Schedule of Values Template for Subcontractors: How to Streamline Your Progress Billing

We’re offering a free schedule of values template for subcontractors. To get your free template, click here to download a copy, or fill out our form (to the right on desktop, or above on mobile) to have it emailed to you. 

The schedule of values is part of our AIA-style payment application template, which includes fields to document the following:

• Basic project details: Application number, application date, contract date, address, billing information, etc. 

• Payment application summary: High-level breakdown of contract amount, change orders, total completed work to date, retainage, balance to finish, etc. 

• Schedule of values (SOV): A table to record each line item of the project (including item numbers, description of work, scheduled value, work completed, remaining balances, etc.)

At each payment period, appointed staff can update the table to reflect work items completed since the previous application, save the document, and send it to the client for review and payment.

Why Static Schedule of Values Templates Fall Short

A basic construction schedule of values template may give subcontractors a useful starting point — a clean format for listing work items and work completed at each billing period. But the real work isn’t in filling out the template — it’s in managing all the moving parts that feed into it.

Here’s where static templates like PDFs, Excel sheets, or Google Docs fall short:

1. Tons of Manual Effort to Maintain Your SOV

Labor hours, purchase orders, change orders, material receipts — none of these flow automatically into your SOV document. Someone is left tracking down paperwork and manually entering that information into the table at each payment period.

2. Greater Risk of Errors and Payment Delays

When you're managing SOVs and progress billing manually, a single missed update or miscalculation can cause inaccuracies or lead to a client rejecting your payment application. This can slow down cash flow and create unnecessary disputes.

3. Lack of Visibility Across Your Team

If office staff and project managers aren’t working from a centralized system, they may be working off different versions of the schedule — leading to confusion and inconsistencies when it’s time to bill.

4. Harder to Scale as Your Business Grows

Templates may work for small businesses with a low project volume, but as your business scales or takes on more complex jobs, managing SOVs through static documents becomes unsustainable.

Alternative to Consider: Software That Automates Much of This Process

By leveraging construction management software like ServiceTitan, subcontractors can solve all of these challenges — benefiting from automations and workflows that reduce effort, lower the risk of errors, improve visibility, and scale with more jobs or complex projects.

In the rest of this post, we’ll walk through some of the key features we offer that our customers find invaluable when it comes to construction billing and project management.

Streamline Construction Billing and Project Management With ServiceTitan

Automate Progress Billing and Invoicing

In ServiceTitan, continuation sheets are automatically, continuously updated as work items are completed throughout a project, enabling contractors to generate payment applications with just a few clicks.

• Easily Generate Payment Applications: Select the billing period and the percent of each line item you want to bill for. Then, generate a PDF payment application with the details automatically filled out, and send it to your client for review.

• Get Paid Faster and Reduce Cash Flow Issues: Subcontractors can defend pushbacks from general contractors or key stakeholders with ServiceTitan’s continuation sheet, which saves and organizes the payment application for easy reference and sharing.  

• Create Invoices Instantaneously: When an application is accepted, generating an invoice for the progress payment can be done in a few clicks and sent to the customer. 

• Integrate Payments with Your Accounting Software: When payments come in, you can swiftly update your accounts receivable through our Viewpoint, Sage, QuickBooks, and CSV accounting integrations.  

All these capabilities make it much easier to address denials, get paid on time, and keep up a steady cash flow during big projects. 

Manage Projects From the Project Overview Dashboard

A project overview page is automatically generated when a new project is created in ServiceTitan. From this dashboard, subcontractors and project managers can: 

1. View all of the basic project information (project name, contact information, customer information, etc.).

2. View project progress and log work tasks. 

3. View real-time project financials, including budget-versus-actual tables and cost tracking details that update automatically throughout a project.

4. Initiate key actions such as generating an estimate, purchase order, application for payment, invoice, and more.

5. View team members involved in the project.

6. Access an audit trail including events, notes, contract documents, and more.

Build Detailed and Accurate Estimates

ServiceTitan gives contractors the flexibility to create different types of construction estimates:

• For jobs where all specific work details are known (e.g. smaller projects or track home builds), office staff can build line-item estimates that specify exact services, equipment, and materials. 

