Your subs have good crews and no back office. The prime ends up rebuilding their closeouts and reconciling their invoices by hand. Give them one list to work from, and their submitted production becomes both invoices.
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One record, two invoices: how sub billing stops being a reconciliation
Coming in the explainer series. Until then, the mechanism is written out below.
A subcontractor with two or three good crews usually runs the office from a phone. What got done today goes to the prime as a text: addresses, footage, a handful of photos. The invoice comes a week or two later, built from memory and the same text thread.
The prime then has to make that match. Match the sub's invoice to the work order. Match the quantities to the map. Find the photos. Rebuild the closeout the ISP wants. If the sub's numbers and the prime's numbers disagree, somebody calls somebody, and the ISP invoice waits.
The instinct is to find better subs. The cheaper fix is to give the subs you have the tools to close out, so that their production arrives ready to bill and the prime's office reviews it instead of rebuilding it.
Jobs assigned to the sub appear on their list, in your priority order, with the codes and quantities from the RFP. Reassign a job and it moves to another list. No spreadsheet is emailed.
The sub's crew enters codes and quantities against the job, limited to what the RFP allows, with photos attached. On drop work that is once a day. On construction it is each submittal.
Submitted quantities times the sub's rate is the sub's invoice to the prime. It is generated from the record, so it matches the map and the photos by construction.
The same quantities times the ISP contract rate is the prime's invoice to the ISP, with the closeout package attached. Two invoices, one set of numbers, nothing reconciled by hand.
What the prime stops doing: chasing subs for status, re-keying their sheets, and matching their invoices to the map. The pile that shows up every Friday is gone, because it was never created.
A list instead of a text thread. A closeout that builds itself from what the crew enters. An invoice that goes to the prime the day the work is complete, which means the sub gets paid sooner without negotiating terms. And a record of every job they did for you, with the photos, if a question comes up later.
Subs adopt it because it is less work than what they do now, not because the prime told them to. That is the only reason field tools get used.
Job cost by sub and by job: submitted quantities times the sub's rate is the cost of sales on that job, next to the revenue at the ISP rate. Who is overbilling shows up in the numbers, not in a dispute. Compliance documents (COI, W9, and the rest) live on the sub's record, so an expired certificate blocks an assignment before the crew shows up. That side is covered in contractor compliance tracking.
No. The sub works from a link on their phone, on the prime's system. They see their jobs, enter production, attach photos, and submit. The prime owns the record.
They cannot disagree, because the sub's entered quantities and the map marks are the same record. If the prime's reviewer disputes a quantity, the change is made once on the record and both invoices update. Nothing is re-keyed.
The sub's invoice is generated from submitted production, so it can be cut weekly, per job, or per period, whatever the prime's terms say. Progressive billing on construction works the same way for the sub as it does for the prime.
Assignment comes from the field approval hub. The field capture and the tally are map to invoice, and the cost side is job costing. Compliance documents are covered in contractor compliance tracking.
Would it be a bad idea to walk one sub's job from their text thread to your ISP invoice on a 30 minute fit call? No pitch. We will tell you whether an Operations Audit is a fit.
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