The constructionWIP schedule
Billed is not the same as earned.
Your pay applications say one thing about progress. Your costs say another. A work-in-progress schedule reconciles the two, and tells you whether you have billed ahead of the work or fallen behind it, job by job and across the whole portfolio.
What a WIP schedule actually is
A construction work-in-progress schedule is the report that reconciles billing against earnings across every open job. For each contract it sets what you have billed the client next to what cost progress says you have earned, and the difference is your over- or under-billed position. It is the single most-read page in a contractor financial statement.
Say you have billed a client $19.8M to date on one job. By cost, you have actually earned $21.6M of that contract. The $1.8M gap is real money you have performed but not yet invoiced, and on most jobs nobody sees it until the quarter closes. A WIP schedule surfaces that number every period, for every job, before it turns into a cash problem or a surprise on the audited financials.
The schedule, line by job
A real WIP schedule carries one row per job and rolls to a portfolio total. Earned revenue on each row is cost percent complete times contract value; the over/under is billed minus earned. Figures below are illustrative, in millions.
| Job | Contract | Cost to date | EAC | Cost % | Billed | Earned | Over / under |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Midtown medical center | $48.0M | $18.0M | $40.0M | 45.0% | $19.8M | $21.6M | -1.8M under |
| Northgate warehouse | $34.0M | $22.0M | $30.0M | 73.3% | $26.5M | $24.9M | +1.6M over |
| Harbor pump station | $8.2M | $3.1M | $7.0M | 44.3% | $3.5M | $3.6M | -0.1M under |
How the number is computed
The chain is three steps, and its discipline is keeping cost-side figures separate from revenue-side figures until a single multiplication. Margin, unspent contingency, and retainage never cross into the wrong side of that line.
| Step | Formula | The discipline |
|---|---|---|
| Cost percent complete | Actual cost incurred ÷ current estimate at completion | Cost-to-cost. Incurred (accrued) cost, never cash paid. |
| Total earned revenue | Cost percent complete × current contract value | Contract value = original plus executed change orders only. |
| Over / under billed | Total billed to date (gross) − total earned revenue | Positive means over-billed. Negative means under-billed. |
A worked example
Take the first job above. It carries a current contract value of $48.0M (original plus executed change orders only). Actual cost incurred to date is $18.0M against a current estimate at completion of $40.0M, so cost percent complete is 45.0%. Earned revenue is 45.0% of $48.0M, about $21.6M. Billed to date is $19.8M. The job is $1.8M under-billed, an asset. Not a red flag on its own, but it is a prompt to ask why billings trail cost progress, whether it is pay-application timing, milestone terms, or a front-loaded cost curve on the subs.
Billed against earned
The picture every controller is really after. The left column is what has been invoiced. The right column is what cost progress says has been earned. When earned rises above billed, the blue band is revenue performed but not yet on an invoice, an under-billed, asset position.
The project-level over- or under-billed figure is a roll-up of line-level detail. On each schedule-of-values line, the percent a contractor claims on the pay application can run ahead of, or behind, the percent that cost progress supports. The visual below shows the same job as the worked example: most lines are under-claimed, and that pattern is what rolls up into the $1.8M under-billed position.
Progress Claim Delta
PODProgress claim variance
Impact
Over-billed is a liability. Under-billed is an asset.
On the financial statements these are not just labels. An over-billing is billings in excess of costs and estimated earnings, a liability, because you have taken the client's cash for work you have not yet performed. An under-billing is costs and estimated earnings in excess of billings, an asset, because you have performed work you have not yet turned into an invoice.
Neither is inherently good or bad. A modest, explained over-billing can be healthy front-loaded cash. A large under-billing is your working capital quietly funding the owner. The discipline is knowing which you are in, on every job, every period, and having the cost and billing evidence to explain it.
Why it matters
An under-billed job is your cash funding the client. Catch the billing up and the working capital comes back to you, often the fastest liquidity a contractor has.
A clean WIP schedule is what a bond company and a lender ask for to support a draw and to hold your bonding capacity. Fade and profit trends live here too.
Over- and under-billings are the contract assets and liabilities on your financials. A number that only appears at year-end is a number you cannot manage.
