Contracts and measuring work

A contract ties a client's work to its rate card, currency, retention and payment terms. A measure records the quantities of work actually done against a job, priced from that rate card. Nothing is billed in Maliru without a measure behind it.

Contracts, measures, invoices and valuations all live under Commercial. Setting up contracts, and approving and billing measures, needs the Manage commercial permission (owners always have it). Recording a measure does not: anyone can record one on the work they were sent to, without seeing the prices (see Recording a measure without Manage commercial below).

Set up your rates first — see Rate cards, priced items and uplifts.

Contracts

A contract is "the agreement a client's work is delivered under — its rate card, currency, retention and payment terms." Open Commercial › Contracts and choose New contract.

Contract details

• Name and Client — both required. A contract needs a name and a client.
• Code / reference — your own reference for it, or the client's.
• Status — Draft, Active, On hold or Closed.
• Rate card — the priced items measures on this contract are drawn from.

Commercial terms

• Currency — an ISO code such as GBP, USD or EUR. Leave it blank and the contract takes your workspace currency.
• Retention (%) — the share held back on each valuation and on invoices raised under this contract. Blank means none. Setting or changing it needs the Crew plan; a contract keeps the figure it already has on any plan, and clearing it is always allowed.
• Payment terms (days) — sets the due date on certified valuations and on invoices under this contract. Blank means 30 days.
• Contract value — optional, for reference.
• Period (start and end date) and Notes.

The Contracts tab lists every contract with its client, currency and payment terms under its name, its Status, and its money:

• Value: the contract value with its approved variations, additions added and omissions taken off.
• Earned to date: what the contract has earned so far. That is what has been certified on its valuations or, for a contract you invoice, what has been invoiced under it, before tax and less credit notes.
• Of value: earned to date as a share of the value. It turns red once the work has run past the value.
• Owed now: what is still unpaid on its invoices and applications.
• Retention held: the retention held on its latest certified valuation.
• Ends: the end of the contract's period.

Every figure is in the contract's own currency. A contract without a value shows a dash under Value and Of value. Search finds a contract by its name, code, client or rate card.

Commercial opens on Overview, which puts the money across every contract on one page. See The Commercial overview.

Contracts, like every Commercial register, has View: at the head of its toolbar, which keeps a search, filter and sort as a saved view. See Saved views.

Recording a measure

Open Commercial › Measures and choose Record measure.

• Job — the job finder opens with finished jobs first, because work is measured once it is done. On a desktop, tick several jobs instead of one and you move to the grid for measuring several jobs at once (see Measuring a route or several jobs in one go).
• Contract — every measure is billed under a contract, and only the job's client's contracts are offered. Maliru picks the job's own contract, or the only one there is. If the client has none yet, the form says "This client has no contract yet. Every measure is billed under one, so add a contract before measuring."
• Client PO — see below.
• Measured on — one day, or the first and last day of a span. Left blank, it is today.
• Shown to the client — see below.

Then add the priced lines. Each line takes a Rate item (search by code, description or card), a Quantity and, if the card has any, an Uplift. The unit, the effective rate and the amount fill in as you type, with a line such as Base rate £38.00 +30% = £49.40 when an uplift is set. Add item adds another line; every line on a measure must be in the same currency. The Total is the sum of the lines, each rounded on its own.

Choose Submit. The measure waits for a decision.

Who earned it

Where your workspace pays piece work by the unit, each line also asks Who earned it: the person the pay run pays for that line, who is not always the person typing it in. The list starts with Nobody, then the people sent to the job, marked Sent to this job, then everyone else. A line recorded by somebody who was sent to the job starts on them; one recorded by a commercial, jobs or schedule manager starts on Nobody. A line credited to nobody pays nobody. Somebody recording on a job they were sent to can credit only themselves or others sent to it. See paying for measured output.

Evidence

Once a measure is saved, someone with Manage commercial can open it and choose Add evidence to attach a photo (up to 25 MB) that backs up the quantities. Whoever recorded it can add evidence too, while it still awaits a decision. Each file shows when it was captured. The Grouped with evidence invoice layout prints these photos as an appendix.

The customer's PO

A measure carries the Client PO the invoice will quote back, and it opens on the job's standing order — so a customer who raises one order per works instruction types it once on the job and every measure takes it.

Leave the box alone and that is what happens. Type one and this visit is invoiced against it instead. That is for the customer who orders each visit separately — a monthly clean, a re-attendance, a second phase — where one job runs to several orders. Clear the box again and the measure goes back to taking the job's.

An invoice still covers one order at a time: your customer's accounts payable matches one invoice to one order, so Maliru refuses a selection spanning two and names both. Work with no order at all mixes in freely.

The days a measure covers

Measured on takes a span, not just a day. Pick the first day and the last, and the measure reads 13 – 18 Sep 2026 wherever the date appears: on the Measures board, on the measure itself, and as the Period on an invoice raised from it. Pick one day and nothing changes.

Valuations: a measure belongs to the period its last day falls in. A run still being walked when the month closes waits for the month it finishes in, so it is claimed once, by exactly one period.

Shown to the client

Some customers need facts from the job record on the invoice — a permit number, a site address, a duct section. Open Shown to the client and tick them; they print under the job on the quote or invoice, beside the priced lines. The header says what is ticked, so you only need to open it to change it.

A workstream can set which facts every measure starts with, under the workstream's settings in Jobs (Shown to the client). Someone with Manage commercial can change them on any one measure; a measure recorded by anyone else takes the workstream's list as it stands.

