Work in progress (WIP) is the value of work your business has carried out but not yet invoiced, applied for, or been certified on. It sits between cost you have already incurred and cash you have not yet seen — which is precisely why it deserves attention.
On a single job, WIP is the gap between what the work has cost you to date and what you have so far been paid for it. Across a business, company-wide WIP tells you how much of your turnover is currently being financed by you — your suppliers paid, your labour paid, your money out of the door, the client's money not yet in.
Why it matters
A contractor can be profitable on paper and still fail on cash, and swollen WIP is usually how. Every week that valued work goes unapplied-for is a week of free credit extended to the client. Healthy businesses watch WIP the way they watch the order book: applications out on time, certifications chased, the gap between cost and value on each live job explained rather than assumed.
How it goes wrong
WIP goes bad quietly: applications slip a cycle because the paperwork is painful; variations are worked but never valued; under-certification is noticed but not argued because the evidence trail is thin. Each looks small. Together they are the difference between funding your own growth and funding your client's project.
In Vyntworks, company-wide WIP reads live across every job — cost, value and the gap — alongside the CVR, with applications for payment generated from the same data. Related terms: applications for payment and what is CVR.