Overview
The Financials tab on a vendor's record replaces the spreadsheet your team builds by hand when sizing up a subcontractor. Enter the numbers from their financial statements and surety letter once, and Billy answers the three questions a reviewer actually needs on one screen: how much work you can safely award, whether the balance sheet is healthy, and how much of their capacity your own active jobs are already using.
⚡ Short answer: Financials is a new tab in the vendor Directory. You enter 13 figures from a subcontractor's financial statements, and Billy calculates a single job limit, an aggregate work limit, balance sheet health indicators, and the capacity already committed to your active projects. The vendor's EIN now lives on this tab. |
Where to Find the Financials Tab
Open Directory, select a vendor, and choose the Financials tab alongside the vendor's existing compliance and document tabs.
IMPORTANT:
The EIN field has moved. It used to sit on the vendor's general information tab and is now on the Financials tab, grouped with the rest of the vendor's financial identity. Existing EINs carried over automatically, so nothing needs to be re-entered.
Why This Replaces the Spreadsheet
Financial prequalification has traditionally meant one reviewer pulling numbers off a PDF into Excel, reading the surety letter, and making a judgment call on whether a job size is safe. That approach is slow, produces different answers depending on who is reviewing, and leaves nothing behind to show how the decision was made.
Reviewing by spreadsheet | Reviewing in Billy |
Every reviewer builds their own formulas | One calculation applied the same way to every vendor |
Numbers live in a file on someone's desktop | Numbers live on the vendor record, next to their COIs and W-9 |
No record of who reviewed what, or when | Fiscal year and source label are stored with every set of figures |
Committed capacity estimated from memory | Your active contracts counted automatically against their limit |
What You Enter: The 13 Figures
Everything on the tab is calculated from 13 numbers taken off the vendor's financial statements, plus a fiscal year and a source label. Enter them as whole dollars.
Section | Fields |
Income statement | Revenue, Net Income, EBIT |
Balance sheet | Total Assets, Current Assets, Cash, Inventory / WIP, Total Liabilities, Current Liabilities, Retained Earnings, Net Worth (Equity) |
Other | Line of Credit, Signed Backlog |
Context | Fiscal year, and a source label recording where the figures came from, for example audited statements, reviewed statements, or a surety letter |
💡 Tip: The source label matters as much as the numbers. Audited statements and a self-reported summary carry very different weight in a dispute, and recording which one you used is what turns this tab into an audit trail. |
What Billy Calculates
Once the figures are saved, the tab answers three questions.
1. How much work can we safely award them?
Billy derives a single job limit and an aggregate work limit from the vendor's working capital and net worth, the two figures sureties lean on most heavily. The single job limit is the largest individual contract the vendor's balance sheet supports. The aggregate limit is the total value of concurrent work they can carry across all of their customers, not just you.
2. Is their balance sheet healthy?
Alongside the limits, Billy surfaces the standard health indicators a reviewer would otherwise calculate by hand, including working capital, current ratio, debt to equity, and profitability. These are what tell you whether a vendor with an acceptable limit is trending in the right direction or quietly deteriorating.
3. How much of their capacity is already committed to us?
This is the question a spreadsheet almost never answers well. Billy compares the vendor's capacity against their signed backlog and the value of the active contracts they already hold with you, so you can see remaining headroom before awarding another job. A subcontractor can look strong in isolation and still be over-committed across your portfolio.
How Reviewers Use It
Collect the financials. Request statements and the surety letter as part of subcontractor prequalification, or through the prequalification form.
Enter the 13 figures on the Financials tab, with the fiscal year and source.
Read the limits against the job. Compare the proposed contract value to the single job limit, and the vendor's total workload to the aggregate limit.
Check the health indicators before treating a limit as final.
Make the award decision and move on. The figures stay on the vendor record for the next reviewer and the next job.
IMPORTANT:
These figures support a decision, they do not make one. Billy is not a surety, an underwriter, or a financial advisor, and the calculated limits are guidance based only on the numbers entered. Your team owns the award decision.
What Ships Now, and What Comes Next
This first release covers manual entry of the 13 figures, the capacity and health calculations, committed capacity against your active jobs, and the EIN move. Automatic extraction of figures from uploaded PDF financials, multi-year trending, and configurable scoring thresholds are on the roadmap for later iterations. If one of those matters to your team's process, tell us, because that feedback drives the order they ship in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where did the EIN field go?
It moved to the new Financials tab on the vendor record. Nothing was lost. Existing EINs carried over and are editable in the same way they always were.
How do I know how large a job a subcontractor can handle?
Enter their financial statement figures on the Financials tab. Billy calculates a single job limit, the largest contract their balance sheet supports, and an aggregate limit covering all concurrent work. Compare your proposed contract value against the single job limit and their total workload against the aggregate limit.
Does Billy read the numbers off uploaded financial statements automatically?
Not in this release. The 13 figures are entered manually from the statements or surety letter. Automatic extraction is planned for a future iteration.
What is the difference between the single job limit and the aggregate limit?
The single job limit is the largest individual contract the vendor can safely take on. The aggregate limit is the total value of all concurrent work they can carry, across every customer they work for. A vendor can clear the single job limit for your project and still be over their aggregate limit because of work they hold elsewhere.
Does the tab account for work the vendor already has with us?
Yes. Billy counts the value of their active contracts with you, together with their signed backlog, against their calculated capacity, so you see remaining headroom rather than a limit in isolation.
Is financial capacity the same as insurance compliance?
No, and both matter. A subcontractor can be fully insured and financially overextended, or financially strong with lapsed coverage. Billy tracks certificates of insurance on the compliance tabs and financial capacity here, so a reviewer sees both sides of vendor risk on one record. See vendor compliance statuses for the insurance side.
Who can see and edit a vendor's financials?
The Financials tab sits on the vendor record inside your team's account, visible to your Billy users. Vendors never see it, and it is never shared with other Billy customers.
How often should financials be updated?
Most teams refresh at each fiscal year end, or whenever they receive an updated surety letter. The fiscal year stored with each set of figures makes it obvious at a glance when the numbers on file have gone stale.
Can I export this data?
Directory exports are covered in our guide to exporting compliance data from Billy.
📌 Questions about the Financials tab? Use the chat bubble below, read more about construction insurance compliance, or book a demo to see vendor prequalification and COI tracking together in one platform. |