Worked example
Joinery contractor
What the report looks like.
A full Commercial Health Check report for a joinery contractor: where the money was going, what each leak was worth, and the three fixes ranked by money against effort. Calder Joinery Ltd is a fictional business and every figure is illustrative, shown so you can see what you would be buying.
The Commercial Health Check · Findings reportSpecimen · example summary
1. Summary - what your documents show
£6,800 of retention is past its contractual release date and can be applied for now; £4,300 of it sits with the two main contractors still trading. Work already done but not billed, or applied for below its value, comes to an estimated £7,300 to £13,500 a year. A further £8,000 to £12,000 a year of quoted work was never followed up: work that could be won, not money already earned. Each figure below is traced to a document in the records reviewed.
| # | Where the money goes | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Retention held on finished jobs, not yet applied for | £14,200 held; £6,800 past its release date now |
| 2 | Extra work instructed on site, never billed | est. £4,300 to £7,900 a year |
| 3 | Payment applications going in below the value of the work | est. £3,000 to £5,600 a year |
| 4 | Quotes sent and not followed up | est. £8,000 to £12,000 a year of winnable work |
| - | The owner's time on month-end paperwork | about 9 hours a week |
The three fixes worth doing, in order of money against effort
- 1.Apply for the retention that is due. £6,800 is contractually due now across three completed contracts. Money already earned, not new work.
- 2.Record extra work when it is instructed. A written confirmation the same day, sent from the phone on site, turns a verbal instruction into a variation that can be priced and applied for.
- 3.Prepare the application from the records. Month-end takes two hours, goes in on the contract date, and carries the substantiation behind every line, so a short certification has something to answer.
