What is a daywork sheet? The record that turns extra hours into money, and why an unsigned one is only your word

Published 22 September 2026 · VariationFlow

A plain-English guide to daywork sheets for UK subcontractors: what a daywork sheet is and is not, what goes on one, who signs it and what the signature means, when JCT wants the voucher in and what NEC does instead, how dayworks are valued, and the Friday-to-Wednesday routine that gets sheets signed.

Three weeks of extra attendance on a refurbishment: builders’ work for the mechanical contractor, making good after the electricians, moving a tower twice because the sequence changed. None of it has a rate in the sub-contract, so the foreman does the right thing and fills in daywork sheets, every day, in biro. He leaves them in the site office on a Friday to be signed. They come back signed late, by somebody who was not there, or not at all. At final account the main contractor’s quantity surveyor pays “the hours that look reasonable”, which is £2,100 of the £6,800 on the sheets. The work happened. The sheets exist. What they never got was the one thing that made them worth anything.

What a daywork sheet is

A daywork sheet is the daily record of the labour, plant and materials actually used on work that cannot sensibly be measured against the rates in the contract: the names and the hours, the machines and how long they ran, the materials and how many. It is signed by the other side’s representative to confirm that the resource was used. JCT calls it a voucher, a lot of sites call it an allocation sheet or a time sheet, and a bespoke sub-contract may call it whatever its author liked. The document is the same: a record of resource, made on the day, and countersigned.

The reason it exists is the reason dayworks exist. The standard way to value a variation is to measure it and price it against the contract rates, or rates pro-rated from them, or a fair rate where nothing comparable exists. Some work defeats that: breaking out and making good, attendance on another trade, abortive work, anything where the quantity is unknowable until it is done. For that, the contract lets the work be valued on the resource actually used, plus percentage additions to cover overheads and profit. The daywork sheet is the evidence of the resource. Without it, the basis of valuation has nothing to stand on.

What a daywork sheet is not

Three things, and confusing them is where the money goes.

• It is not an instruction. The sheet records what you did; it does not prove you were told to do it, or that it was outside your scope. That proof is the written instruction, or your written confirmation of a verbal one, and it has to exist separately. A signed sheet for work nobody instructed is a signed record of work you did for free.
• It is not an agreement to pay. A site manager’s signature confirms that the hours and the plant were there. It is common for the signature to be endorsed as being for record purposes only, and even without the endorsement it is a confirmation of resource, not of liability or of value. Expect the commercial argument to come later, and welcome the fact that the resource, at least, is no longer in dispute.
• It is not a valuation. The valuation is the resource on the sheet priced at the rates and percentages the contract sets. The sheet is the input.

What goes on it

A sheet that carries only hours gets a shrug, because the person asked to sign it cannot tell what the hours were for. A sheet that answers the question before it is asked gets signed. Every sheet should carry:

• The date, and where on the site: level, grid, room or area.
• What was done and why it was extra, in a sentence, with the instruction it hangs off: the site instruction number, or the date and time of the verbal instruction and of your confirmation of it.
• Labour: each person by name, their trade or grade, and the hours, with overtime shown separately because it is paid differently.
• Plant: each item, the hours or days, and whether it was working or standing. Standing time is often a different rate.
• Materials: description, quantity and unit, and the delivery ticket or invoice reference behind it.
• A photograph, dated, on the day. It is the cheapest evidence there is and the one most often missing.
• The name and role of the person signing for the contractor, and the date they signed. A signature with no name is a signature nobody can later stand behind.

Who signs it, and what the signature means

The person the contract or the main contractor has authorised to sign: usually the site manager or the site engineer, sometimes the contractor’s quantity surveyor. Find out on day one who that is, because a sheet signed by a general foreman who was not authorised is worth less than you think, and you will not find out until the final account.

Then read the two states honestly. A filled-in sheet is a record of what it cost you. Your word, in a final-account meeting fourteen months later. A signed sheet is a record the other side has accepted of what it cost you. Evidence. Only one of the two gets paid at the number on it. And a sheet where the hours are disputed in writing is still evidence: a written dispute about hours you can substantiate with a photograph and a diary is a far better position than silence, because silence is the only thing that reliably loses.

