Schedule of values
A schedule of values that still matches your job in month fourteen.
Your contract value is one number. The schedule of values is how that number gets billed, verified and argued over for the rest of the job — and it is also your own reporting structure, which is the part nobody writes about. Most subs build it in a hurry in the same workbook as the estimate and spend fourteen months paying for those twenty minutes. In SubMark the SOV is one structure per job: you build it, it locks when the first draw goes out, and every draw after that reads from it.
14-day free trial, no card needed. Field crews are free and unlimited. See pricing →
- Your trade pack opens the builder with a starting breakdown, not a blank grid.
- It locks when the first draw is submitted, so the basis of billing stops moving.
- Approved change orders are added to it automatically — there is no line to remember.
Why a bad SOV costs you for the whole job.
Too few lines to prove anything
Three lines on a nine-month job means every draw is a single argument about a single percentage. Nobody can show that a line is 75% done rather than 60%, so the number stops being a measurement and becomes a negotiation you lose a little of every month.
Lines that do not match how crews work
If the SOV is organized the way the estimate was, and your crews finish work in a different order, every draw is a translation done by the one person in the office who understands both. When that person is on vacation, billing is late.
It keeps moving
A workbook anybody can insert a row into is not a baseline. Two draws in, billed-to-date no longer ties to anything, and the first person to notice is a GC’s PM comparing this month’s sheet to last month’s.
Change orders live somewhere else
The extras are approved and sitting in the change order log. Adding them to the billing structure is a separate manual step in a separate file, and the month it gets skipped you bill the original contract value and quietly leave the money there.
How the SOV works in SubMark.
Build it once at the start of the job. Everything downstream — draws, retainage, what you are owed — reads from it instead of being rebuilt beside it.
- 01 Start from your trade’s breakdown
Open the SOV builder on a new job and your trade pack has already put its default lines in it, as percentages of whatever contract value you enter. An electrical SOV opens with electrical lines; a plumbing one opens with plumbing lines.
- 02 Make it match your crews
Rename, re-split, reorder, add and delete until the lines describe how your work actually finishes. This is the twenty minutes that decides the next fourteen months, and it is the one part SubMark cannot do for you.
- 03 It locks on the first draw
The schedule of values locks when the first draw is submitted — not at contract execution. You get the whole first billing cycle to fix a line that came out of the estimate wrong, and after that the basis of billing cannot move under you.
- 04 Report progress line by line
Each draw records, per line, what was completed in previous periods, what was completed this period, and what is stored on site but not installed. Percent complete falls out of those numbers rather than being asserted.
- 05 Approved change orders join it
An approved change order is added to the schedule of values automatically, as its own line tied back to the change order it came from. The adjusted contract value and the billable total move together.
Everything above ships today and none of it is a tier you upgrade into. The core modules are on in every trade pack from setup; a few extras, like the invoices inbox, are a switch in Settings. The full list is on the product page.
In the app
What a line on the SOV actually carries.
Each line is a small record rather than a cell in a grid, and that is what makes a draw a review instead of a rebuild:
- Item code
- Your own cost code, if you use them. Optional, because plenty of subs bill by description alone.
- Description
- The line as the GC will read it on every draw for the life of the job.
- Scheduled value
- The dollars assigned to this line. Together, they are the contract.
- Completed previously
- What you had already billed against this line before this period. Carried forward, not retyped.
- Completed this period
- This month’s work on this line — the one number that is actually a judgment.
- Stored materials
- Material on site and not installed, tracked on the line rather than smuggled into percent complete.
- Change-order origin
- A line created by an approved change order keeps the link back to it, so “where did this line come from” has an answer at close-out.
One schedule of values per job, by design. Two versions of the SOV is the most expensive condition a sub’s billing can be in, and it is not a state this can get into.
Straight answer
What it does not do.
A product page that only lists wins is a product page you stop trusting in week two. These are the gaps, in our own words, before you find them yourself.
- It does not produce the owner-standard billing forms as PDFs. You submit through whatever system each GC requires and log the draw here, so SubMark is the record of what you billed and collected rather than a form generator.
- It does not invent your percentages. Percent complete is a judgment about your own work; the SOV is where you record it, defend it and bill it.
- It locks on the first draw. That is the point, but it means the thinking belongs in week one, before billing starts.
Which trades feel this most.
Same problem, different shape. Each trade page leads with that trade's own phases, schedule of values and wording.
Electrical
Long-lead gear and stored-material lines that have to be billed before anything is installed.
Drywall & Framing
Framing, hang, tape, finish — percent complete by activity, across a dozen floors, every month.
Fire Sprinkler
Fabrication, rough and trim bill in a fixed sequence, with the last of it held until final inspection.
Questions
Schedule of values: what a sub’s office actually asks.
When does the schedule of values lock?
When the first draw is submitted — not at contract execution. That gives the office the whole first billing cycle to fix a line that came out of the estimate wrong, while still making sure the basis of billing cannot move once you have billed against it.
Do I have to build the SOV from nothing?
No. Pick your trade at setup and the pack loads a default SOV as percentages of the contract value you enter, in your trade’s own words. It is a starting point, not a template you are stuck with: rename, re-split, add and delete lines until it matches what you negotiated with this GC.
What happens to approved change orders?
They are added to the schedule of values automatically, each as its own line that keeps the link back to the change order. You do not add a line by hand — which is the step most often skipped when it is manual, and skipping it means billing the original contract value for the rest of the job.
Can we bill stored materials?
Yes. Material on site and not installed has its own field on each line of each draw, separate from work completed. That keeps it out of percent complete, which is where a GC’s PM will look for it if the two get mixed.
Does SubMark fill out the owner’s continuation sheet?
No. SubMark does not generate those forms. You submit through your GC’s system, then log the draw here against the SOV — which is where scheduled value, completed to date, stored materials, percent complete and retainage held actually live.
Read next
Schedule of values for subcontractors: how to build one that bills clean
How to break out the lines, where change orders and retainage sit, and why week one decides every draw after it.
The subcontractor change order process, start to finish
How an approved change becomes a billable line without a Sunday rebuild.
Build an SOV against a real contract value.
Start the trial, create one job, and open the SOV builder. Your trade’s default lines are already in it, which shows how much of billing week was retyping.
14-day free trial, no card needed. See the whole product →
$249/mo for your company, your first 3 office users included, $39/mo each after that. Field crews are free and unlimited. See what's included →
The rest of the job
Change orders
From the day the field finds the change to the day it is in the schedule of values, with an audit trail at every step.
T&M tickets
Priced in the office off your own rate lists, signed on site, and several tickets roll into one change order.
Draw tracking
Fifteen jobs, nine GCs, nine cutoff dates and nine submission methods — in one calendar and one log, with drawn, certified and received as three different numbers.
Retainage tracking
Five or ten percent of everything you have ever billed, sitting somewhere, on jobs some of which finished last year.
Daily logs
The record that wins an argument nine months later, written in two minutes by a foreman who wants to go home.
Lien waiver tracking
Which waivers went up the chain, which the GC has received, and which draw is sitting still because one of them has not.
Job costing
The overrun you can still do something about, instead of the one you find in the end-of-job autopsy.
Crew scheduling
Who is on which job on Monday, across every job — and a flag the moment the same crew is promised to two of them.
QuickBooks
Bills and card purchases pull back as job costs. Draws and POs push across with a click. Your books stay your books.
Time tracking
Hours per worker, per job, per day — signed by the worker who worked them, approved by the office, and read straight into job costing.
Safety records
Toolbox talks signed off per person, scored site inspections, and certification and COI expiries you see 30 days out instead of on the day.