Who it's for: project managers and site managers who bill the investor by quantities of work completed.
What you'll do: enter the bill of quantities on schedule items, record measurements from site and issue a progress protocol for a period, the basis for an interim invoice.
Before you start
- Quantity takeoff and progress protocols are on the Pro plan.
- The bill of quantities is the amount of work planned before starting, usually from the cost estimate. A measurement is the quantity actually done and measured on site.
- The bill of quantities is the price for the investor, not the cost plan. You keep the cost plan separately. See How to control a construction budget.
Steps
1. Enter the bill of quantities
- In the schedule, open a task and go to the Bill of quantities section.
- Enter the quantity, unit and Contract unit price from the contract with the investor. You can also enter the item's value, and the unit price is calculated for you.
- When the task has a cost plan, click set price with markup… to set the price as the planned cost plus a markup.
- You can import the bill of quantities from an XLSX file together with the schedule, e.g. a cost estimate exported to Excel. See How to build a construction schedule.
Mark a lump-sum stage as Settled as a whole (stage price) and enter the stage price. The tasks under it have no prices.
2. Record measurements
- In the task's Measured quantities section, click Add measurement.
- Enter the quantity done, the measurement date and a note, e.g. “measured with the surveyor”. Click Save measurement.
- The item shows how much is done, how much is left and when it was last measured.
An item with a bill of quantities has no manually entered percentage. Its progress comes from the measurements.
3. Issue a progress protocol
- Go to Protocols and click New protocol.
- Enter the start and end of the period. The items are calculated from the measurements recorded in that period: before, in the period, cumulative, remaining and value for the period.
- After adding measurements, click Recalculate.
- Click Issue. The investor or the project manager signs the protocol separately with Sign.
- Download the protocol as a PDF.
What happens next
- A signature in the app is an approval with name, role and time. It isn't a handwritten or qualified signature. Sign the paper copy on a printout of the PDF.
- A correction after issuing is a New version. The previous one stays, since it may already have reached the investor.
- You compare the value from measurements with the item's costs, so you see the profit on each piece of work.
Troubleshooting
- The item's progress is 0%. The item has a bill of quantities but no measurements yet. Enter the first measurement.
- The protocol has no items. No measurements were recorded in the chosen period.
- I can't save a measurement without signal. Measurements and protocols need an internet connection.