Schedule of Values Template for Subcontractors: How to Streamline Your Progress Billing

Having a schedule of values template is useful for subcontractors working on projects that require creating periodic applications for payment. They provide a standardized format to capture and present the necessary information when billing general contractors and other clients.

We’ve created a free schedule of values template for subcontractors to download which we’ll walk through below. 

However, a basic schedule of values template (whether it’s a PDF, Google Doc, Excel sheet, etc.) is limited in its utility because a static template doesn’t help with the difficulties involved in the process of creating and maintaining schedule of values (SOV) documents.

For example:

• Tracking, organizing, and pulling together all of the data that goes in a schedule of values (payroll data such as labor hours, purchase orders, change orders, vendor invoices, etc.)

• Keeping that data up to date and visible throughout the course of a project so you can make informed decisions and maintain profitability

• Making accurate job costing calculations at each payment period

» Want to grow your subcontracting business? Click here to get a demo.

These are the real challenges when it comes to the type of progress billing that requires subcontractors to create schedules of value (also commonly referred to as continuation sheets). The steps to handle this process manually are time consuming, error prone, and if they aren’t executed properly, they can delay payments — or worse, reduce the profitability on any given project.

In this article, we’re going to share our free application for payment template (which contains a schedule of values template inside), and then we’ll walk through how our subcontractor management software helps subcontractors overcome essential and related process challenges such as job costing, progress billing, requisition, and other key aspects of subcontractor project management. 

Want to learn more about how we can help streamline your subcontracting business operations? Schedule a call to get a live, one on one walk through of the features we describe throughout this article.

How to Download and Use Our Subcontractor SOV Template

Our schedule of values template is on page 3 of our free subcontractor payment application template (modeled after what’s commonly known as AIA style billing). The schedule of values page provides all of the fields that subcontractors need — whether they’re working on a construction project, a commercial service contract, or a home renovation — to present defensible applications for payment to their clients. 

It includes spaces for:

• Customer contact and address information

• Project name, application no., application date, and contract date (be it a construction contract or service contract)

• A table to record each line item of the project (including item number, description of work, scheduled value, work completed, balance to finish, retainage, and more)

Then, for each project, your project manager (or whoever is in charge of drawing up the project estimate), can use this template to document and plan the items of work to be done. 

At each payment period, they can update the template to reflect the work items that have been completed since the previous application, save the document, and send it off to the client for review and payment.

Using this schedule of values form can save subcontractors the work of trying to create an equivalent of this in Excel or Google Sheets. However, as we mentioned above, this template won’t help solve the core challenges involved in the process of creating and maintaining a schedule of values throughout the course of a project. 

Specifically, it won’t help you with the tracking and organizing of labor hours and purchase order data. It won’t provide real-time visibility into your budget vs actual in order to do reliable job costing. And, among other things, it won’t help you manage and execute the requisition process. 

In the following section, we’ll walk you through how ServiceTitan’s software makes managing these processes significantly easier for subcontractors. 

How ServiceTitan Streamlines Project Management for Subcontractors

The biggest benefit of using a software like ServiceTitan compared to a disparate system of spreadsheets or cobbled together software solutions is that ServiceTitan centralizes all of your relevant project management and contract documents in one place, and integrates them together.

Once you create an initial, detailed estimate of work to be completed and corresponding costs for a given project, all of the information captured in that estimate can be translated to other documents throughout the fulfillment of that project.

So, for example, when you want to requisition equipment materials to create a purchase order for a stage of your project, you can do so based on the line items of the sold estimate that’s already been created. You can easily generate a PDF of that purchase order to send to your vendor, and manage that entire requisition process with a few clicks. 

Or, if you want to create an application for payment at the end of a set payment period, you can generate one — including an up to date schedule of values (in ServiceTitan it’s called a “Continuation Sheet”) — based on the work that’s been completed and registered in ServiceTitan so far. Then, when that payment application is accepted, you can have an invoice generated with a few clicks, as well as have their payment logged in your accounts receivable — all right from within the same intuitive user interface.

This type of integration saves subcontractors an immense amount of time, ensures far greater accuracy and workflow efficiency, and this is just scratching the surface of what ServiceTitan can do.

Let’s take a look at some of the features we have to offer subcontractors for project tracking. 

Product Features Tailor-Made for Subcontractors

From our project overview page, pictured above, users can see:

• High level project details including the project name, number, location, customer contact information, etc.

• A Project Summary encompassing the at-a-glance details of your project completion so far (including the amount and percent completed of your total contract sum, total expenses, total earned, total retainage, invoiced to date, and payments received).

• A Budget versus Actual table to help you manage cash flow throughout the course of a project, broken out into different schedules of value items and updated in real-time based on work that’s completed. You can see the difference between planned and actual billing and expense amounts (viewing the variance as a dollar amount and as a percentage). And you can easily view and track your project budget and margins in dollar and percentage terms.

• An Expense Details table providing specific details on the expenditures to date, including labels for organization and the ability to drill down and view the exact sources of any individual expenses listed.

• An Actions Menu for generating applications for payment, purchase orders, invoices, and more.

What’s seen on the project overview page is based on an initial estimate that’s created and sold. Our estimate feature allows subcontractors to document every task that’s needed to complete the entire project. 

And directly from this estimate page, users can initiate a requisition which allows them to select the items they want to order directly from the project tasks list:

This triggers a workflow to generate the purchase orders needed for the selected equipment and materials. From the purchase order page, users can define the amount of each item they’re requesting, the procurement source, shipping location, and more. 

They can then easily turn that into a purchase order, and export that order as a PDF to submit to their vendor for fulfillment. 

This order is then automatically registered and reflected in the project overview page described above — tying this all back to continuously having an accurate, real-time view of your budget versus actual expenses. 

When it comes time to submit an application for payment, users can select that option from the actions menu, and generate a payment application and continuation sheet based on that payment period.

The continuation sheet or construction schedule of values is automatically generated from the initial sold estimate. And to update the payment application for that period, you can simply click into any line item, and input the percentage of the item that’s being billed for:

Again, with a few clicks of a button, you can generate a PDF to send to the customer for review. And, importantly, in the event of a dispute with your customer, all of the data you need to defend that application for payment is all logged and accessible right from within ServiceTitan. This makes it easier to overcome rejections, get paid on time, and maintain cash flow throughout the course of a project — a task that’s much more difficult to do when managing these things manually.

When applications for payment are approved, you can easily generate an invoice with the corresponding button in the action items menu, and export that to be sent off to the client. 

Conclusion

It is possible to manage the process of subcontracting projects with a variety of different tools like spreadsheets, PDF templates (like the one we shared above), and other software solutions for things like payroll and accounting software.

However, for subcontractors working in the construction industry or involved in the construction management process, having an integrated tool like ServiceTitan can be absolutely transformative for your business.

As we’ve demonstrated throughout the product walk through, we’ve built a suite of features that offer a level of efficiency, accuracy, and effectiveness that is very difficult to replicate using disparate tools and products. 

Want to get a live, one on one walk through of the features we’ve described throughout this article? Schedule a call today to learn more about how we can help your subcontracting business.