It is the last week of the month, and you are rebuilding the WIP again. Costs and billings get exported from your accounting system. Contract values and change orders come out of Procore. Then you email six project managers for their cost-to-complete numbers, wait, re-send, and finally paste it all into a spreadsheet that has to tie out before your bonding agent and your bank see it.
If that is your monthly close, this post gives you a better starting point. Below is a free construction WIP schedule template for Excel: all 11 ASC 606 columns a bonding agent expects, with the formulas already wired and a worked example so you can check it against your own math. It is genuinely complete, and it is free.
Then we will tell you the part the template farms leave out: this spreadsheet is correct, and it will still cost you 2–3 business days a month, and it will break the first time a formula gets fat-fingered. So this post also covers the honest second act — exactly when to stop maintaining a WIP spreadsheet and pull the same columns from Procore instead.
What Is a Construction WIP Schedule Template?
A construction WIP schedule template is a spreadsheet that lists every active project a contractor is running and shows the financial status of each one: contract value, costs to date, billings, percentage complete, and projected profit. It is the document your surety, your bank, and your CPA read to confirm your revenue recognition is correct and that no job is hiding a loss. The Work-in-Progress schedule is "a must have for any bonded construction company" and "one of the first documents the underwriter reviews after your financial statements." (Integrity Surety; Grit Insurance)
A good template does more than line up cells. It encodes the percentage-of-completion (POC) math correctly so the numbers reconcile to your balance sheet and income statement. Well over 90% of construction companies use the percentage-of-completion method (Foundation Software), and under ASC 606 that method survives as the measure of progress for over-time performance obligations, which is how most construction revenue is recognized.
If you want the full background on the document itself before you build one, start with what a WIP schedule is. This post is the "now build one" companion.
What Columns Does a Construction WIP Schedule Need?
A bonding-ready construction WIP schedule needs 11 columns: contract value (including approved change orders), costs incurred to date, estimated cost at completion (EAC), estimate to complete (ETC), percentage complete (cost-to-cost), earned revenue, billings to date, overbilling, underbilling, estimated gross profit, and estimated gross margin. Each column is required because sureties, banks, and CPAs use the WIP to verify that revenue recognition under ASC 606 is correct and that no project is hiding a loss. (Grit Insurance)
Miss a column and the WIP is incomplete. Get a formula wrong and it stops tying out. The table below is the standard layout: the same fields your bonding agent expects, in plain definitions.
The 11 Columns Every Bonding Agent Expects
| Column | Formula / source | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Contract value (incl. approved COs) | Original contract + approved change orders (from Procore) | The revenue ceiling for each job |
| Costs incurred to date | Actual job costs from your accounting system | The cost-to-cost % complete numerator |
| Estimated cost at completion (EAC) | Costs to date + ETC | The cost-to-cost % complete denominator |
| Estimate to complete (ETC) | The PM's forward-looking estimate (human input) | The one number not in any system of record |
| Percentage complete (cost-to-cost) | Costs to date ÷ EAC | Drives earned revenue and ASC 606 recognition |
| Earned revenue | Contract value × % complete | What you have earned, regardless of billing |
| Billings to date | Total invoiced to date (from accounting) | What you have actually billed the owner |
| Overbilling | Billings − earned revenue, when positive | A balance-sheet liability; sureties flag excess |
| Underbilling | Earned revenue − billings, when positive | A balance-sheet asset; may signal cash-flow risk |
| Estimated gross profit | Contract value − EAC | Projected job-level profit at completion |
| Estimated gross margin % | Est. gross profit ÷ contract value | Trend over time = profit-fade signal |
Two of these columns are the forward-looking inputs that decide everything downstream: EAC and ETC. EAC is costs incurred to date plus the ETC, and it is the denominator that sets percentage complete, earned revenue, and projected margin. If you want the deep dive on how those two interact, see EAC and ETC explained. And because this is the document that sets your limits, getting it right is also how you keep your program bonding-ready.
