Sulge alates substantial performance'ist kuni lõpparveldiseni

Record substantial performance as a dated, certified event with the signature behind it, and attach the certificate together with the record of the state of the work it was certified against.

Miks: Everything downstream counts from this date, so it has to be one date with a document behind it rather than a date three people remember slightly differently. The version that ends up challenged is always the one nobody can produce on the day it is questioned.

Enter the obligations that run from the certified date against it: publication of the notice, the period in which security can still be claimed, the holdback release, and the date deficiencies are reckoned from. Count each one on the rules of the province the work is in.

Miks: Four consequences tracked in four places are four chances to miss one, and the one that gets missed is always the one with no invoice attached to remind you. A single register in date order is also what lets somebody cover for you without being briefed.

Value each outstanding item at what it will cost to complete or correct, and total the list as the reserve to be held against release rather than reporting it as a count of open items.

Miks: A deficiency list is a claim about money and a checklist is a claim about tidiness. Releasing against a count treats ninety small items and one expensive one as ninety-one, and the expensive one is the entire reason the release is being argued about.

Record the release against the contract for the holdback balance less the valued deficiency reserve, so the ledger shows what was held, what was released, on what date, and against what.

Miks: The release is the moment a balance and a recomputed percentage stop being the same number, and only writing the release down as a transaction keeps them together. A release nobody recorded is one both sides will later compute differently and each be certain about.

Build the final account from the original contract price, every approved change with its code, holdback released, deficiency deductions and any credits, so that each line points at the transaction that produced it.

Miks: A final account is agreed when the other side can check it, not when it is delivered. One that can be walked backwards to its transactions settles in a meeting; one that arrives as a total settles in a negotiation, and the negotiation is where the last few percent of the job goes.

Issue the final account together with the certified date, the deficiency list and its status, the holdback release and the warranties, as one package to the client and one record to your own file.

Miks: The package is what the client's finance department needs before it can pay, and the file copy is what you need when a security claim or a deficiency argument arrives eighteen months later, by which time everyone who did the work has moved to another job.