Nobody has worked it, nobody has earned it

With no hours logged there is no surplus to share, so an untouched pool can never be reported as money someone is owed.

What it is

The surplus is only non-zero when total crew hours are above zero. The rounding-drift correction is guarded the same way, so a project that has not started cannot pay anybody.

Also called: payout on a job that hasn't started · phantom surplus · $81,900 bug

See it
Nobody has worked it, nobody has earned it
Won
30%
Avg cycle
16d
Pipeline
$572k
JanSep
A payout panel on an unstarted job showing zeros throughout rather than a large surplus. Sample data — no customer information appears here.
How it works
  1. 1surplus = totalHours > 0 && rawSurplus > 0 ? rawSurplus : 0.
  2. 2The drift correction requires totalHours > 0 and at least one member.
  3. 3With no hours, every member's share is zero and the pool stays the builder's set-aside.
Why we built it

The surplus is the share of the pool a crew earns back by working, split by hours — so with no hours logged there is nothing earned and nobody to earn it. Reading an untouched pool as a shareable surplus once paid one man the entire job on a project that had not started: $81,900 against zero hours worked. A pool nobody has worked is money the builder has set aside, not money anyone is owed, and it is reported that way until someone actually works it.

The problem
  • An untouched pool being read as an earned surplus.
  • Rounding logic handing an entire surplus to whoever sorted first.
Sound familiar?
What you get
A job with no hours pays nobody.
The payout screen cannot produce a catastrophic false figure.

See it on your own jobs

Twenty minutes, your numbers, no slide deck. We’ll build one of your real buildings in front of you and send you the estimate link at the end — yours to keep either way.

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