Standing cost — money on lost time

Money in the lost-time world is a lens, never a bridge: it prices the crew-hours a confirmed Blocker already carries, and it never turns hours into a claim. The figure is called standing cost everywhere — deliberately never "loss" or "damages" — and every surface that shows it treats it as indicative: what the standing crew and plant cost while the work was held up, on the rates the site keeps, and nothing more contractual than that.

Three rules shape everything on this page:

• Only confirmed records are ever priced. The awaiting-triage tier shows hours and counts, never £ — an unvetted claim must not acquire a price tag.
• £ renders exactly where the lost-time read grant renders hours, and nowhere else. A firm's own panel, the basis a confirmer reads, the distribution copy of the weekly — none of them carries money.
• Money never partitions. Hours can read "…of which 16 contested"; the £ beside them is always one figure. A discount implied by a mark would be a verdict nobody issued.

The rates table

Rates live in Settings ▸ Rates: a labour rate per firm (with a site default beneath it), and a standing rate per plant type. The table is append-only — no cell is ever edited:

• Add a rate starts a new row from a date. History stays.
• Correct a rate supersedes a row and requires a reason — a correction claims a stored figure was wrong, and figures already printed may depend on it.

Before either lands, the screen shows an impact preview: "This re-prices 10 rows, 10–18 Aug — £18,078.67 → £17,383.33 (−£695.34)." A change that re-prices nothing says so ("Nothing re-prices…"). A record prices at the rate in force when its stoppage began — so a long stoppage split at close prices consistently at its start, and accepting a split can never move the money.

To correct a rate that was entered wrong:

1. Open Settings ▸ Rates and find the scope — the firm's labour row, the site default, or the plant type.
2. Choose Correct a rate, enter the right figure, and say why the rate was wrong — the reason is required, because a correction changes figures that may already be printed.
3. Read the impact preview — the rows that re-price, their date range and the £ movement — then commit.

Labour, plant, and the honest dash

A priced record has up to two components:

• Labour — crew-hours × the losing firm's rate (or the site default, and the figure says which it used).
• Plant standing — for a stoppage only: each machine attached to the record × its type's standing rate × the stopped hours. People are priced as crew-hours; the machine is priced once, as plant.

Where a £ cell can't be computed it shows a dash with exactly one reason, the first that applies: extent not declared → disruption — nothing declared about plant → no plant on this record → no stopped duration on this record → no plant rate in force at the resolved rate epoch. A reader's first question is always what did the record say, so the reasons run in that order. Beside a shared machine, the cell also discloses double counting plainly ("2 records price the same plant over shared hours (£1,200 counted twice)") rather than silently netting it.

The money line

Every £ total carries its own honesty clause — the records it could not price, classed by reason:

£15,852.67 · 10 records costed · 2 uncosted: 2 still running · 11 awaiting triage: 5 still running · 2 no restart recorded · 3 no count · 1 costable on confirm

Read the tail as the work outstanding. A confirmed record can be missing its £ for six reasons, printed in that order — still running (no window yet), no restart recorded (closed with no window at all), no count (confirmed but uncounted, waiting on the firm), no rate, partly costed (some of the fold priced, some didn't), and nothing priced, the fallback that fires when no narrower reason was found, so a fold never prints a bare £0 or an unexplained dash. The awaiting tier adds its own last class, costable on confirm: counted, rated, and one triage decision away from pricing. A fully-priced total says nothing uncosted rather than saying nothing.

Who sees money, on screen and on paper

• On screen: the ledger's confirmed tier, and Settings ▸ Rates' impact preview (its £ needs the lost-time grant too — a settings holder without it sees counts and dashes).
• The full weekly — the principal contractor's working copy, money line included, marked "Principal contractor working document — not for distribution. Standing cost is indicative, not a claim (SCL CP20)."
• The distribution copy — the same weekly with the money line removed entirely; safe for the meeting room, deliberately carrying no "money withheld" notice.
• The ledger CSV — one variant only, money included, under the same read grant; dashes travel with a sibling reason column, so the most portable artifact stays as honest as the screen.

Paper defends its ink

An issued sheet is a fact about when it was issued. Every hours- or £-bearing artifact prints its range and as-at instant; a frozen one carries an issue number, and re-generating mints the next issue with a "supersedes issue N−1" line. If the live figures move after issue — a late correction, a rejected record, a rate corrected with its reason — the issued artifact, re-opened in the app, shows "live figures have moved since issue" and what moved. Nothing edits ink; supersession discloses it.

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Next: The register & injury rates · Reading the ledger

Blockers & lost time guide: Overview · Reviewing & triaging · Raising · How lost time is counted · The ledger · Your firm's panel · Slip & nil returns · Standing cost · The register · Scene by scene · Reference