What Is a Schedule of Values? How GCs Build and Manage One
Every pay app you submit is only as good as the schedule of values behind it.
Get it right, and draws move, cash flow stays predictable, and your client trusts your numbers. Get it wrong, and you’re fighting rejected pay apps and arguing over what percent of the job is actually done.
So, what is a schedule of values? A schedule of values (SOV) is a line-item breakdown of your total contract sum, with a dollar value assigned to each trade, phase, or scope of work. Each month, you bill every line by percent complete, and the SOV becomes the backbone of your pay application.
What is a schedule of values in construction?
In construction, the schedule of values turns one contract number into pieces you can bill and verify. The line items add up to the contract sum. As work gets done, you bill each line by how complete it is instead of billing the job as one lump sum.
Your client, the architect, and the lender use it to check that what you’re billing matches what’s in place in the field. The same numbers feed your construction draw schedule and your work in progress (WIP) report.
How the SOV fits into AIA billing (G702 and G703)
On most commercial jobs, pay apps follow the AIA format. The AIA G703 continuation sheet is your schedule of values. It has one row per line item, showing:
- the scheduled value
- work completed on previous applications
- work completed this period
- materials stored
- the total to date
- percent complete
- balance to finish
- retainage
The G702 is the cover sheet that rolls those totals up into the amount due this period.
If the G703 doesn’t tie to the G702, or the SOV doesn’t tie to the contract sum, the pay app comes back. Your client may use its own form instead of the AIA forms, but the logic is the same.
Where schedules of values go wrong
Front-loading
Overvaluing early line items gets you paid ahead of progress. Clients, architects, and lenders know what it looks like. It leads to pushback, disputes over retainage, and lost trust that follows you for the rest of the job.
Vague line items
A line like “Sitework — $180,000” with no breakdown makes it nearly impossible to agree whether it’s 40% or 60% complete in month four.
Change orders that don’t reconcile
If approved change orders never make it onto the SOV, your total drifts away from your actual contract value. Every pay app after that is fighting an arithmetic problem. Many of those changes start upstream, which is why it pays to understand how submittals lead to change orders.
Retainage that isn’t tracked by line
Without per-line tracking, retainage math drifts from one pay app to the next, and closeout turns into a scramble. Here’s how to manage construction retainage so it doesn’t.
None of these are hard to avoid. They just require treating the SOV as a living financial document, not a form you fill out once at contract signing.
How to create a schedule of values in 5 steps
- Break the work into line items you can verify.
Go by trade or major scope. For example, use “Concrete — Foundations” and “Concrete — Slab on Grade” instead of just “Concrete.” With too few lines, you can’t track partial completion. With too many, the SOV is a chore to update every month. Most commercial jobs land somewhere between 20 and 60 line items. - Price each line at its real cost.
Each value should reflect the actual cost to complete that work, plus a proportional share of overhead and profit. Your estimate and your job costing should back up every number. - Break out general conditions.
Give mobilization, supervision, temporary facilities, and similar costs their own lines instead of burying them in trade lines. That keeps the SOV auditable and lets you track overhead burn against the schedule. - Tie the total to the contract sum.
Every line item added together must equal the contract value, including approved change orders to date. It sounds obvious, but it’s the most common error reviewers catch, and it can hold up the entire pay app. - Get it approved before the first pay app.
Submit the SOV to your client and architect before your first draw. Changing values after the job is underway is far more painful, and it raises more questions.
Schedule of values example
Here’s what a simple SOV looks like mid-job:
The change order has its own line instead of being folded into “Sitework & Excavation.” That keeps the original scope’s percent complete accurate, and anyone reviewing the SOV can see at a glance what’s contract work and what’s change order work.
Here’s the math behind it:
Percent complete = total to date ÷ scheduled value
- Concrete — Foundations: $148,500 ÷ $165,000 = 90%
- Whole job: $466,750 ÷ $758,500 = 61.5%
Retainage works the same way. If your contract holds 10%, then $137,750 × 10% = $13,775 retained this period. This pay app requests $137,750 − $13,775 = $123,975.
That’s easy to check on five lines. On 50 lines with a dozen change orders, it’s where a spreadsheet starts to break down, and where construction project management software earns its keep.
Building your own schedule of values from scratch?
Use the same columns as the AIA G703: scheduled value, previously billed, this period, materials stored, total to date, percent complete, balance to finish, and retainage.
How to manage your SOV through the life of the project
- Update it every billing cycle.
Even in a quiet month, review the SOV against actual field progress before the pay app goes out. - Add a new line for every approved change order.
Folding change order value into an existing line distorts that line’s percent complete and makes the SOV harder to audit. Get the change order process right, and the billing side follows. - Track stored materials separately.
Clients and lenders want materials stored on site or off site broken out, because that cost has been incurred but not yet installed. - Keep percent complete defensible.
If your super or PM can’t explain why a line is at 65% instead of 50%, look at it again before it goes on the pay app. Daily logs and construction photo documentation are your backup. - Apply retainage consistently.
Use your contract’s retainage percentage across every line unless the contract says otherwise. Clean tracking all job long makes closeout and final payment faster.
Keep your SOV connected from first pay app to closeout
Most SOV problems trace back to one thing: the SOV lives in a spreadsheet, and the change orders and budget live somewhere else. When change orders get approved in email, spreadsheets, or text messages, someone has to key them into the SOV by hand every month.
RedTeam is construction project management software that connects your schedule of values to your budget, change orders, and pay apps in one platform. Approved changes flow into your next billing, and every pay app reflects your current contract value. Born on the jobsite, RedTeam has spent over 20 years helping small to mid-sized GCs simplify, automate, and standardize their work from precon through closeout. Unlike enterprise construction software, every RedTeam customer gets full software functionality and a dedicated implementation and customer success team.
That’s total project control. That’s RedTeam.
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