Sample audit report · Construction

Renovations, extensions and new builds, 25 people

This is what a company gets after the audit. The company is invented; the report was written by the AI agent. The agent wrote the report in the company's language; this is its translation, proofread by us.

Amounts in the text are the invented company's own figures and prices, not ours. All samples and how to request an audit

Review for Skarvholmen Bygg og Rehab AS

As at 8 June 2026. The figures cover 2 March – 31 May 2026.

1. In short

• Where is the margin going? Not on the estimates. It is disappearing into extra work that is done on the spot but often never invoiced.
• Your figure is right: hours on finished fixed-price jobs are 20.5 per cent over the estimate. But the contract work itself is only 2 per cent over. The rest is extras.
• In three months, 68 completed change orders were closed without an invoice when the final invoice went out. That is 499.5 hours of work.
• What should you buy? Nothing for now. Two routines that cost nothing come first.
• Do not buy AI estimating, and do not buy AI payment reminders.
• Can you manage without the estimator? The figures cannot show that you can, and what we do know points the other way.
• Customers mostly pay on time: only 5 per cent of outstanding receivables are overdue.

2. How the work runs today

Three carpentry teams log their hours every day, split between contract work, extras, time-and-materials work and warranty work. When something unexpected turns up, the team foreman logs a change order with a photo the same day, and the work is done straight away. The customer usually agrees verbally on site.

The project manager is then supposed to price the change and send it to the customer. That takes around 20 minutes per change, and there are 58.67 changes a month. Changes the customer has asked for are priced the same week. Unforeseen work is left until there is time — often until the job is nearly finished.

The accounts team invoices only changes that have been approved with an amount. When the final invoice goes out — on average 7 days after the job is finished — all open changes are closed without being invoiced. None of the people we spoke to could say who decides when the final invoice is sent.

3. Where the firm is losing, and why

Extra work that is never invoiced. Of 172 completed changes, 103 had not been invoiced as at 8 June — 60 per cent. 68 of them are closed for good. 53 were never priced, and 15 had been priced and sent to the customer (134 500 NOK excl. VAT), but the customer had not yet replied. The accounts team confirms that no claim has ever been sent after a final invoice.

Pricing is the bottleneck. Customer requests are always priced: 56 out of 56. Unforeseen work is priced in 46 of 116 cases, and when it is, it takes 17 days, against 5 days for customer requests. 62 of the 68 lost changes are on the renovation projects, where the project manager is running ten to twelve small jobs at once.

At the firm's hourly rate of 720 NOK, the 68 closed changes are worth about 409 180 NOK excl. VAT, not counting materials. That is an estimate of the work done, not money we promise to get back.

Goods with no project number. 152 of 345 in-store collections — 44 per cent — have no project number. That is 281 331 NOK in three months, all at one supplier that does not ask for one at the till. The goods are booked as sundry consumables and never reach a customer invoice. How much of it should have been charged on to customers, nobody knows.

What you thought was the problem, but the review did not confirm:

• Tight estimates and wasted hours. Across 19 finished jobs, 4 156 contract hours were used against 4 070 estimated. Bathrooms and renovations look worst because they have the most extra work, not because the estimates are off.
• Customers pay late. Outstanding receivables stand at 1 519 898 NOK, but only 76 712 NOK, across four invoices, is overdue. Of that, 31 875 NOK is agreed retention. Customers pay 11 days after the invoice date.

4. What to change, and in what order

1. Free, now: price all changes on a fixed day each week. Do not send the final invoice until every change on the job has been settled. You need to decide who releases the final invoice.
2. Free, now: nobody collects goods on the company account without a project number. That is something for you to agree with the store.
3. Your call: whether to take up with the customers the 15 changes that had already been priced and sent. Check the contract first.
4. Later, and only if needed: if after eight weeks unforeseen work is still not being priced the same week, try an assistant that drafts price proposals. The offer you have received costs 35 000 NOK to set up and 5 900 NOK a month.

What to leave alone:

• AI estimating at 60 000 NOK plus 8 500 NOK a month. The estimates are already accurate.
• AI payment reminders at 15 000 NOK plus 3 900 NOK a month. Among other things, it would chase agreed retention.
• Digital signing on its own, at 25 000 NOK plus 2 400 NOK a month. The amount still has to be set by the project manager.

5. What we can do for you

Changes that are never invoiced. We set up three things as part of our "Groundwork" package (preparation and set-up). A lock, so that a final invoice cannot be prepared while changes are still open. A weekly list of unpriced changes for each project manager. And the pricing rule for extras, written down, with fields for estimated hours and materials. We will name the price after the review, before any work starts.

After that, our Proposal-drafting agent can draft a price proposal for each change, for the project manager to approve. It is built for the task, and we will name the price after the review, before any work starts. Language-model costs are billed separately, on actual use. We run a 3-week trial and measure the share of completed changes that are closed without an invoice — 52 per cent on finished jobs today.

From you we need: the decision on the final invoice, access to the project system, the project managers' know-how on pricing, a named person responsible, and an answer on whether data may be sent to an external model.

Goods with no project number, estimating and payment reminders: we have nothing to sell here. The first is solved by a single agreement with the store. The other two are not problems.

Not for an agent: approving a price for the customer, chasing payment for old changes, handling retention and warranty claims, site inspections, and staffing questions.

6. What this gives, and what we do not promise

• Hours: the routine means more work, not less. Pricing goes up from 11.78 to 19.56 hours a month for the project managers combined.
• Money: no payment goes away, so the guaranteed saving is 0 NOK. We do not promise any additional invoicing; that has to be measured.
• People: no post can be cut on the strength of these figures. The estimator is the only one who knows the estimating software.

7. What is missing, and how to check

• How the estimator's time is spent: ask for four weeks of time records broken down by task.
• What the fixed-price contracts say about unforeseen work: dig out the contract template.
• Materials on unpriced changes, and margin per project: this needs the labour cost per job.
• Regular payments: no bank statement was provided.

Measure before and after: the share of completed changes on finished jobs that are closed without an invoice (52 per cent today), and the number of days from logging unforeseen work to the customer receiving a price (17 today). Look at the figures after eight weeks, and decide on the pricing assistant then.

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