How the Math Connects: From Cost-to-Cost to Earned Revenue
Percentage complete drives the whole schedule, and it is calculated with the cost-to-cost method: actual costs to date divided by the estimated total cost (EAC). That percentage is then multiplied by contract value to produce earned revenue. As SaltMarsh Advisors puts it, "if you have incurred 40% of a project's expected costs, you recognize 40% of the contract value as revenue" (SaltMarsh Advisors). Cost-to-cost is an input method, more precise than eyeballing "percent done," but it is only as accurate as the ETC you feed it. (Foundation Software)
Here is a single project, with round numbers, so you can trace it cell by cell. Take Meridian Construction Group's Harbor Point Tower job:
- Contract value: $1,000,000
- Costs to date: $300,000
- PM's ETC: $450,000 → EAC = $300,000 + $450,000 = $750,000
- Percentage complete = $300,000 ÷ $750,000 = 40%
- Earned revenue = $1,000,000 × 40% = $400,000
- Billings to date: $450,000 → the job is overbilled by $50,000 (a balance-sheet liability)
- Estimated gross profit = $1,000,000 − $750,000 = $250,000 (a 25% margin)
Overbilling and underbilling fall straight out of this comparison. Overbilling (billings in excess of costs and estimated earnings) is a liability that "can show healthy cash flow and acceptable margins even when a job is actually losing money" (WIP Insights). Underbilling (costs and estimated earnings in excess of billings) is a current asset and can mean you are financing the owner's project with your own working capital. (Foundation Software; NASBP)
Watch the estimated gross margin column across several months on the same job. If it drifts down — say a bid at 25% slips toward 18% — that is profit fade, and it is the single thing a surety underwriter is hunting for in your WIP.
Download the Free WIP Schedule Template
The free template is a single Excel workbook with the 11 columns above, the POC formulas pre-wired, and the worked Harbor Point example on a reference tab so you can sanity-check your own setup. You fill in four things per project — contract value (plus approved change orders), costs to date, billings to date, and each PM's ETC. Everything else (percentage complete, earned revenue, over/under billing, gross profit, and margin) is formula-driven and updates as you type.
It is built to the column order a surety expects, so the output drops cleanly into a bonding-agent submission. No login, no account, no upsell inside the file.
How to Fill In the Template: Step by Step
Filling in the template is a five-step loop you run once a month. Pull the objective data from your systems, collect the one subjective number from each PM, let the formulas calculate, check your billing position, and have your CPA review before it goes out. The order matters: the ETC is the slowest input, so start chasing it on day one.
- Pull contract value and change orders from Procore. Export each active job's original contract plus approved change orders. If you are wondering whether the platform can hand you a finished schedule instead, the honest answer is in Can Procore generate a WIP report? — it holds the data but does not produce the WIP for you.
- Pull costs to date and billings to date from accounting. These come from QuickBooks, Sage, or whatever ledger you run alongside Procore. Most contractors export from Procore and finish the schedule in Excel anyway. (PivotXL)
- Collect the ETC from each project manager. Ask every PM: how much more will it cost to finish this job? This is the number that is not in any system — see the next section on why it is the hard one.
- Let the formulas calculate percentage complete and earned revenue. EAC = costs + ETC; % complete = costs ÷ EAC; earned revenue = contract value × % complete. The template does this for you.
- Check over/under billing, then review with your CPA. Reconcile the WIP's overbilling and underbilling totals to your balance sheet. Your CPA "should be involved in preparing or reviewing your WIP to make sure the numbers reconcile" with your financial statements. (Grit Insurance)
Why Is the ETC Column the Hardest to Fill?
The ETC column is the hardest to fill because it is the only number on the WIP that does not live in a system of record. Contract value, costs, and billings all come out of Procore or your accounting system with an export. The estimate to complete has to be collected from each project manager by hand, every cycle, with no deadline, no structure, and no audit trail in the standard Excel workflow. That is where the spreadsheet's reliability quietly breaks down.
It is also the number sureties trust least. Underwriters are told to "challenge the 'estimated costs to complete' number on each project because this is where problems hide. Project managers tend to be optimistic, and that optimism can mask cost overruns until it is too late." (Projul) When you collect ETC over email, you get arbitrary numbers, often without context or backup — no note explaining a contingency, no timestamp, no record of who said what.
