Contractor Bill Verification Against BOQ
Check every RA bill line against the work order BOQ, measurement records, previous bills and recovery rules, so billing engineers certify from a verified sheet instead of re-adding.
- Capability:
- Document Intelligence
- Industry:
- Real Estate & Construction
Who it is for
- Quantity Surveyor
- Billing Engineer
- Project Manager or PMC Lead
- Head of Contracts
The problem
Contractors raise running account bills every month with an abstract, measurement sheets and claims for extra items. Billing engineers check each line against the BOQ, the measurement book and the previous bill before the project manager signs off. With several contractors per tower, this check is where rate errors, quantity overruns and missed recoveries slip through.
Cumulative quantities that drift
Up-to-date quantities claimed against an item can exceed the BOQ or the measured quantity, and the arithmetic of previous plus current is rarely redone in full.
Rates and items outside the contract
Lines billed at a revised rate, or for items not in the BOQ, need an approved variation, but they look like any other line in a long abstract.
Deductions and recoveries missed
Mobilisation advance recovery, retention, TDS, GST and labour cess each follow their own rule, and an error in one bill carries into the next.
Free-issue material not reconciled
Cement and steel issued by the developer should reconcile with theoretical consumption, but the reconciliation is often skipped when payment is urgent.
What we build
We build a bill checking pipeline that reads the contractor's RA bill, abstract and measurement sheets, whether they arrive as Excel, PDF or scans, and matches each line to the work order BOQ. It recomputes cumulative quantities and amounts, compares rates with the contract, checks quantities against measurement book entries and BOQ limits, and applies your rules for advances, retention, material recovery, taxes and cess. Each line gets a status of matched, needs review or not in contract. The billing engineer works from this sheet, records decisions and certifies the bill in your usual system. The pipeline never certifies a bill or releases a payment.
- Extraction of RA bill abstracts and measurement sheets from Excel, PDF and scans
- Line matching to BOQ items by code and description, including items the contractor has renamed
- Recalculation of previous, current and up-to-date quantities and amounts
- Rate check against the work order and approved variations, with non-BOQ items flagged
- Rule-based deductions for mobilisation advance, retention, free-issue material, TDS, GST and labour cess
- Theoretical versus issued consumption check for cement and steel
How it works
- 01Receive the RA billThe contractor's bill, abstract and measurement sheets arrive by email or upload and are linked to the work order.
- 02Extract bill linesEach line's item, description, unit, rate and previous, current and cumulative quantities are extracted.
- 03Match to BOQ and measurementsLines are matched to BOQ items and compared with measurement book entries and approved variations.
- 04Recalculate and apply rulesArithmetic, BOQ limits, rates and deductions are recomputed, and mismatches and non-BOQ items are flagged.
- 05Billing engineer reviewThe engineer reviews flagged lines with their source pages, accepts or corrects them and adds remarks.
- 06Certify and recordThe verified sheet supports certification in your ERP, and decisions are kept for the next bill and for audit.
Architecture
- Intake and extraction
- Email and upload intake linked to work orders
- OCR with table structure detection
- LLM line extractor with a bill schema
- Contract data
- Work order BOQ and rate store
- Approved variations register
- Measurement book entries
- Verification engine
- BOQ line matcher
- Quantity and arithmetic recalculation
- Deduction and recovery rules
- Material reconciliation
- Review and integration
- Billing engineer review screen
- ERP adapter
- Audit log
Inputs and outputs
Inputs
- Contractor RA bill, abstract and measurement sheets
- Work order with BOQ, rates and terms
- Measurement book entries or site measurement records
- Approved variation and extra item orders
- Material issue register for free-issue cement and steel
- Previous certified bills
Outputs
- Line-by-line verification sheet with matched, review and not-in-contract status
- Recalculated bill abstract with proposed corrections
- Deduction and recovery schedule
- Material reconciliation statement
- Reviewer decision log for audit
Where people stay in control
The billing engineer or quantity surveyor reviews every flagged line and certifies the bill, and the project manager approves it under your delegation of authority. The pipeline proposes corrections but cannot change a certified amount or release a payment.
Integrations
- ERP or project accounting system such as SAP, Oracle or Farvision
- Excel BOQ and bill formats used by your contractors
- Email inbox used for bill submission
- Document management system for work orders
- Tally or your accounts system for payment processing
Guardrails
- No automatic certification or payment release
- Every corrected figure shows the original value, the rule applied and the source
- Rate and deduction rules versioned per work order
- Non-BOQ items can only be accepted with a linked variation reference
- QS team samples auto-matched lines every billing cycle
Compliance notes
- Keeps an audit trail for contractor payments, including TDS and GST treatment as configured by your finance team.
- Labour cess deductions follow the rules your finance team sets for each state and contract.
A typical pilot
Duration: 3 to 4 weeks
One contractor and one work order, re-checking the last few certified RA bills and running the current bill in parallel with your billing engineer.
Deliverables
- 01BOQ and rules configuration for the pilot work order
- 02Verification sheets for past and current bills
- 03Billing engineer review screen
- 04Comparison with certified amounts and remarks on past bills
- 05Roll-out plan and estimate for further contractors
What we measure
- Line matching accuracy
- Auto-matched BOQ items checked by the billing engineer on every pilot bill.
- Issues found that were missed earlier
- Flags on past certified bills that the QS team confirms as genuine.
- False flags per bill
- Flags the engineer marks as not an issue.
- Checking time per bill
- Engineer time with the verification sheet versus the current method, on comparable bills.
Built on related work
Claims reconciliation platform
Packaged-food brand (anonymised)
OCR and LLM platform that matches distributor claims spreadsheets against invoices and proofs, applies policy rules, detects duplicates, recalculates amounts, routes uncertain lines to an exception queue and keeps an audit trail. Finance keeps final approval.
FAQs
01Our contractors all use different bill formats. Will it cope?
Yes. The extractor reads the bill's content rather than a fixed template and maps renamed or reworded items to BOQ codes. New formats are added to the test set during the pilot, and any line it cannot map is flagged rather than guessed.
02Can it check quantities against drawings?
Not in the first phase. It checks claimed quantities against measurement book entries, BOQ limits and previous bills. Drawing-based quantity take-off is a separate piece of work we can scope later.
03Will this create friction with contractors?
The output is an internal verification sheet, and your team decides what to share. Line references often help billing engineers give contractors clearer reasons for each deduction.
04How long before it works across all our sites?
After a pilot on one work order, most of the effort is loading BOQs and rules for each new contract. We roll out contractor by contractor, checking each one against past bills before it goes live.
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Founded by Akhilesh Mittal. 8 years building a security platform for a New Zealand company. IIT ISM Dhanbad and IMT Ghaziabad. Builds production agentic AI.
Pick one project and one painful workflow
Book a discovery call and we will scope a short pilot on one project, such as RA bill checks for a single contractor or lead qualification for one launch, run in parallel with your current process.