Records and reporting

The recovery dashboard and ageing alerts

3 min read · Checked against the product 3 October 2026

Use the Revenue Dashboard as the Friday-afternoon view: the executive view of forecast margin, cash due and project health, what is submitted, instructed and outstanding, and the 28 and 42-day ageing alerts.

The Revenue Dashboard answers one question for a commercial manager: how much variation money is out there, and how much of it is late. It opens with an executive view of the whole business, and ageing alerts make sure somebody is told when a submitted variation has sat too long without an answer. The dashboard and the alerts are on the VariationFlow plans, and on older plans that included them; they are not on the free plan or Builder.

The executive view

The QS, contracts manager, director and admin see it at the top, across live projects, active and complete: active projects; forecast revenue, cost and margin from each project’s latest CVR; outstanding variations; applications awaiting certification; and cash due, with what is overdue. A project without a forecast is counted and its contract value shown beside the total, never added in. Cash with no due date the product can state, such as on a JCT sub-contract without its own periods, is shown as undated rather than guessed.

Project health

Below the figures, each project carries a health mark from its last two CVRs. Improving, in green, means the margin is up by more than half a point; Eroding, in red, down by more than half a point; Stable, in amber, anything in between. It compares forecast margins where both CVRs have one, otherwise margin to date, and a project with fewer than two CVRs reads Not enough data rather than a guess. The same mark is on the project page.

Reading the dashboard

• Year to Date: submitted, instructed and recovered in your financial year. Pick an earlier year from the selector and the heading changes to Financial Year.
• All Time: Total Potential, Total Instructed, Total Outstanding with the count of ageing variations, and Total Recovered / Paid. Each card opens the register filtered to the variations behind the number.
• A red banner appears whenever any variation has been outstanding for more than 42 days.
• Submitted · Awaiting Response lists each submitted variation with its days outstanding, amber from 28 and red from 42.
• On projects with notice tracking, a strip counts the contract deadlines that need attention and links to Contract Deadlines.

How ageing alerts work

Outstanding means Submitted, Awaiting Instruction or Under Review, counted from the submission date. The alert email goes to the QS assigned to the project and lists their outstanding variations with the days each has waited. It is sent when a variation first crosses 14, 28 or 42 days rather than every day, and its subject turns urgent once anything passes 42.

Set it up

1. Open Analytics, Portfolio Analytics and use QS Assignment to give every live project an assigned surveyor. Alerts go to that person and nobody else, so a project with no one assigned sends none.
2. Each person controls their own alerts in Settings, Notifications. Turning email alerts off stops every alert email to that person, contract deadline alerts included.
3. Set your financial year end in Settings, Organisation so Year to Date matches your accounts.

Using it each week

Start with the red banner and the awaiting-response list, oldest first. For each red item, either get the instruction, record that it was refused, or escalate it in writing. Then check that Total Outstanding is falling month on month; a rising figure with a flat Total Recovered means variations are being submitted and left. The same amber and red colours appear in the register and on the phone’s register cards, so the site team sees what the office sees.

What good looks like

• Nothing red on Monday morning without a recorded chase.
• Every live project with an assigned QS.
• Rejected and withdrawn variations moved on, so the outstanding figures are real.

Common mistakes

• Assuming alerts are going out when no QS has been assigned to the project.
• Leaving dead variations in Submitted, which inflates Total Outstanding and the ageing count.
• Reading the dashboard without settling paid valuations first, so recovered money is understated.