The accepted work still waiting for its PO
A service business can be busy, on schedule and accepted by its customer, and still be short of the value it has earned. The cause is rarely a dispute. It is accepted work that nobody has matched to its purchase order line yet.
Two lists that rarely meet
Delivery teams track sites and milestones. Commercial teams track PO lines and amounts. Each list is well kept. The trouble starts in the join between them: which order line pays for this site, has the work behind it been accepted, and has anyone asked for it?
When that join is made by hand at month end, it is slow and it is incomplete. What gets missed does not raise an alarm. It simply waits.
A service partner delivers against a customer PO with several hundred lines. Over four months the customer accepts $227,000 of work. The partner's claims for the same period total $137,000.
The monthly shortfall grows from $18k to $26k. Over four months, $90k of accepted work has no claim behind it.
Exact example values
| Month (2026) | Work accepted (USD k) | Claimed (USD k) | Not yet claimed (USD k) |
|---|---|---|---|
| June | 40 | 22 | 18 |
| July | 55 | 31 | 24 |
| August | 62 | 40 | 22 |
| September | 70 | 44 | 26 |
| Total | 227 | 137 | 90 |
Why it builds quietly
- The trigger is a memory. Someone has to notice that a site was accepted and remember to raise its order lines.
- The PO keeps changing. Lines are added, amended and cancelled. A claim prepared from last month's copy can be wrong in either direction.
- The proof is elsewhere. The acceptance email sits in one mailbox and the order line in another file, so each claim starts with a search.
None of this shows in a delivery report, which is why the backlog is usually discovered during a quarter-end review, not the week it appeared.
What changes when value follows the work
- Acceptance is the prompt. When work is accepted, the order lines behind it are already known, so the next step is visible the same day.
- Every amount has a status. Waiting on delivery, ready to claim, under review, approved: one list, read the same way by delivery and commercial teams.
- Corrections leave a trail. When a line changes or a claim was wrong, the adjustment is recorded beside the original, not over it.
- Reviewers decide with the evidence in front of them. The acceptance and the amount arrive together.
MSDP connects accepted delivery work to the customer PO value behind it, so the question "what have we earned and not yet claimed?" has a current answer. It records that decision; it does not issue invoices or collect payment.