A phased payment schedule from the contract value, with stages that must add to one hundred.
Programme, labour and cash flow. 5 questions answered below, each with the arithmetic behind it and the limits of what the tool decides. Open the Cash-Flow Timeline tool.
A job is paid for over its life, and its costs are paid out over the same life at a different rhythm. Materials are bought before they are fixed, labour is paid weekly, and the client pays in stages that may lag both. The cash flow view exists to show that mismatch before it becomes an overdraft. It is built from the payment stages you define, applied to the contract value, mapped onto the programme's dates. What it does not do is track money received, because that is a ledger rather than a forecast. It shows what should be due when, and with a retention applied, what will actually be released and when.
A contract of a hundred and twenty thousand in four stages: twenty percent on start, thirty on roof level, forty on practical completion and ten on the defects period ending. Retention at five percent held from each stage leaves six thousand withheld through the job and released after the defects period. Costs run at roughly nine thousand a month for six months, so the second month is where the gap appears: costs of eighteen thousand against receipts of twenty four thousand that clear thirty days later. That gap is what the view exists to show, and it is the reason a profitable job can still stop.
From the percentages you set against milestones or dates in the programme, applied to the contract value. Each stage becomes a payment due in a period, and its value follows from the percentage. Where a stage is tied to an event, such as roof level, its date comes from the programme rather than from a guess, which is why the two tools belong together.
It reports the remainder. A schedule of twenty, thirty and forty leaves ten percent unallocated, and the tool shows that as a gap rather than quietly scaling the others up. On a hundred and twenty thousand contract that gap is twelve thousand, which is the kind of money that turns into a dispute at the end of a job, so it is worth seeing while the contract is still being drafted.
Yes, as a percentage held from each payment and released at the point you specify. It shows the cumulative amount held through the job and the amount released at the end, which matters because retention is money earned, invoiced and unavailable for months. A job that looks profitable on the margin line can still fail on the cash it has tied up in retention.
No. Actual payments are a ledger, and this is a forecast. What it shows is what should be due when, based on the stages you have agreed. Reconciling that with what has actually arrived is bookkeeping, and a forecast that pretends to be a ledger is worse than either on its own.
Because a single payment at the end means the contractor funds the whole job. Staging moves money closer to the work, which reduces the funding requirement and spreads the risk. The tool shows what each staging arrangement does to that requirement, so a negotiation about payment terms can be had with numbers rather than with instinct.