The paperwork side, in plain words

Running the job

• Job costing in four numbers

  Contract value, billed, not billed yet, left to bill. What each one means, where a spreadsheet quietly gets them wrong, and what to do when the last one goes negative.

• The Friday look

  A twenty-minute weekly routine: what to read, in what order, and what to do about each thing you find — before the next invoice goes out.

• Cost plus or fixed price

  The same job read two ways: who carries the risk of the estimate being wrong, what each contract type demands of your records, and why a line over budget means two different things.

• Deposits and progress billing

  How to size a deposit against what you actually spend first, pick one billing rhythm and write it down, and keep the money slightly ahead of the work instead of permanently behind it.

• Allowances, and the argument they cause

  More end-of-job disputes start here than anywhere else. Four things that stop it, why the low allowance always arrives, and what to do the day a client's choice comes in over.

• What belongs on a change order

  The eight things a change order has to carry, why the price and the schedule both matter, and how to keep the numbering straight when the client is slow.

• Paying subs without a bookkeeper

  One place, one day a week, three checks before anything is paid — and the five-minute habit that keeps a crew turning up when the money is late.

• Keeping your records yours

  Whatever program you run on, the records should be able to leave it. A test you can run this afternoon on whatever you use now, and what a good answer looks like.

Ontario: the Construction Act

• What has to be on an invoice

  The clock only starts on a proper invoice, and the Act lists what one carries. Eight items since January, and most templates are missing one or two.

• Ontario's prompt-payment deadlines

  Seven days for the owner to say an invoice is wrong, fourteen to dispute it, twenty-eight to pay, seven to pass it down to the subs. The four clocks, with the dates worked out on one invoice.

• Holdback, and the 2026 change

  Ten per cent of every job sits behind you by law. Since January it has to be released every year on the contract's anniversary — and here is where it becomes a lawyer's question.