And the spreadsheet around it is only as strong as the person maintaining it. As Sage puts it: "Manually managing this process is time consuming and error prone, as Excel is only as good as the person handling the formulas." (Sage) One overwritten cell in the EAC column and your percentage complete, earned revenue, and margin are all wrong, and you may not catch it before the bonding agent does.
When Should I Stop Using a WIP Spreadsheet?
You should stop using a WIP spreadsheet when the cost of maintaining it exceeds the value it delivers — not before. The template above is real, correct, and free, and for a contractor with a handful of jobs and one PM, Excel is the right tool. The signal to move on is operational, not theoretical. Here are four thresholds you can self-diagnose:
- More active projects than fit on one screen without scrolling. The formula-maintenance burden does not scale linearly — every added job is another row of cross-references that can break, and a wider sheet is harder to audit before it goes out.
- Multiple PMs submitting ETCs. Once you are chasing four, six, or ten people for cost-to-complete numbers over email, that chase becomes the bottleneck that pushes your close out by days.
- Your bonding agent is asking for monthly WIPs, not quarterly. Sureties want a WIP "at a minimum… quarterly," but monthly updates are significantly more valuable for contractors pursuing capacity increases. (Grit Insurance) A manual process you can survive quarterly becomes a monthly fire drill.
- "It never ties out" has become a monthly phrase. Recurring reconciliation failures mean the formula complexity has outgrown what one person can reliably maintain — exactly the failure mode Sage describes.
If two or more of those are true, the fix is not a better spreadsheet. It is to stop rebuilding the schedule from scratch and pull the same columns directly from Procore instead (the contract values, costs, and billings), and to collect the ETC from each PM in a structured, attributed way rather than over email. That is the bridge from the template to an automated WIP.
Frequently asked questions
What should a WIP report include? A construction WIP report should include, for every active project: contract value plus approved change orders, costs incurred to date, estimate to complete (ETC), estimated cost at completion (EAC), percentage complete (cost-to-cost), earned revenue, billings to date, overbilling, underbilling, estimated gross profit, and estimated gross margin. These 11 columns are what sureties, banks, and CPAs read. (Grit Insurance)
How is percentage complete calculated on a WIP schedule? Percentage complete is calculated with the cost-to-cost method: actual costs incurred to date divided by the estimated cost at completion (EAC = costs to date + ETC). A job at $300,000 of costs with a $750,000 EAC is 40% complete, so you recognize 40% of contract value as earned revenue. (SaltMarsh Advisors)
What is the difference between overbilling and underbilling? Overbilling means you have billed the owner more than you have earned (billings greater than earned revenue), a balance-sheet liability. Underbilling means you have earned more than you have billed — a balance-sheet asset that can signal cash-flow risk, because you are effectively financing the owner's project. (Foundation Software)
How often should a WIP schedule be updated? Sureties want a WIP at a minimum quarterly, but monthly updates are significantly more valuable for contractors carrying heavy backlog or pursuing higher bonding limits. A year-end-only WIP means the surety is making decisions for 12 months on a single snapshot. (Grit Insurance)
When should I use software instead of Excel for a WIP? Use software when the maintenance cost of the spreadsheet exceeds its value — typically when you have more active jobs than fit on one screen, multiple PMs submitting ETCs, a monthly (not quarterly) bonding cadence, or a WIP that "never ties out." Below those thresholds, a correct Excel template is the right tool.
How WIP Ready helps
This template is real and useful, and we mean it — the free file is the same set of columns and formulas a bonding agent expects, not a teaser. The point of the second half of this post is honest: a spreadsheet has a ceiling, and the ETC column is where it cracks. WIP Ready is what you move to when you hit that ceiling. It pulls contract values, costs, and billings directly from Procore, collects a structured ETC from each PM in under two minutes on their phone — no login, every number timestamped and attributed — and produces the schedule in your bonding agent's exact template. The result is the same WIP you build today, in about 45 minutes instead of 2–3 days, with every figure traceable to a Procore field or a dated PM submission. If you have crossed two of the four thresholds above, that is the next step: wipready.com.
