A WIP reconciliation ties your work-in-progress schedule, recognised revenue and cash position line-by-line to your general ledger — then tells you, in writing, where they disagree and why.
None of these are exotic. They're the predictable consequence of a schedule maintained by hand alongside a ledger that keeps moving.
The WIP schedule, the project master and the executed change order log carry three different numbers for the same job.
Cost-to-complete figures unchanged for three months on jobs actively burning cost. The margin shown is fiction.
A formula dragged one row short. A hardcoded override entered in a hurry and never removed. Both survive for years.
Posted date versus entry date pulls transactions into different months, so WIP revenue and the income statement never quite agree.
The clock starts when the data arrives complete. Everything is read-only — we extract and analyse, and never write back to your ERP. The audit diagnoses and quantifies; it does not remediate. That boundary keeps the fee fixed and the scope honest.
You send GL transaction detail, chart of accounts, the project master, your current WIP schedule plus the prior six months, AR aging, the change order register, and trial balances for the reconciliation periods. Flat exports are fine — no API access or security review required to begin.
Each test compares two sources that should agree and quantifies the gap where they don't. Every variance gets a dollar figure, a root cause, and a classification: data problem or process problem. One round of clarifying questions with your controller, not unlimited access to their calendar.
Findings ranked by materiality, with the effort required to close each one and who owns the fix. Ninety minutes with your CFO and controller to walk through it, ending with a fixed-fee build scope quoted from what was actually found rather than from guesswork.
Whether revenue less cost of sales less overhead, computed from transaction detail, reproduces reported net income. Surfaces account-range definitions, which book is authoritative, and how periods get assigned.
Duplicated transactions from connector or import behaviour, unreversed prior-period entries, and orphaned records with no valid dimension.
Cost-to-date on the WIP schedule against general ledger cost of sales, job by job.
Earned revenue on the WIP schedule against recognised revenue in the ledger for the same period.
Contract on the WIP against the project master against executed change orders. This is where individual jobs turn out to be carrying the wrong number.
Placeholder values, blanks, estimates below cost-to-date, and figures that haven't moved while cost has.
The WIP billing position against the balance sheet asset and liability accounts that should mirror it.
Whether remaining-to-bill is computable at all, and whether it ties to contract value less billings to date.
Bank general ledger accounts against reconciled bank balances for the same date.
Unassigned project managers, missing profit centres, project status drift, and absent close-out dates — the quiet causes of reports that don't foot.
Below is a worked WIP reconciliation on a fictional $80M commercial contractor with 24 active jobs. Every figure is synthetic and illustrative — these are not client dashboards and no client data appears anywhere on this page. They show the shape of the output, not anyone's numbers.
| Job | Contract | Cost to date | Est. total cost | % Compl. | Earned | Billed | Over / (under) | GP % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26-004 Flagship | $12,400,000 | $8,190,000 | $10,500,000 | 78.0% | $9,672,000 | $10,100,000 | $428,000 | 15.3% |
| 25-018 West Loop | $8,750,000 | $7,050,000 | $7,500,000 | 94.0% | $8,225,000 | $7,410,000 | ($815,000) | 14.3% |
| 26-011 Midtown | $6,200,000 | $2,542,000 | $6,100,000 | 41.7% | $2,585,000 | $2,480,000 | ($105,000) | 1.6% |
| 25-022 North Pier | $4,900,000 | $2,772,000 | $4,200,000 | 66.0% | $3,234,000 | $3,390,000 | $156,000 | 14.3% |
| 26-007 Harbor East | $3,150,000 | $621,000 | $2,700,000 | 23.0% | $724,500 | $690,000 | ($34,500) | 14.3% |
Each finding structured identically: what was tested, what was found, dollar magnitude, root cause, whether it's a data problem or a process problem, who owns the fix, and effort to close. Ranked by materiality.
The actual tie-out worksheets, so your controller can reproduce every number independently rather than taking our word for it. Most teams are still using this a year later.
Which ERP object and field feeds which reported number, and every definitional decision it embeds — which account ranges are revenue, which book is authoritative, which date governs the period. Most contractors have never had this written down.
Ninety minutes with your CFO and controller walking through the findings, followed by a fixed-fee build scope priced from what the audit actually surfaced. The audit fee credits fully toward that build if you proceed.
Before any audit, we spend thirty minutes on the WIP schedules you already have — no system access, no NDA, no IT ticket. If nothing turns up, we'll say so and you've lost half an hour.
Plus the matching income statement
We walk you through what we found
Yours whether you engage or not
Fixed fee, credits toward a build