agreed at the start and what is payable at the end must be attributable to an identified adjustment. If it cannot be attributed, the account does not close, and the gap will be argued over.
The structure
| Line | Notes |
|---|---|
| Contract sum | As executed, excluding VAT |
| Less contingencies | Where included in the contract sum |
| Less provisional sums | Each one omitted individually |
| Add expenditure of provisional sums | Valued work instructed against each sum |
| Add or omit variations | Each variation separately identified |
| Adjust prime cost sums | Where applicable |
| Adjust approximate quantities | Remeasured against actual |
| Add fluctuations | Where the contract provides |
| Add loss and expense | Ascertained amounts only |
| Adjust for any other contractual adjustment | Each with its clause reference |
| Adjusted contract sum | The gross final figure |
| Less liquidated damages | Where properly levied |
| Less amounts previously certified | Sum of all certificates to date |
| Less retention still held | Released separately on the certificate of making good |
| Final balance | What is actually payable now |
Why netting destroys it
The single most damaging habit is combining adjustments to save lines.
A provisional sum of £15,000 expended at £18,400 recorded as a single "+£3,400" looks tidy and is unreconcilable. Six months later nobody can tell whether the sum was omitted, whether the expenditure was valued, or whether some of that work also appears as a variation.
The five places money goes missing
1. Provisional sums omitted twice
The sum is omitted in the final account, and the work that replaced it was already picked up as a variation earlier in the job. The employer benefits twice from one omission and the contractor eventually notices.
2. Materials on site never extinguished
Materials certified in an early valuation, incorporated later, and never deducted when the measured work was certified. The account carries a duplicated value that shows up as an apparent overpayment.
3. Omission variations recorded as reductions in measured work
The total is right and the variation register does not agree the account. When the client asks why the register says £84,000 of variations and the account says £71,000, the answer takes a day to find.
4. Approximate quantities never remeasured
Approximate quantities are estimates by definition and require remeasurement. Left at bill quantities they carry an error of unknown size and direction into the account.
5. Advance payment recovered only partly
Where recovery was set at a percentage of each valuation and the job finished early or short, the recovery may not have completed. It has to be picked up explicitly.
Working towards it during the job
The practices that produce a clean final account do the work continuously:
- Each variation numbered, valued and closed as it is agreed, not held open
- Each provisional sum tracked against its expenditure from the day it is instructed
- Approximate quantities flagged at set-up and remeasured as the work is completed
- Materials on site linked to the work that will extinguish them
- A running anticipated final cost that is reconciled to the same structure as the eventual account
Done this way the final account is largely written by the time the job finishes. Done the other way it is a two-week reconstruction exercise carried out under pressure from a client who wants the job closed, which is when the errors above get made.
Presenting it
RICS Black Book guidance on final account procedures is worth reading on presentation. The essentials: a clear statement of the adjustments, supporting schedules for each category, and the ability to trace any figure back to its instruction and its valuation.
An account that can be traced is an account that gets agreed. One that has to be explained gets negotiated.
QScope builds the final account from the same bill, variations and certificates you have been working with all year, so the reconciliation is a report rather than a rebuild.