Final Account Statement Template (Construction) — Free Excel
Free construction final account statement template in Excel. How to take the original contract sum to the final sum, what evidence each line needs, and how the final account is certified and paid.
Key Takeaways
- Start from the contract sum and show every adjustment as a referenced line.
- Put claimed and agreed side by side — hiding the gap does not close it.
- Include the deductions yourself rather than waiting to be told.
- Keep retention out of the account; it has its own release triggers.
- Agreement is not payment: the agreed sum still goes through the payment notice machinery.
The final account assembles from what you already recorded
Site Samurai keeps every variation with its instruction, every daywork sheet with its signature, and every valuation against what was certified, on the project record as the job runs. At close-out the final account is assembled from evidence that already exists rather than reconstructed from inboxes, and the lines still in dispute are the only ones anyone has to talk about.
What the final account is
It is a single statement reconciling everything that happened on the contract to a final sum, agreed between the parties and then certified. It is not a new claim and it is not a negotiation opener — the strongest final accounts are the ones where every line was already agreed months earlier and the statement simply adds them up.
- It starts from the original contract sum, not from what has been certified.
- Every adjustment is a line with a reference to the instruction or record behind it.
- It includes deductions as well as additions, because a statement that ignores them is not credible.
- It is agreed first and certified afterwards — the certificate follows the agreement.
What goes into the account
Most disputes at final account are about which of these lines exists, not about the arithmetic within them.
| Element | Direction | Evidence it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Original contract sum | Base | The executed contract or order |
| Remeasured work | Either | Agreed measure or as-built records |
| Variations and compensation events | Usually addition | Instruction references and agreed valuations |
| Dayworks | Addition | Signed daywork sheets and instruction references |
| Provisional sums | Either | Actual expenditure against the sum included |
| Loss and expense | Addition | Contemporaneous records of the cause and the effect |
| Contra charges | Deduction | Notice given at the time, plus evidence of the cost |
| Liquidated damages | Deduction | Non-completion certificate and the contractual rate |
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How to build the statement
The work is in the referencing, not the totalling.
- Start from the contract sum and list every adjustment as its own line.
- Show claimed and agreed side by side, so the gap you are negotiating is explicit.
- Attach a reference to every line — instruction number, daywork sheet, measure sheet, correspondence.
- Deal with the deductions honestly rather than waiting to be told about them.
- Keep retention out of the account; it releases on its own contractual triggers.
- Reconcile the final sum against everything certified to date, so the balance due is obvious.
- Run the close-out checklist in parallel — O&M manuals and as-builts hold up more accounts than money does.
Worked example
A £420,000 subcontract closes out. Remeasure adds £4,900. Fourteen agreed variations add £31,600 and two disputed ones are claimed at £9,300 against an offer of £2,000. Signed dayworks add £6,140. A provisional sum for drainage connections comes in £3,200 under. A contra charge for attendance is deducted at £1,850. The claimed final sum is £467,890 and the agreed position stands at £460,590, with the £7,300 gap sitting on two variation lines that both have instruction references and neither has an agreed valuation. Presenting it that way turns a £467,890 argument into a conversation about two lines.
Common mistakes
Final accounts stall for reasons that have nothing to do with the money.
- Submitting a total with no line-by-line breakdown, so the payer has nothing to agree.
- Showing only the claimed column, which hides everything you have already conceded.
- Leaving out the deductions, which invites the payer to reopen the whole account.
- Producing evidence for variations eighteen months later, when the people who instructed them have moved on.
- Mixing retention into the account, so a defects argument holds up the whole settlement.
- Missing contractual time limits for submitting the account or for loss and expense claims.
How the final account gets paid
Agreeing the final sum does not move any money. The agreed sum is certified in a final certificate or a final payment, and that payment goes through the same machinery as every interim one: a due date, a payment notice, a pay less notice deadline and a final date for payment. A final account that is agreed and then not paid is an ordinary notified-sum claim, with adjudication available at any time.
- Agreed account → certified → paid by the final date for payment.
- Retention releases separately, on its own contractual triggers.
- Statutory interest on a late commercial debt runs at 8% above the Bank of England base rate, with fixed compensation of £40, £70 or £100 depending on the size of the debt.
Sources
The payment mechanics on this page were checked against the sources named below before publication. What goes into a final account, and the time limits for submitting it, are contractual — this is general information, not legal advice.
- Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, Part II, ss.109–111 (as amended by the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009) — legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/53/part/II
- Scheme for Construction Contracts (England and Wales) Regulations 1998, Schedule Part II, paragraphs 4, 8, 9 and 10 — legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/649/schedule/part/II
- JCT, "JCT explains: interim payments" (SBC/Q 2016 clauses 4.9 and 4.11) — corporate.jctltd.co.uk/jct-explains-interim-payments/
- Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, s.5A, and gov.uk "Late commercial payments: charging interest and debt recovery" — legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/20/section/5A
Last reviewed: 2 September 2026
A final account built from the record, not from memory
Site Samurai keeps variations, dayworks and certified valuations on the project record, so the final account assembles from evidence that already exists.
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Keep the instructions, sheets and valuations on the record as the job runs, and the final account writes itself.