Pilot RA bill preparation with an auditable review pack

Select a contract whose measurement and billing rules are understood and whose historical records can be accessed lawfully. Define the included work items, billing period, source systems and output format. Exclude unresolved entitlement interpretation from automated calculation; show those items for commercial review.

Avoid choosing only the cleanest bill. Include at least a returned submission, a prior certification difference and a corrected measurement in the historical test set. If no suitable records exist, use synthetic challenge cases before the authorised live sample.

The commercial head sponsors the pilot. A named QS owns preparation rules, a second reviewer owns acceptance, finance owns accounting and tax mappings, and the technical owner runs the integration. Client submission remains through the existing authorised process unless a later scope explicitly changes it.

Read these sources into a controlled preparation workspace. Validate mappings and versions, calculate the draft, then route missing or conflicting evidence to the responsible person. Preserve a snapshot of the inputs used for every reviewed output. A live link alone is insufficient if the source can later change.

The payment-application documentation from Autodesk is one example of software maintaining application history. It does not establish which statuses or values your contract should use; those mappings belong in the pilot specification.

Illustrative example: bill 06 claims 40 metres of new work. It is returned for a missing attachment and resubmitted as revision 1 with the same 40 metres. The expected contribution to cumulative claimed quantity remains 40 metres.

The system should preserve both documents, identify revision 1 as the current submission for that claim and show the return reason. A simplistic import that adds every submitted file would count 80 metres. A system that deletes the first file would lose the review history.

Now change revision 1 to 38 metres after an approved measurement correction. The pack should show the 2-metre reduction, its source and the effect on cumulative quantity. If the first version has already been certified or invoiced, hold the downstream correction for the relevant commercial and finance process. Do not assume replacing the PDF reverses those events.

For each draft bill line, show cumulative eligible quantity, previous active claimed quantity, newly claimed quantity, prior certification difference, applicable rate and source references. Where the contract allows a prior difference to be presented again, show it separately in the current application and count it only once cumulatively. Add current and cumulative adjustments separately. Mark any amount excluded because approval or evidence is missing.

Provide a change report against the last reviewed draft. The checker should be able to see that a measurement changed, a variation became approved or an attachment was replaced without rereading every unchanged page. Bind approval to the pack's input versions and output version. A subsequent change must reopen the affected review; it must not inherit approval from an earlier calculation. Keep the full pack available alongside the change report.

If OCR or AI extracts fields, retain the source page and extracted location. Check a labelled sample against a QS-verified answer set, including decimal errors, crossed-out values and similar item codes. Count wrong fields accepted as correct as well as fields sent for review: a confident extraction can still be wrong. Missing rates, ambiguous dimensions and conflicting totals should hold the affected line for review. Deterministic calculations should use validated structured inputs; a language model must not invent a rate or decide contractual entitlement.

Use comparable bills under fixed inclusion rules. Record preparation time, checking time, number of missing evidence items, correction cycles and return reasons. Separate internal review time from waiting for client certification; the pilot cannot claim to control the latter.

Illustrative baseline design: if the package has enough history, review 20 distinct bill cycles, including four that were returned. Count preparation, checking and resubmission effort against the original bill identity; three revisions are not three independent successful bills. If only six comparable cycles exist, report those six and their limitations. Use synthetic cases to test controls, but do not include them as evidence of live productivity.

Agree a time-improvement target with the process owner after the baseline. Accuracy and authority gates should include zero unexplained duplicate claimed quantity, complete source traceability for released lines and no submission or posting without the required approval. A fast draft with missing support fails the gate.

Safe retry design helps avoid repeated effects when an acknowledgement is lost. For this pilot, keep output in draft form initially. Any later ERP write-back needs a stable transaction reference, reconciliation to the target and separate approval of the expanded scope.

Stop expansion for duplicate claims, an unexplained total, an authority bypass or unauthorised disclosure. Pause the affected processing, preserve logs and input snapshots, and mark unreviewed packs as superseded or withdrawn from use. Return preparation to the existing controlled method.

The QS and finance owner should reconcile any output that crossed into an authoritative system. Corrections must use that system’s approved process; deleting pilot records does not undo a submitted claim or accounting entry. Resume only after the failure case is reproduced, repaired and retested.

Hand over the mappings, rule approvals, exception ownership, runbook and export process. Include the time required to operate the pilot after the implementation team leaves.

The useful outcome is a bill pack that reduces assembly effort while making review easier to reproduce. Expansion should follow evidence from both ordinary and difficult bills.

1. Select one contract and establish its accepted source records.
2. Measure the existing preparation and review effort.
3. Pass the returned-bill, correction, retry and access tests.
4. Run a reviewed live draft and reconcile every released line.
5. Agree whether to expand preparation coverage or separately consider controlled write-back.

For an RA preparation review, begin with the contract model, monthly bill volume and the step that consumes the QS's time. A returned-bill example can help define the pilot once suitable records are agreed for review.