The Column You Type by Hand: What "Prior Completed $" Does to Your Pay-App Check

The problem: one hand-typed column feeds a check

Every month, the person assembling a subcontractor pay application works from three sets of records: T&M tickets, change order requests (CORs), and the pay-application schedule of values (SOV). In the Construction Control workbook, most of the SOV's structure is carried by the workbook itself. One column is not. Column D — "Prior completed $" — is typed in by hand, by you, for every line.

That hand-typed column matters more than it looks. The billed-to-date figure for each SOV line is built from it: the amount completed before this period, plus this period's billing. One of the workbook's seven checks, EX-07, compares each approved change order's billed-to-date total against its approved amount, and flags the line when the two differ by more than half a cent. EX-07 cannot see where the billed-to-date figure came from. If Column D is stale — last cycle's number, a figure typed from the wrong row, a value nobody rolled forward — the comparison starts from a wrong number, and the flag it produces (or fails to produce) is about your typing, not your billing.

A stale Column D cuts both ways. Understate it, and a fully billed, correct line flags as under-billed. Overstate it, and billed-to-date can land exactly on the approved amount and stay silent while real billing is still behind. Neither outcome tells you anything about the work. Both send you looking in the wrong place first.

The manual method: keep Column D current in three steps

Step 1 — Roll it forward right after each pay application goes out. When a pay app is submitted, take each SOV line's completed-to-date total from that submission and enter it as the new "Prior completed $" before the next cycle's billing starts. Column D should always describe the world as of the last submitted pay app — never the one before it.

Step 2 — Tie it out line by line before you run any check. Before relying on any billed-vs-approved comparison, read Column D against the totals on the last submitted pay application, line by line. You are looking for the two failures that actually happen: a line that was billed last cycle but never rolled forward, and a figure typed against the wrong line. This is a comparison of two documents you already have; it needs no software.

Step 3 — When a flag appears, check Column D first. An EX-07 flag means the approved amount and the billed-to-date total differ. Before questioning the billing, confirm the hand-typed input the total was built from. Column D is the only one of the three numbers in that comparison that a person typed from memory or from another document — check it before the other two.

A worked example (fictional)

The example below is fictional. The company, the change order, and the amounts were invented for this article, with round numbers. It is not data from a real job, and it is not one of the workbook's demo datasets.

Northgate Ceilings LLC (fictional) holds approved change order COR-21 for $9,000. Through last month's pay application, the full $9,000 had been billed — the line is complete, and nothing further will be billed against it.

This month, the office admin builds the new pay application. Column D for the COR-21 line still reads $6,500: the figure from two cycles ago, which nobody updated after last month's billing was entered elsewhere in the file. This period bills $0 on the line, so billed-to-date reads $6,500 + $0 = $6,500.

EX-07 compares billed-to-date ($6,500) against approved ($9,000). The difference is $2,500 — well over half a cent — and the line flags. Yet nothing about the billing is wrong: the work was billed in full last month. The flag is the stale cell. The admin updates Column D to $9,000, billed-to-date now reads $9,000, the difference is $0, and the flag clears.

Run the same error the other direction and the check goes quiet instead. If Column D had been typed as $9,000 while only $6,500 had actually been billed, billed-to-date would read $9,000, match the approved amount exactly, and produce no flag — with $2,500 of approved work still unbilled and nothing on the report pointing at it.

How to read an EX-07 flag when Column D was the cause

A flag is a difference, not a verdict. The check reports that two numbers disagree; it cannot say which number moved, and it cannot say any number is wrong. When EX-07 flags a line, read it in this order:

1. Column D for that line, against the last submitted pay application. Is the prior-completed figure the one that submission actually shows?
2. This period's billed amount on the SOV line. Was this cycle's billing entered once, on the right line?
3. The approved amount on the Change Orders sheet. Does it match the approved COR as recorded?

If the answer to the first question is no, you have found the usual cause: correct Column D, let the totals rebuild, and read the report again. If all three numbers check out and the difference remains, then the flag is pointing at a real billing difference — and it has earned a closer look on its own terms. (An earlier article in this series covered the EX-07 check itself — what a billed-vs-approved difference does and does not establish.)

What the workbook does — and does not do

The Construction Control workbook runs seven checks (EX-01 through EX-07) on the T&M tickets, change-order requests, and schedule-of-values records you enter in desktop Excel, and reports the exceptions it finds. EX-07 is the billed-vs-approved comparison described above.

It does not pull last month's figures from your accounting system, your files, or anywhere else. Column D is yours to type, and every check can only compare what is in the file in front of it. It does not update Column D for you, and it does not decide whether a flagged difference is an error — that judgment stays with the person who knows the job. It is a worksheet for use alongside your AIA G702/G703 — it does not replace them.

Where to get it

The workbook — Construction Control, the Subcontractor Pay Application Reconciliation Workbook — is currently paused and not available to buy while it is rebuilt and independently re-tested.

If you would rather run the seven checks by hand first, the free Pay App Pre-Submission Checklist is at payhip.com/b/ROCQb.