The T&M Leak Audit

The pattern is familiar. A foreman gets a verbal go-ahead in the field, the work happens, and the change order shows up two weeks later as a vague text or a blurry photo of a scribbled note. By the time it gets formalized, the GC denies it because the documentation was not submitted in time. The labor and material is already spent. The billing is gone.

Subs and small GCs running this pattern routinely lose thousands of dollars a month to it. The number is invisible because the cost shows up on the job and the bill never does. The first step is naming the specific points in your workflow where the leak is happening.

A subcontractor on a public construction thread reported losing roughly $4,000 in a single month to unbilled T&M work. On one crew that is $48,000 a year — thirty-two times the audit fee. The pattern is the same across the thread: foremen verbally agree to extras, the documentation arrives weeks later, and the GC denies it because it missed the deadline.

The audit names the specific points in your workflow where the leak is happening and what to change so documentation is captured at the moment the work is authorized.

Three weeks of recent T&M ticket activity in whatever format you currently use — paper, photos, texts, software exports. A short description of how a T&M directive flows from the field through to the change order ledger and the invoice. No client names, contract amounts, or financial statements required.

A short written PDF naming the specific points in your workflow where unbilled work is leaking, with concrete process changes that capture the documentation at the moment the work is authorized rather than weeks later. Delivered within 5 business days of intake.

Solo subs, foremen running their own crew, and small GCs who suspect they are eating field changes that should have been billed. Most useful when monthly job-cost reports keep surprising you on the wrong side and you cannot point to where the money went.