Cashflow Exposure Estimator
At any moment, a contractor has a rolling balance of payment applications that have been submitted but not yet certified or paid. That money has been earned. The work has been done. But it is sitting in the assessment process, and you are financing the gap.
This estimator quantifies that exposure across your portfolio, puts a cost on it, and shows your finance director what a faster, more structured payment process is actually worth in cash terms.
How much of your cash is waiting to be certified?
Construction net margins typically sit around 2 to 6%.
From the date you submit an application to the date the money hits your account. Industry average is 45 to 60 days.
Applications currently in the assessment window across all projects.
The percentage of your applied-for value that typically gets reduced or disputed in assessment.
Current Bank of England base rate is 4.25%. Use your actual borrowing or overdraft rate if higher.
What This Estimates
Four numbers your finance director should know
Most construction businesses do not track payment application exposure as a financial metric. This estimator turns it into one, using numbers you already have.
- Cash in-flight: The total value of applications submitted but not yet certified or paid, across your entire portfolio at any given moment.
- Annual financing cost: What it costs to carry that in-flight balance every year at your actual cost of capital or overdraft rate.
- Under-certification risk: The portion of each cycle likely to be reduced or disputed in assessment, based on your typical under-certification rate.
- Weekly cycle saving: What each week you compress your submission-to-payment cycle is worth in cash, year on year.
The FD Blind Spot
Why this exposure is invisible in most construction businesses
Finance directors in construction are used to working from lagging data. Payment application exposure is one of the clearest examples of a cost that is always there but almost never tracked.
Most FDs see payment exposure only at month-end
By the time the month-end report is produced, the decisions that created the exposure have already been made. A live view of in-flight applications changes what an FD can act on today.
The financing cost is invisible on a P&L
The cost of carrying uncertified applications does not appear as a line item. It shows up as overdraft interest, working capital pressure and cash flow variability, with no clear source.
Under-certification compounds across the portfolio
A 10% reduction on one application is manageable. The same rate across twenty applications, every month, year-round, is a structural drain that most businesses have never quantified.
StoneRise Payment Applications
A live view of every application in your portfolio
StoneRise gives finance directors and commercial managers a real-time view of every payment application, its submission date, its assessment deadline, the certified versus applied-for gap and its payment status.
The exposure this estimator just calculated becomes a tracked number, not an estimated one, and every assessment deadline is flagged before it is missed.
Live portfolio view
Every application across every project, with applied-for value, certified value and days outstanding visible in one place.
Assessment deadline tracking
Payment notice deadlines calculated automatically for every application. Alerts fire before the window closes, not after.
Certified vs applied-for gap
Under-certification is tracked against every application with a complete record of what was disputed and why.