When it has to be in: JCT

Under the JCT Standard Building Contract, clause 5.7 deals with daywork and requires the vouchers to be delivered for verification by the end of the week following the week in which the work was done. That is the main contract’s clause and the main contract’s window. Your sub-contract has its own version of it in its valuation section, the JCT sub-contracts have their own numbering, and a bespoke sub-contract may shorten the window to a matter of days or make a signed sheet a condition of being paid for dayworks at all. Read the clause before you rely on a week.

Two things follow from the way the JCT clause is written. The purpose of the window is verification: the other side gets the sheet while somebody still remembers Tuesday. And the clause is not drafted as a bar in terms, so a late voucher is an evidential weakness rather than a forfeiture of the entitlement. That is a real distinction, and it is also cold comfort, because the argument you will meet at final account is exactly the evidential one: we never had the chance to check it. Treat the end of the following week as the last possible day, and Friday as the real one.

When it has to be in: NEC

NEC4 has no daywork mechanism. A compensation event, which is NEC’s variation, is assessed on the effect on Defined Cost plus Fee, from a forecast where the work is still to come and from cost incurred where it is done. So there is no daywork voucher and no voucher window; what there is, is a Defined Cost that has to be shown, and the same daily allocation of labour, plant and materials is how you show it. The clock that matters on NEC is a different one: on the Engineering and Construction Subcontract the compensation event has to be notified within seven weeks of becoming aware of it, or the change in the Prices is gone. The sheets prove the cost; the notification keeps the entitlement. Do not let the first stand in for the second.

How dayworks are valued

The prime cost of the labour, plant and materials on the sheets, calculated under the definition the contract names, plus the percentage additions set out in the contract documents. For building work the definition most contracts name is the RICS Definition of Prime Cost of Daywork carried out under a Building Contract; the specialist trade bodies publish their own agreed definitions for electrical and for heating and ventilating work, and civil engineering has its own schedules of dayworks. Which one your contract names matters, because the percentages you priced at tender sit against it, and a percentage that looked generous on one definition can be thin on another.

The practical points: labour is priced by the definition’s rules, which are not the same thing as your payroll cost, so read them; overtime and standing plant are commonly treated differently from working hours; and materials go in at the cost on the invoice with the percentage on top, so keep the invoice with the sheet.

The Friday to Wednesday routine

None of this needs a system, but all of it needs a habit, and the habit is a week long.

• Every day: the sheet is written on the day it describes, on site, with the instruction referenced and a photograph taken.
• Friday: the week’s sheets go across for signature, and you record the date and the person they were handed to.
• Wednesday: anything unsigned is chased in writing, with the sheets attached and the hand-over date named. A chase in writing is itself evidence that the sheet existed and was offered inside the window.
• Disputed: if the hours are challenged, get the challenge in writing and answer it with the photograph and the diary. Do not let a disputed sheet become an unsigned one.
• Month end: the signed sheets, priced, go into the application with the basis of valuation stated, because a payment application has to show the basis on which the sum was calculated, and “dayworks, sheets attached” is a basis. “Extra works” is not.

Where the money goes

Around one in four construction disputes turns on the valuation of variations, and dayworks are the part of that valuation with the least protection, because the whole case rests on a piece of paper that had to exist on the day. Three failures account for most of the loss. The sheet that carried hours and no reason, so nobody would sign it. The sheet signed by the wrong person, or three weeks late, so it proved nothing. And the sheets that were perfect and sat in a drawer until the final account, by which time the site manager had moved to another job and his replacement had never seen them.

How VariationFlow keeps the record

A daywork variation in VariationFlow is built from its lines: each one labour, plant or material, with the description, the quantity and unit, the rate, the date worked and the name of the contractor’s representative who signed the allocation sheet. The variation’s submitted value is the sum of those lines, so the headline figure is never a bare assertion, and an unsigned line is flagged as one, because unsigned lines carry little weight in a dispute. On a JCT project the voucher clock runs from the date the work was done to the end of the following week, shows on the variation and sends a reminder as it closes. The signed sheets then travel with the variation into the application, so the basis is stated every month rather than reconstructed at the end.

This guide is general information rather than legal advice. Dayworks are governed by your own contract’s valuation clause and the definition it names, so read both, and get advice early on a live dispute.