Closing the final account from the record you kept

The final account is the last valuation of a Singapore contract, the point where the measured works, every instructed variation, and the retention are drawn together into one agreed figure. Done well it is quiet, because it settles numbers that were valued and claimed month by month. Done badly it becomes an argument about work nobody recorded at the time.

What the account pulls together

The final account is a reconciliation, and its parts are already familiar from the interim cycle.

• Measured work, the final remeasure of the contract works against what was actually built.
• Variations, every instructed change, valued on the contract basis and agreed.
• Retention, the held sum reconciled and released as the defects period closes.
• Adjustments, provisional sums resolved, claims settled, and any agreed set-off.

Build it as you go, not at the end

The contractors who close accounts quickly are the ones who valued each variation when it was instructed and kept the retention account current. When the last certificate approaches, the account is already mostly built. Those who leave it all to the end are reconstructing prices for work done a year earlier, arguing valuation and entitlement at the same time, and doing it after the leverage of ongoing payment has gone.

Still a payment claim

The final account, once agreed, still moves through the payment mechanism. The final payment is claimed and answered under the SOP Act like any other, with a payment response and a due date. If the agreed final sum is claimed and not properly answered, the same route to adjudication is available. Agreement on the number does not remove the discipline of claiming it correctly.

GST on the closing figure

The agreed final account is a net figure. GST at nine per cent is added on the final tax invoice, as on every interim claim. Keep the net settlement clean, because that is the figure the parties actually negotiated and the one any later challenge will test.

Treat the final account as the sum of a well kept record and it closes in weeks. Treat it as a fresh valuation of the whole job and it drags for months. The work that makes it easy was done in the interim cycles, long before the account was opened.