• For larger, more complex projects where you need flexibility, you can use rough project estimates with summary totals to set budgets and track actual revenue and costs over time.

Precise Line Item Estimates For Projects Where All Details Are Known Upfront

With ServiceTitan, contractors can build precise line-item estimates that list the exact services, materials, and equipment required for a job. Every item pulls directly from your pricebook, ensuring accuracy and consistency in pricing.

Line-item estimating is ideal for smaller, shorter-term projects where detailed scope and costs are known upfront. Estimates can also trigger purchase orders via requisitions, tying directly into purchasing and invoice closeout workflows for streamlined job costing and project management.

Rough Estimates For Complex Projects Where You Need Flexibility

ServiceTitan’s rough project estimates make it easy to build budgets for large-scale or long-term projects when every detail isn’t known upfront. Instead of listing specific equipment or materials, you can use summary tasks and revenue items to represent overall contract value and projected costs.

By setting up default project labels for pricebook items, job types, and technicians, budgets automatically populate in the Budget vs. Actual table, keeping expenses organized and easy to track. This method is especially useful for construction estimating and early-stage bids, where flexibility is key and estimates need to be created quickly without every line item in place.

Initiate Requisition and Purchase Orders Within Your Estimate

When an estimate is sold, all of the details you’ve set up are automatically integrated into the rest of the project management workflow. 

• Initiate a Requisition of Equipment and Materials: For example, you can select your required permits and materials from within your estimate, which will lead you through a workflow to create the purchase orders you’ll need.

• Create Purchase Orders: Line items are automatically populated from your estimate, so you can simply select your procurement sources and shipping locations for each material. Then, you can save that order to create a transaction and send those purchase orders to your vendors — without ever leaving ServiceTitan. 

Automate Project Financials and Job Costing

As you progress through a job — creating purchase orders, logging labor hours, processing change orders, receiving progress payments, and so on — ServiceTitan provides:

• Real-time Project Financials & Job Costing: This is done automatically for you, based on work that’s completed and entered into the system. This saves you from manually updating Excel spreadsheets every time labor and material costs are incurred.

• A Detailed Breakdown of Project Budget vs. Actual Costs: This automatically updates as you accumulate expenses from materials, equipment, and labor costs. Margins are displayed in dollar amount and percent to help you track project costs and profit margins. 

• Ability to Drill Down into Your Expenses:  Access a table that breaks down your expenses in further detail. Click on line items to see the exact source of that expense (e.g., which technician logged those hours, or which vendors certain materials came from). This allows you to easily check your cost breakdowns and feel confident in your data.

Stay Up-to-Date with Automated Work in Progress Reporting

ServiceTitan offers work-in-progress (WIP) reports to help construction businesses maintain an accurate, up-to-date view of their projects by calculating recognized revenue based on the percentage-of-completion method.

For larger organizations with many construction jobs in progress, this report is invaluable for getting a real-time view of the business's financial health and ensuring that budgets are managed effectively. In addition, project managers can use WIP reports to manage over- and under-billing.

To run the report, users select from a series of fields, including date ranges, project statuses, and completion dates. The report then generates a table with the following project details:

• Project number and name

• Contract value

• Estimated cost

• Total cost

• Percent complete cost

• Earned revenue

• Revenue

• Retainage percent

• Retainage

WIP reports can be customized with various columns and calculations based on your business needs and can easily be exported to be further manipulated in spreadsheets, too.

Like all other features within ServiceTitan, the data used to generate WIP reports is automatically pulled from other areas of the platform. As a result, the amount of work and potential for errors in generating these reports is significantly reduced. 

Get a Personalized Demo of ServiceTitan Project Management Software

It is possible to manage construction billing and project management with a variety of different tools, like spreadsheets, PDF templates, and other software solutions for things like payroll and accounting software.

However, for subcontractors working in the construction industry, having an integrated tool like ServiceTitan can be absolutely transformative for your business.

What we’ve covered above is just a sampling of the desktop features that ServiceTitan offers to streamline the estimating process and construction project management. We also offer a mobile app (available on The App Store and Google Play) for crew members and project managers to track time, use forms and checklists on-site, create daily reports, and more.