The weekly reconciliation isn't a feature. It's a discipline. And like most disciplines in construction, the builders who practice it consistently are the ones who finish projects on budget, on time, and with relationships intact.
The concept is simple: at the end of each week, the manager reviews every expense the PM logged, approves or questions each one, closes the week, and records the payment. Then it's done — that week's finances are locked, and next week starts clean.
The execution is where most builders fall down.
Why Weekly (Not Monthly, Not "Whenever")
The further in time you are from an expense, the harder it is to verify and categorize. The PM who bought $340 of hardware at Ferguson last Tuesday can tell you exactly what it was for. The PM reviewing that receipt three weeks later might not remember. The manager trying to categorize an expense from six weeks ago is essentially guessing.
Weekly cadence keeps memory fresh. It keeps the budget current enough to be actionable. And it matches the real-world payment cycle — most builders wire the PM weekly anyway, so the review and the payment are already linked in practice.
The Review Workflow in BLT
The manager opens the weekly review screen. It shows all submitted expenses for the current pay period, grouped by project and phase. For each expense, the manager has four actions:
Approve — confirm the expense and its budget assignment. If the PM categorized it correctly, this is one click.
Reassign — move the expense to a different project, phase, or budget category. Sometimes the PM guesses wrong on the category. The manager corrects it here, and the actual spend rollup updates immediately.
Flag — mark for discussion. Adds a comment thread to the expense. The PM gets notified and can respond with context. Good for "what was this $340 at Ferguson?" or "this seems high for hardware."
Reject — deny the expense with a reason. The PM sees the rejection and the reason. The amount doesn't roll into the budget.
Closing the Week
When all expenses are reviewed, the manager closes the week. This locks the reviewed expenses and generates a settlement summary: total approved expenses by project, labor costs by project, Amex charges vs. cash/wire, and the grand total owed.
The manager then makes the payment outside BLT (wire transfer, Venmo, Zelle) and records it in BLT: amount, date, payment method, reference number. The week is now settled. That week's expenses are part of the permanent financial record and feed the budget tracking.
What Happens When You Skip a Week
One missed week usually isn't a crisis. Two or three missed weeks creates a backlog that's genuinely painful to work through. Expenses pile up. The PM's recollection fades. Budget categories drift unmonitored. By the time you catch up, you may have already committed spend against categories that were already over budget — and you didn't know because you hadn't reviewed.
The weekly review is the feedback loop that makes everything else in the financial system work. Without it, the rest of the data is just noise.