Records and reporting

Cost value reconciliation (CVR)

3 min read · Checked against the product 3 October 2026

Run a monthly CVR per contract: value from your valuations against cost by head, with the tender as the budget, costs uploaded from your accounts, provisions and the forecast, and a health mark from the last two reports.

The cash position tells you what has been paid. The CVR tells you whether the job is making money. VariationFlow reconciles the value of work done against its cost, per contract and per month, and rolls the latest report on each project up into a portfolio margin. The CVR, the tender budget, the cost upload and the tender’s rate suggestions are on the VariationFlow plans, and on older plans that included CVR. They are not on the free plan or Builder, and Builder cannot import a tender at all.

Where it lives

Cost Value Reconciliation sits in Analytics, Portfolio Analytics. Each active project is a row showing its latest margin, worst first; open a row to see its reports and add a new one. It is open to the commercial roles only.

Before the first one

1. Enter the tender cost estimate on the project, in the estimated cost field when you create it or the tender cost field when you edit it. It sets the baseline margin each CVR is measured against.
2. If the job was tendered on a priced bill, import it as the project’s schedule of rates (see pricing a variation). Under it, in “CVR budget from the tender”, choose “Map to cost heads”, give each section of the bill the cost head its cost will fall under and, if you have one, a budget cost, and choose “Save mapping”.
3. Keep the valuations up to date, because the CVR reads applied and certified to date from them.

How to run it

1. Open the project’s row and choose “New CVR”. Set the period end and leave the status as Draft.
2. Value. Certified to date comes from your valuations. Where you have applied for more than has been certified, the difference is pre-filled as work in progress; adjust WIP to what is genuinely earned and not yet certified. Use a negative value adjustment to carry a disputed variation below its claimed value.
3. Cost by head. Add a line for each head (labour, plant, materials, subcontractors, preliminaries, other) with the cost in your ledger to date and the accruals, meaning cost incurred but not yet invoiced. Or choose “Import costs from accounts” and paste or upload the job’s cost export: give each nominal code a cost head once and it is remembered next month. Rows dated after the period end are left out, and the totals replace cost to date while your accruals stay as they are.
4. Provisions. Add the future cost and liabilities you can already see, such as contra-charges, defects or delay damages.
5. Out-turn forecast: final value and final cost. A new report starts from the last one’s forecast or, failing that, the tender total marked “From the tender”, and an empty box offers the tender value or budget cost at one click.
6. Check the live preview, add notes, and choose “Create CVR”. Mark it Finalised when the month is closed.

Reading the result

Each report shows total value, total cost and margin, the movement since the previous report and the margin against the tender. Where the bill is mapped, Budget against cost sets each head’s budget value and budget cost beside its cost including accruals and what remains. Export PDF produces the reports for the monthly commercial meeting. The last two reports also give the project its health mark, Improving, Stable or Eroding, on the project page and in the dashboard’s executive view.

What good looks like

• One finalised CVR per live contract per month, run after that month’s valuation is in.
• Unagreed variations carried at a value you would defend, not at the asking price.
• Accruals entered every month, so the margin does not jump when the invoices land.

Common mistakes

• Counting under-certification as profit. If the client has not certified it, decide whether it is really earned before it stays in WIP.
• Leaving out accruals and provisions, which flatters the margin until the costs arrive.
• Running the CVR before the valuation is recorded, so the value side is a month behind the cost side.