Earned is not received
A valuation tells you what you have earned. A cash flow forecast tells you when it will arrive. On a UK job the gap between the two is set by the final date for payment, and QScope maps it.
QScope Team · 16 January 2026 · 6 min read
The most dangerous line on a healthy job is the one between earned and received. Work is valued, everyone is content, and the business still runs short because the money has not arrived yet. QScope turns the valuation cycle into a forecast of when cash actually lands, using the payment dates the contract sets.
From due date to final date to bank
Each certified valuation has a due date. From there the final date for payment sets when the money must be paid. Where the contract is silent, the Scheme for Construction Contracts puts the final date seventeen days after the due date. QScope takes the certified figure, applies the contract periods, and places the receipt on the forecast at the date it should actually arrive.
Net of what leaves before it lands
The receipt on the forecast is not the gross valuation. QScope nets it down through the layers that apply on a UK job: retention held this cycle, CIS deducted where the contractor is a subcontractor, and the VAT position under the domestic reverse charge. What appears on the cash line is what the bank will see, not what the certificate says.
The outflow side
Cash flow is two curves, not one. Against the receipts sit the payments the contractor owes down the chain, each on its own subcontract final date for payment. QScope holds both, so the forecast shows the peak funding requirement: the point where the most money is out and the least is in.
Counting the days honestly
Because section 116 of the Construction Act excludes Christmas Day, Good Friday and bank holidays when counting, a final date over a holiday period lands later than a naive count suggests. QScope applies the same day counting to the forecast that it applies to the notices, so the cash date and the notice date agree.
A forecast that moves with the job
Every new valuation, every agreed variation, every recorded milestone updates the forecast. It is not a one off exercise pasted into a board pack and forgotten. Because it draws on the same data as the valuations and the retention tracker, the cash flow the board reads and the position the surveyor certifies are the same numbers, seen from different ends.
QScope builds a cash flow forecast from the valuation cycle and the final date for payment on each cycle, so a contractor sees when cash actually lands, not just when work was earned.