Project and contract setup

Acting as: your side of the contract

This is not cosmetic. It changes the names of the documents you issue and hides the sections that do not apply to you.

1. Main contractor applies up the chain to a client and certifies down to subcontractors.
2. Client-side or PQS issues interim certificates and does not see the subcontractor side at all.
3. Subcontractor applies up to a main contractor.

Contract form

Drives the statutory payment timetable and suggests a default retention rate. Get it wrong and every date on every certificate after it is wrong too.

1. JCT SBC/DB and JCT IC/MW: final date 14 days, pay-less 5 days before it.
2. NEC3/4 ECC: final date 14 days, pay-less 7 days before it.
3. Scheme: final date 17 days, pay-less 7 days before it.

Document issued

QScope picks a name automatically from your role and contract form, and shows underneath exactly what will print. Override it when your contract calls the document something else.

1. Interim Certificate for JCT with a contract administrator.
2. Interim Payment Notice for JCT Design and Build, where there is no certifier.
3. Payment Certificate for NEC, issued by the project manager.
4. Interim Application for Payment when you are applying up the chain.

Retention

Enter the rate from your contract particulars. QScope suggests a default from the contract form: 3 per cent for JCT Standard and Design and Build, 5 per cent for Intermediate and Minor Works.

1. Set the retention rate.
2. Enter the practical completion date when it is certified. From that valuation onwards the rate halves automatically.
3. Enter the rectification period, usually six or twelve months. QScope counts the release date from it and warns you on the project list before it passes.

Valuation cycle

Tells QScope when your valuations fall, so it can lay out the schedule and prompt you.

1. Set the period, normally monthly.
2. Set the day of the month you value.
3. Set the number of valuations if the job has a fixed count.

Your firm and the people on the job

These print on every document you issue, so they are worth doing once and properly.

1. Your firm is your practice name, printed alongside your logo on certificates and reports.
2. QS or Prepared by is the name on the signature block.
3. Client reference or PO number prints on certificates so their accounts team can match it without emailing you.

If the job has no subcontractors

Turn the subcontractor side off in settings. The whole section disappears from the sidebar, the dashboard and the final account, so you are not looking past empty panels on every screen.