Progress claims are accounts submitted to the customer for payment on an agreed regular basis for payment on work completed. Based on the assumption that the project has been quoted and an agreed price reached the progress claims will be proportional to the completed work inline with the price quoted. It is important to note that the progress claim is not associated with the cost of materials purchased or the labour costs for installing those materials.

When quoting a job, consideration must be given to how the progress claims are to be submitted, the estimate is categorised to suit, for example, houses may be in four (4) stages, under slab, hot and cold water installations, external drainage and finishing off. While commercial projects are based on the percentage of work completed for each individual trade or section including the overheads and profits.

When estimating plumbing trades there are advantages in breaking the estimate into the following categories, roofer, sanitary fixtures, sanitary plumbing, hot water, cold water, fire, gas, house drainage and stormwater drainage.

A typical progress claim would be presented as follows: -

Comparing Progress Claims and Profits
Contractors should place a high priority on the profitability of individual jobs/projects and in particular, section of the job. There is a belief that if there is money in the business bank account there must be a profit, this of course is not correct.

A good exercise is to view each project similar to department stores, which have separate departments for the purpose of measuring profitability; the plumbing industry has a number of trades within each project. Roofer, sanitary plumbing, hot and cold-water drainage etc, all can be used as departments sometimes referred to as "profit centres." It is further possible to breakdown a job to individual sections such as "stages", to gain a higher degree of accuracy, an example would be cold water services, level one, two, three or areas one, two and three. The benefit is in being able to identify the most profitable areas of work and take action in those areas not producing a satisfactory return. Computer programs such as the Cavalier Contractor's Pack allows this to happen automatically.

The "Progress Claim" asnd the "Profitability" for a project should be viewed separately. If in a tender/quote the drainage was priced at $2,600.00 including overheads and profits, the progress claim for 50% complete would be $1,300.00, note that the overheads and profits are claimed proportionally in each claim, they are not held over to the last claim.

The profitability is compared to the total dollar value claimed to date not the full quoted price, it is not possible to claim more than 100% of any trade at any time. The project/job is costed using the same breakdowns as those used in the claim. Take the total cost of labour to date and add it to the cost of the materials used to date, (but only up to the point of the progress claim) also add any overhead costs, which have been incurred.