A Schedule of Values (SOV) is a detailed breakdown of a project’s total cost by work item or phase, used for tracking progress and payment applications. Funders, brokers, and underwriters rely on these documents to confirm project completion percentages, cost distribution, and budget integrity.
However, reading and interpreting SOVs manually is time-consuming. Reviewers must scroll through long spreadsheets, reconcile line items, and compare new versions just to see what changed.
Heron automates summarization for SOVs by distilling these complex documents into concise, structured overviews. It highlights contract value, change orders, percent complete, and key deltas across versions.
Instead of scanning through hundreds of rows, underwriters and operations teams get a quick snapshot of project health and readiness in seconds.
Use Cases
- Generate project-level summaries: Heron compiles totals, change order amounts, and completion percentages into a single view. Reviewers see where a project stands without opening a spreadsheet.
- Highlight budget deltas: The system compares new submissions to previous versions and summarizes changes in total value or percent complete.
- Flag anomalies in progress trends: Heron detects when work completed jumps irregularly or when progress stalls, signaling possible data entry errors or project issues.
- Summarize by cost category: Labor, materials, and subcontractor costs are grouped and summarized, showing proportional spending.
- Create audit-ready notes: Heron generates short contextual notes for each deal record, listing key figures, version details, and detected anomalies.
- Surface retainage impact: Retainage amounts and remaining balances are summarized so teams can understand withheld payments quickly.
Operational Impact
Summarization transforms raw SOV data into actionable intelligence. Teams no longer rely on manual scanning or spreadsheet formulas to grasp the project’s state. With Heron, reviewers get clarity instantly, brokers receive faster feedback, and funding decisions happen sooner.
- Faster analysis: Reduces hours of spreadsheet review to seconds.
- Better visibility: Everyone in the workflow can access key financial insights from a structured summary in the CRM.
- Stronger compliance: Summary logs retain every revision, creating a clear audit trail.
- Improved forecasting: Aggregated summaries feed clean data into reporting dashboards.
Heron turns repetitive review steps into structured insights that help funders make faster, more confident decisions.
Summary Generation Framework
- Input recognition: Heron identifies the document as an SOV and confirms project linkage. Each submission is assigned to the correct record, even when filenames vary.
- Data extraction: The system parses line items, totals, and percent complete fields. Missing data or unreadable sections are flagged automatically.
- Version comparison: Heron analyzes prior versions to spot contract value or progress changes. Differences appear in structured summaries with numerical deltas.
- Aggregation and scoring: Heron generates total work complete, change order totals, and retainage summaries. These metrics form the core of the summary section.
- Structured write-back: Heron writes summarized fields and short narrative notes to the CRM. Each summary includes timestamps, version IDs, and completion metrics.
- Exception awareness: The summary calls out anomalies, gaps, or irregularities. Examples include inconsistent progress or mismatched totals.
Insight-Driven Reporting
Summarized SOV data unlocks deeper insights that manual reviews cannot achieve.
- Portfolio tracking: Aggregated summaries reveal funding exposure by contractor or sector.
- Trend monitoring: Teams see consistent growth or irregular dips in work completion over time.
- Exception concentration: Exceptions cluster by broker or document type, helping identify training needs.
- Cycle-time visibility: Managers track how long it takes from submission to underwriting-ready status.
These reports inform policy changes, staffing decisions, and broker feedback loops, ultimately making the process more efficient.
Human-in-the-Loop Review
Automation drives speed, but human oversight ensures trust.
- Confidence thresholds: Heron highlights summaries with low-confidence fields for manual review.
- Context verification: Reviewers check flagged metrics or unusual changes directly from the CRM.
- Edit logging: Adjustments made by reviewers are timestamped and stored for traceability.
- Continuous learning: Feedback from reviewers trains Heron to recognize new formats and language patterns.
This balance keeps summaries fast, accurate, and adaptable to evolving document styles.
Collaboration and Broker Experience
Summarized SOVs improve communication between brokers, funders, and underwriters.
- Simplified feedback: Instead of sending spreadsheets with comments, teams share concise summary notes.
- Transparent communication: Brokers see exactly which values changed and why, reducing back-and-forth.
- Faster resubmissions: Clear summaries shorten correction cycles and improve broker satisfaction.
- Unified visibility: All teams reference the same summarized data, reducing confusion across departments.
Heron makes every interaction more efficient and precise, creating a better workflow for both sides of the transaction.
Governance and Compliance Advantages
Automated summarization helps organizations maintain oversight and accountability.
- Audit trail: Each summary includes the document source, version, and generated timestamp.
- Policy alignment: Summaries standardize reporting language and remove subjective notes.
- Data lineage: Teams can trace every metric back to its original cell or section.
- Controlled access: Only authorized users can edit or regenerate summaries.
- SOC 2 compliance: All summarization actions occur within Heron’s secure infrastructure.
This governance-first approach keeps automation compliant while remaining transparent and verifiable.
Business Outcomes
Summarization produces measurable impact across the funding workflow.
- Throughput: Teams process 2–3× more SOVs per day.
- Error reduction: Manual interpretation mistakes drop sharply as Heron handles calculations.
- Operational savings: Teams avoid redundant data entry and lengthy review cycles.
- Decision speed: Underwriters reach conclusions faster with clear, data-backed summaries.
- Data quality: Structured summaries enhance consistency across all records and reports.
As volume grows, these benefits compound, allowing organizations to scale without proportional increases in headcount.
Benefits of Using Heron for Summarizing the Schedule of Values
- Speed: Summaries generate within seconds of intake.
- Clarity: Reviewers get essential insights instantly, without spreadsheets.
- Consistency: Standardized structure improves understanding across teams.
- Scalability: Handles hundreds of SOVs daily without quality loss.
- Auditability: Every summary includes timestamps and version tracking.
Heron turns dense financial data into actionable intelligence that keeps underwriting flowing.
FAQs About Summarize for Schedule of Values
How does Heron summarize Schedule of Values documents?
Heron parses each document, extracts financial fields, compares versions, and compiles structured summaries. It presents totals, progress, and anomalies in the CRM for immediate review.
Can Heron highlight what changed between versions?
Yes. Heron automatically identifies and lists changes in contract value, percent complete, and retainage between submissions, so reviewers instantly know what’s new.
How detailed are the summaries?
Summaries include key metrics (original and revised contract value, total work complete, retainage, and progress percentage), plus notes on detected anomalies or missing data.
Can teams customize which fields appear in the summaries?
Yes. Organizations can define which data points Heron includes in summaries based on underwriting priorities or compliance requirements.
How does summarization improve underwriting speed?
Underwriters receive ready-to-review summaries instead of lengthy spreadsheets. This reduces manual reading time and accelerates decision-making significantly.
