How to stop losing money on completed T&M work.
Specialty subcontractors routinely complete work that never makes the invoice — not because the work didn't happen, but because the documentation happened too late, was too thin, or was disputed by a GC with no record of the verbal directive. This guide explains why it happens and how to close the gap.
Why T&M work goes unbilled
The root causes are consistent across specialty trades — the specific work differs, the documentation failure looks the same.
Verbal directives with no written record
A GC or owner directs additional work on site. The crew does it. No one writes it down. By invoice time, the GC has no memory of the conversation and the sub has no proof it happened.
End-of-day documentation that misses details
Even when crews try to document at day's end, small additions get forgotten — the extra cores, the footage extension, the 45-minute equipment setup for a task that wasn't planned. Memory is a poor substitute for capture at the point of work.
T&M tickets that can't be verified
A paper T&M ticket with no timestamp, no GC signature, and no photos is easy to dispute. GCs who receive an invoice for work they don't remember authorizing have every incentive to push back.
Scope additions captured too late to get GC buy-in
When documentation happens days or weeks after the work, GCs who would have approved it in the moment may dispute it retrospectively — especially if they've already given the owner a cost forecast that didn't include it.
The fix: capture at the point of direction
The only reliable way to close the T&M billing gap is to capture scope additions at the moment they are directed — not reconstructed hours or days later. Documentation that happens in real time produces three things that end-of-day documentation cannot: a timestamp that precedes the work, a record of who directed it, and the GC's contemporaneous acknowledgment rather than a retrospective dispute.
On a practical level, this means the foreman's phone needs to be the documentation tool — not a paper ticket, not a spreadsheet at the end of the day, not a memory exercise on Friday afternoon. When documentation is as fast as taking a photo and selecting a work type, crews actually do it. When it's a friction-filled process that happens after the job, it doesn't.
The second half of the fix is getting GC acknowledgment at capture time rather than approval time. A GC who can review and approve documented field work the same day it was captured has full context and little incentive to dispute it. A GC who receives an invoice three weeks later for work they don't remember has every incentive.
How Revecta closes the T&M billing gap
Field capture at the point of direction, compiled into GC-reviewable proof, with a Revenue Recovery Engine that flags anything that hasn't been invoiced yet.
Frequently asked questions
How much T&M revenue do specialty subcontractors typically lose?
There's no single reliable industry-wide figure, and we don't publish one — treat any specific percentage you see elsewhere with skepticism unless it cites a real source. What's consistent is the mechanism: work completed but never made it onto an invoice, most often because documentation happened too late, was incomplete, or was disputed by the GC who had no record of the verbal directive. The actual dollar impact depends on a contractor's own documentation habits, not a fixed industry rate.
Why doesn't end-of-day or end-of-week documentation work?
Memory degrades over hours, not days. By end of day, a foreman may remember the big items but not the additional cores, the extra footage, or the 90-minute standby period. By end of week, the dollar value of forgotten items compounds. Documentation at the point of direction eliminates the memory problem entirely.
What makes a T&M ticket defensible when the GC disputes it?
Three things: a timestamp showing when the work happened, documentation of who directed it and what specifically was requested, and — ideally — a contemporaneous acknowledgment from the GC rather than a dispute two weeks later. Revecta captures all three at the point of direction.
Is Revecta just for T&M work, or does it help with lump-sum jobs too?
Revecta helps on any job where scope additions generate change orders — lump-sum jobs where the scope changes mid-project are exactly where the field-capture and proof workflow adds the most value. T&M is the clearest use case, but the billing-gap problem exists on any contract type.