Work in Progress (WIP) Template

A Clean, Surety-Ready Format for Tracking Your Active Projects

Your work-in-progress schedule is one of the most important documents in your surety underwriting file. It tells the surety how your active projects are performing, how much of your bonding capacity is being used, and whether your jobs are making or losing money. The format, accuracy, and timeliness of your WIP directly affect your bonding capacity.

This template gives you a professional, surety-ready format that you can use to build and maintain your WIP schedule. It includes every column a surety underwriter expects to see, organized in the order they expect to see it.

What the Template Includes

The WIP Template includes the following columns for each active project.

Project name and project owner. Original contract amount. Approved change orders (listed separately from the original contract). Revised contract amount (original plus change orders). Total costs incurred to date. Estimated cost to complete. Estimated total cost at completion. Total billings to date. Percentage of completion. Estimated gross profit or loss. Overbilling or underbilling status.

The template also includes a totals row that summarizes your entire project portfolio, giving the surety a single-line view of your total contract backlog, total costs, total billings, and overall profitability.

How to Use This Template

Enter every active project, bonded and non-bonded. The surety wants the complete picture of your workload.

Update the template at least quarterly. If you are actively pursuing capacity increases or bidding large work, update it monthly.

Make sure your cost-to-complete estimates are realistic. Base them on actual job cost data, not optimistic projections. If a job is running over budget, reflect that honestly. Sureties expect some jobs to underperform. What they do not expect is a WIP where every project is exactly on budget. That suggests the numbers are not real.

Reconcile your WIP totals with your financial statements. The numbers should tie to your balance sheet. If they do not, work with your CPA to resolve the discrepancy before you submit.

For a complete guide on how sureties use the WIP and how to avoid common problems, see our Work in Progress (WIP) Reporting page.

Common WIP Mistakes That Hurt Your Bonding

Stale data. A WIP that has not been updated in four or more months tells the surety you are not tracking your projects closely. This erodes confidence and slows approvals.

Missing projects. Leaving non-bonded projects off the WIP gives the surety an incomplete picture of your workload. They will find out during underwriting, and the omission raises questions about what else might be missing.

Optimistic cost-to-complete estimates. If your estimates consistently prove too low when actual results come in, the surety notices. Over time, they discount your projections and may underwrite more conservatively.

Excessive overbillings. Billing significantly ahead of work completed suggests you are using project funds to finance operations rather than funding work from working capital. This is one of the most common red flags surety underwriters identify on a WIP.

WIP does not reconcile with financial statements. If the totals on your WIP do not match the numbers on your balance sheet and income statement, the surety has to spend time figuring out why. That slows the process and erodes confidence in your reporting.

Download the WIP Template

Download the WIP Template

If you prefer to talk through your situation before downloading, call us at (801) 505-5500 or schedule a Bond Consultation.

Work in Progress (WIP) Reporting

Building an Underwriting File