The final account has a timetable

The final account is treated in practice as something that happens eventually. Contractually it is a process with defined periods, and under JCT they run from practical completion.

The shape of it

The contractor has a period from practical completion to provide the documents needed to compute the final account. On JCT Standard Building Contract that is six months, though the particulars can vary it.

The quantity surveyor or contract administrator then has a further period to prepare the account and notify the contractor. The final certificate follows, on a timetable tied to the end of the rectification period and the certificate of making good.

None of these periods is aspirational. They are contractual obligations on identified people.

Why delay costs money on both sides

Every month the account stays open, the evidence degrades. The people who knew what happened move on. The site records get archived, then lost. Suppliers who could confirm a delivery stop answering.

Positions harden as well. A variation that could have been agreed in ten minutes six months after the event becomes a matter of principle two years later, because by then it is one of six remaining items and everybody has taken a position on all of them.

Retention sits behind it all. The second release depends on the certificate of making good, and the final certificate depends on the account. An account that will not close holds money that stopped being security for anything a long time ago.

What to do at practical completion

Calculate three dates the week practical completion is certified: the contractor’s document deadline, the account preparation deadline, and the end of the rectification period. Put them somewhere that survives the project team.

Then start the account immediately rather than waiting for the documents. Most of the content, measured work, agreed variations, retention, is already known. What is genuinely outstanding is usually a small number of contested items, and identifying them early is what makes them agreeable.

The running account

The best final accounts are not prepared at the end. They are maintained throughout, with each variation agreed and closed as it arises, so that at practical completion the account is ninety per cent settled and only the last few items are open.

That is harder than it sounds because it requires agreeing variations when neither side is under pressure to. It is also the single practice that most reliably prevents a two-year account.

When the contractor does not submit

The obligation to prepare the account does not disappear because the documents did not arrive. Under JCT the quantity surveyor can proceed on the information available, and doing so is usually better than waiting indefinitely.

An account prepared on incomplete information and notified is a position the contractor has to respond to. An account never prepared is a vacuum, and vacuums are where disputes grow.