Sending the sheet to your client

A client who wants to check the figures before there is an invoice can be sent the measure itself. Open it and choose Export:

• Excel (.xlsx) — one row per priced line, with the job, the code, the quantity, the rate and the amount.
• PDF — the printable sheet: who it is for, the contract, their order number, the days measured, the lines and the total, with your logo where your plan applies it.

The sheet is a copy, not a document. It has no number and nothing is stamped on the measure. A measure still awaiting a decision says Awaiting review on the sheet, so a figure you are checking cannot be read as one you stand behind. To export many at once, use Select on the Measures board. Export is only offered to people who see the prices.

One-off costs

Some costs belong to one job only: a skip, a road closure, traffic management on a Saturday. They have no place on the rate card, so add them to the measure instead. Under the priced lines, choose Add one-off cost, describe it, and enter the quantity, the unit and the price.

• The price you enter is the price. A one-off cost takes no uplift.
• It is marked One-off on the measure, so whoever approves it can see which prices were never agreed on a rate card.
• It is billed like any other line: on the invoice, the valuation and the application for payment, under the measure's contract and in its currency.
• Labour % is asked for only where the client holds back a deduction on the labour part of an invoice. Enter how much of the cost is labour.
• It is never piece work. Nobody is paid by the unit for a one-off cost.

Only people with Manage commercial can add or change one. Someone recording a measure on a job they were sent to sees the office's one-off costs on it without the price, and correcting their own lines leaves them in place.

Measuring several jobs at once? One-off costs sit under the grid, each on the job it was spent on.

Recording a measure without Manage commercial

The person who did the work is usually the one who knows the quantities. Anyone in the workspace can record a measure on work they were sent to, without being given the price book.

Where: in the office app, under Commercial › Measures › Record measure — on a computer, or in the office view on a phone for those who have it. The field app's Capture has no measure form.

Which jobs:

• People who hold Manage jobs or Manage schedule pick any job they can open, as a commercial manager does, and can measure several jobs at once.
• Everyone else picks from the jobs they have been sent to — a published shift on that job, finished or not — one job at a time. If there are none, the form says "There is no job for you to measure. A measure is recorded on a job you have been sent to."

What the form offers: the contracts the job can be billed under (closed contracts are not offered), and only the rate items on cards that price work under the chosen contract. Change the contract after picking an item and that line says "Not priced under this contract. Choose another item." — Submit waits until it is fixed. If no rate items have been set up, you are told to ask whoever manages Commercial to add them.

What you do not see: no rates, no uplift values, no amounts and no totals — not on the form, not on the Measures board and not on the measures you have filed. Uplifts are offered by name only. The Shown to the client choice is not yours either: your measure takes the workstream's standing list. Add one-off cost, Export, Quote and Approve are for people with Manage commercial. You can Add evidence to your own measure while it awaits a decision, and see its evidence whatever its status.

What happens next: the measure is Submitted and waits for someone with Manage commercial to approve or reject it; you are told the decision. Your Measures tab lists only the measures you recorded, with their status and where they have got to. While one is still awaiting a decision you can Edit it or delete it; after that, corrections are the office's.

Approving and rejecting

A submitted measure waits for someone with Manage commercial. Open it and choose Approve or Reject; both ask first. Approving says "It becomes ready to invoice, and whoever measured it is told." Rejecting means nothing is billed from it.

A decision can be taken back while nothing has been billed: on the Measures board choose Select, tick the measure, then Status › Awaiting approval. Once a measure is on an invoice or in a valuation, it cannot be put back.

Correcting a measure

Edit on a measure reopens it in the editor it was recorded in. Commercial managers can correct any measure, including one already on an invoice (see A measure that has been invoiced below); the person who recorded it can correct it while it still awaits a decision.

Changing what an approved measure is worth — its lines, its contract or its dates — sends it back for a decision, and the measure's Activity reads Corrected, and sent back for a decision. Changing only the note leaves the approval alone.

A measure that has been invoiced

A commercial manager can still correct or delete a measure that is on an invoice, pro-forma or application raised from measures, and the invoice follows. Edit first asks Correct a measure on INV-…?, with What changed? (optional). When you save, the invoice reads that measure's lines again and works out its totals again. It keeps its number, and the version your client already has is kept in its history with your note. A change the invoice doesn't print, such as the measure's note, leaves the invoice alone.

Deleting a billed measure takes it off the invoice first. If it is the invoice's only measure, Maliru asks you to void the invoice instead.

Once a payment or a credit note is recorded against the invoice, its measures can't change: raise a credit note for the difference. A measure in a valuation, or on an application raised from one, can't be edited or deleted either. Fix the figure by crediting or voiding that document instead.

Statuses and where the money got to

• Submitted — waiting for a decision.
• Approved — ready to bill.
• Rejected — nothing will be billed from it.
• Applied — on an invoice, an application for payment or a valuation.

The board's Billing column says exactly where each one stands: Awaiting approval, Unbilled, Draft invoice, the invoice number once it is issued, or Valued.

What comes next

• Turn approved measures into an invoice: Raising an invoice from approved measures.
• Price work before it is agreed: Quoting from a measure.
• Certify the cumulative position on a contract: Valuations, retention, variations and dayworks.
• Hand measures to colleagues, filter and decide in bulk: Working the Measures board.

Why it's built this way: every bill traces back to an approved, evidence-backed measure against a real job, and a measure is stamped the moment it is billed, so it can never be charged twice.