One file, from the folder to the underwriter's inbox.
Here is what happens to a contractor's file inside Surety Minds, in the order you would work it yourself. The panels are drawn from the demo book: invented companies, real output.
Everything a surety asks for, read on arrival.
One drop box. Recognised files are read on their own; anything unfamiliar opens a short review instead of failing quietly. Statements, WIP schedules and agings are read in the layout they arrive in, whether prepared by the accountant, exported from accounting software or scanned, with nothing retyped by hand.
- Financial statements, year-end and interim, with the accountant's own captions and note references kept.
- WIP schedules read by shape, not by template: five facts per job, everything else derived and proved with arithmetic.
- A/R and A/P agings reconciled to the report's own totals before anything is trusted.
- Bank and legal: credit agreements, indemnity agreements, org charts, bond requests, meeting notes.
- PDF2025-12-31 - FYE - Review engagementYear-end, read with 14 notesRead
- PDF2026-06-30 - INTERIM - Balance sheet and incomeSix months, year-to-date totalsRead
- XLSX2026-06-30 - WIP - Work in progress22 jobs, totals provedRead
- PDF2026-06-30 - AR - Receivables aging57 clients, ties to the report totalRead
- PDFBank letter - line of creditCommitment and covenantsAgreement
- PDFAR report (1).pdfSame bytes as a file already on the accountDuplicate
The same statement dropped twice, usually as “report (1).pdf”, is caught before it double-counts.
Reported, then restated. With the reason on every line.
This is the difference between a bookkeeping tool and a surety tool. The platform applies the treatments an underwriter applies, shows its working, and lets you override any of it.
- Related-party advances come off working capital and net worth unless they reconcile inside the indemnity group.
- Over-90 receivables are compared across two agings. Stale last period and still open: written off. Newly aged: moved to long term. A holdback: stays current.
- Owner debt counts as equity only where it is subordinated to the surety, not to the bank.
- Your judgement wins. Every figure can be overridden, and the override is recorded.
Not just what the numbers are. What they mean.
Margin compression on rising revenue reads differently from margin compression on falling revenue, and the read says which one you are looking at.
| Line | FYE 2023 | FYE 2024 | FYE 2025 | Change | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $29.8M | $32.5M | $35.8M | +$3.3M | +10% |
| Cost of earned revenue | $25.0M | $27.1M | $29.6M | +$2.5M | +9% |
| Gross profit | $4.78M | $5.40M | $6.20M | +$800K | +15% |
| Gross margin | 16.0% | 16.6% | 17.3% | +0.7 pts | — |
| Overhead and other, net | $3.50M | $3.88M | $4.32M | +$440K | +11% |
| Net income | $1.28M | $1.52M | $1.88M | +$360K | +24% |
| Net margin | 4.3% | 4.7% | 5.3% | +0.6 pts | — |
The read written beneath it: “Overhead grew 11% against revenue growth of 10%. They are absorbing volume without adding proportional cost, and it drops straight to net.”
Where a profitable contractor actually gets into trouble.
A statement of cash flows, read from the year-end where the accountant gives one and rebuilt where they don't. Then the question that matters: was the operating cash earned, or borrowed from the jobs?
- Cash against profit. Profit that runs the other way from cash is the earliest reliable warning in contract surety.
- The overbilling test. If billings in excess of cost grew faster than operating cash, the business billed ahead to cover what it spent. The read says so in those words.
- Distributions against earnings. Taking out more than the business made shrinks net worth in a profitable year.
“At roughly 83 days they are financing their customers for nearly three months. The cash is sitting in the receivable, not in the bank.”
Backlog is remaining cost to complete. Not contract value.
Getting that wrong overstates a book by multiples. The whole schedule is carried on a cost-to-complete basis, across every company in the group, with the things an underwriter opens the schedule to find already flagged.
Loss jobs
Counted, sized, and shown as a share of the book with the exposure still on them.
Closeout underbillings
Jobs 95% complete or more still carrying costs in excess of billings: usually a write-off waiting to happen.
Profit fade
Margin lost after 75% complete, tracked job by job across schedules, not on book totals.
Overbillings vs cash
The float that should still be in the bank, and what it means when it isn't.
And the aggregate the program is actually sized against
The whole schedule's cost to complete, every job, bonded or not, across the group, plus bonds on no schedule, less closed bonds and the work burned down since the schedule date.
Seventeen sections, in the order you walk an underwriter through a file.
Every figure is computed the moment you open the tab: no AI call, no cost, no waiting. The written analysis on top is generated when you press the button, and never re-run for figures that haven't moved.
Each section is coloured by what it found: amber where something needs an answer, red where it will drive the decision.
The argument, the objections, and the email. In your voice.
It builds the case you take to market, grounded only in what the file supports, and it talks to the underwriter the way you do: single and agg, a clean file, a loss job, getting ahead of a problem.
- Lead with these. The genuine strengths, with their figures. A thin file yields a short list, and that is the honest answer.
- Get ahead of these. What the underwriter will question, with the mitigation already written.
- Two emails. The cover note to the surety, and the chase to the client for what is still missing, in plain words.
Hi Dana,
New submission for you: Pacific Structural, a structural steel contractor. Clean file, and it should underwrite comfortably. Looking for $5M single / $40M aggregate. You'll see top-customer concentration trending up; it's an institutional payor and we're watching it.
• Tangible net worth, surety-adjusted: $3.84M (FYE Dec 31, 2025)
• Working capital, surety-adjusted: $4.4M
• WIP: 10 jobs on the current schedule · no loss jobs
Full package is ready. Let me know what you need.
It assembles, computes and drafts. The judgement stays with you.
- It does not underwrite, bind or advise. It hands you a file you can defend, and you decide what to do with it.
- Honest gaps. Where a document is missing, the read says what is missing and where to drop it. Never a confident zero.
- Costs you control. Opening and working a file calls no AI. Each document is read once, when it arrives, and the written analysis runs only when you press the button.
- The test we hold it to: if it cannot say where a number came from and why it changed, it does not show the number.
Bring a file you already know the answer to.
Twenty minutes. We put one of your own accounts through it while you watch, and you tell us where we're wrong.