They want three years of financials and a WIP schedule. I do not have a WIP schedule.
That is a packet coming back short, and it is the point where paperwork stops being annoying and starts deciding which jobs you are allowed to bid.
Free checklist
Everything a GC asks for before he lets you bid
Twenty-two items across four groups. Nine of them are financial, and those are the ones that come back short. Every line says who produces it, so you know what to chase and from whom before the packet goes out rather than after it comes back.
Two pages · No cost · Unsubscribe anytime
Why this one
A packet does not come back short on the safety section
The licences and the certificate of insurance are a phone call to somebody who already has them. The financial half is the half nobody can hand you.
They are holding ten percent and I do not know what that adds up to.
Reported inside ordinary receivables it makes your working capital read worse than it is, to the exact reader deciding whether you can carry his job.
What is on it
Four groups, twenty-two items
Marked so you can see at a glance which items come out of your books, which are written by somebody else off your numbers, and which have nothing to do with us at all.
01
The financial packet
Nine itemsThree years of statements, the work-in-progress schedule, completed contracts, retainage aged by contract, AR aging, backlog, bonding capacity letter, bank reference, current interim financials.
Where packets come back short 02
Safety
Four itemsExperience modification rate letter, OSHA 300 and 300A logs, your written safety program, and the incident rates calculated off the logs.
03
Insurance, licensing and legal
Five itemsCertificate of insurance at the limits that contract specifies, W-9, every license the work touches, litigation and termination history, and any diversity or small business certification.
04
Experience and references
Four itemsAIA A305 or the contractor’s own qualification form, a comparable project list, key personnel and the organization chart, plus owner, contractor and supplier references.
What the reporting looks like
The package this comes out of
Five of the nine financial items a general contractor asks for are pages of the monthly reporting package rather than documents built when somebody asks for them. This is that package, shown for a fictional contractor so the schedules can be read in full.
Contractor Position Page showing percent complete and over/under billings, retainage position by contract, contract margin against estimate, and cash against profit
Get the sample pack →work-in-progress schedule showing cost-to-cost percent complete, earned revenue and billings across seven open contracts
Get the sample pack →accounts receivable aging with retainage shown in its own column, and a completed contracts schedule for the last three years
Get the sample pack →Illustrative. Meridian Mechanical does not exist. The figures were written to demonstrate the format and to make the schedules reconcile against one another. Nothing here is a client, a result or an average. Get all five pages — name and email required
Get the checklist
If the work-in-progress schedule is the item you do not have, that is the one worth talking about. It is also what your surety reads before it moves your bonding capacity, so it is rarely worth building once.