Valuations, retention, variations and dayworks
Certify the cumulative work on a contract for a period, hold retention, and roll in variations and dayworks.
Rufineous Emmanuel
Last Update a day ago
Valuations turn approved measures into a certified, retention-aware application for payment — the interim certificate your client pays against.
Raising a valuation
New valuation on a contract gathers every approved, not-yet-valued measure, variation and daywork up to the period end and builds the figures:
- Gross to date — cumulative measured value.
- This period — what's new since the last valuation.
- Retention held ({x}%) — the percentage withheld, shown as held (this period), capped at the contract's retention cap.
- Applied this period — this-period gross minus this-period retention.
Each covered measure is stamped applied so it can never be re-billed, and the valuation snapshots its lines so later edits to a rate or measure don't change an issued certificate. It's numbered per contract with a reference like VAL-{contract}-001.
The lifecycle
A valuation moves Submit → Certify → Mark paid:
- Certify records the certified amount (defaults to applied — change it only if the client certifies differently) and sets the due date from the contract's payment terms.
- Mark paid closes it out.
- Export PDF/CSV produces the full breakdown for your client, line by line.
Variations and dayworks
Both feed valuations alongside measures:
- Variations are change orders — Addition (extra value) or Omission (which subtracts). They run Proposed → Submitted → Approved, and an approved variation is valued once.
- Dayworks are time-and-materials sheets with Labour, Plant and Material lines. Pull logged hours brings a job's clocked time straight in as labour rather than re-keying it. They follow the same approve-then-value flow.
Note: the older flat payment applications still exist for historical data and export, but valuations are the go-forward path — cumulative, retention-aware and certifiable. Use valuations for new contracts.