The Attic of the Balance Sheet

Why projects get stuck, how it shows up in audits, and the practical habits that finally clear them out.

Angela Bolton • Fixed Asset Consultant, CIP Expert

Every company I walk into has an attic. Costs go up into Construction in Progress with the best of intentions — we'll deal with it later — and then they sit there for months, sometimes years, while the rest of the business carries on as if everything's fine.

Delayed reclassification of substantially-complete projects is the single most common CIP finding I see in fixed asset audits. It is also, honestly, one of the most fixable. This is the short paper I wish I could hand people before the auditor asks.

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The attic I keep finding

The core metaphor, and why a quiet CIP balance is rarely as quiet as it looks.

Why the attic stays full

Five root causes: spreadsheet dependency, nobody owning the closeout moment, non-qualifying costs riding along, detail collapsing too early, and finance owning the account while the real status lives elsewhere.

CIP is not a finance task

The cross-functional ownership model — Finance, Project & Facilities, Procurement & AP, and one named role responsible for declaring "this one is done."

What good actually looks like

Five practical habits: centralize the tracking, use project templates, define the closeout trigger, review aging on a cadence, and preserve detail until handoff.

Your CIP health check

A hands-on worksheet — eight direct questions you answer about your own CIP process.

Practical steps for this month

A four-week action plan: pull the aging list, schedule a cross-functional review, write down your closeout definition, walk the oldest balances, and decide your ongoing cadence.

Send me The Attic of the Balance Sheet

Tell me where to send it and the download appears on the next screen — no waiting on an email to arrive.

9 pages, PDF, free.

Includes the CIP health check worksheet and the four-week plan.

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