Five ways it goes wrong
Percent complete has to run on accrued cost, not cash disbursed. Payment lag understates progress and has nothing to do with how much work is in the ground.
A gross billed-to-date figure is what belongs in the calculation. Retainage is a cash-timing hold, tracked in its own ledger, and it never touches the earned-revenue math.
Only executed change orders raise contract value. Fold in approved-but-unexecuted ones and earned revenue inflates against billings that were never issued.
If percent complete is just the percent billed, earned revenue equals billed by definition and the over/under check always reads zero. The point is to measure billing against cost independently.
Margin is a revenue markup, never a cost. It belongs in contract value, never in actual cost or the estimate at completion, or percent complete comes out wrong.
A stored file vs a current read
A WIP schedule is only as current as its two inputs: billed-to-date from your pay applications, and cost-to-date from your cost reports. The difference between a stale schedule and a live one is entirely about how those inputs get in.
- ·The pay application is a PDF filed in a folder, re-keyed into a spreadsheet once a month
- ·Cost-to-date lives in the accounting system, on a different cadence than the billing
- ·Someone assembles the WIP schedule by hand, so it is a week to a month stale
- ·The under-billed position surfaces at the quarterly close, after the cash is already tied up
- ·POD reads each pay application as it arrives and carries billed-to-date forward
- ·It reads the cost report on the same as-of date, so billed and cost share one period
- ·Billed-to-date and cost-to-date stay current per project without a re-keying exercise
- ·The inputs your WIP schedule needs are never behind, per project and across the portfolio
POD reads your pay applications and cost reports as they arrive and keeps billed-to-date, cost, and your cash position current, per project and across your portfolio, so the reconciliation you build from it is never behind the filing cabinet. It pairs with earned value management, the schedule of values, and the wider construction billing methods. Read them together, never one alone.
The project controls library
The pillar: integrated cost and schedule, earned value, and the forecast a controls team should not assemble by hand.
How CPI and SPI are derived, and why performance measurement is a different lens than billing.
The line-item structure every pay application and earned-value figure rests on.
Lump sum, unit price, cost plus, and how each one bills against progress.
Budget, commitments, and change orders: the burn and the drift before it becomes an overrun.
Budget minus committed is your buy-out buffer; how category savings absorb overruns before contingency.
The free AIA-style pay app that carries billed-to-date into every figure on this page.
WIP schedule questions
What is a construction WIP schedule?▾
A work-in-progress schedule reconciles what a contractor has billed a client against what it has actually earned, measured by cost-based percent complete. For each job it lists contract value, cost incurred, estimated cost at completion, billed to date, and the resulting over- or under-billed position, and it rolls those into a portfolio total.
What is the difference between over-billed and under-billed?▾
Over-billed means you have invoiced the client for more than you have earned by progress, so the excess is a liability you still owe in work. Under-billed means you have earned more than you have billed, an asset that ties up cash until you catch the billing up.
How is percent complete calculated for revenue?▾
The common method is cost-to-cost: actual cost incurred to date divided by the current estimate at completion. It is deliberately independent of the pay-application billing percentage, which is the whole point of checking billed progress against cost progress.
Why does a surety or lender ask for a WIP schedule?▾
The over- and under-billed positions are contract assets and liabilities that a bond company and a lender read to gauge how a contractor is financing its work and whether a draw is supported by earned progress. A clean, current WIP schedule is a routine condition for bonding capacity and for funding.
Is percent complete for revenue the same as EVM percent complete?▾
No. Cost-based percent complete for revenue recognition uses cost incurred over estimate at completion. Earned value management measures performance, and it can earn progress a different way. They are two lenses on the same job and can differ, which is why a project can be efficient on CPI and still be under-billed.
How does POD help with a WIP schedule?▾
A WIP schedule is only as current as its inputs. POD reads your pay applications and cost reports as they arrive and keeps billed-to-date, cost, and your cash position current per project and across your portfolio, so the reconciliation you build from it is never a month behind.
POD keeps billed and cost current
Begin with the free pay application template, then let POD read the billings and costs already flowing through your jobs. Per project and across your portfolio, in real time.