You approved an estimate. The invoice came back higher. Now what?
There is no federal rule that a make-ready invoice be itemized, and no requirement that anyone reconcile the estimate you approved against the bill you received. So the question is not whether the number is right. It is whether you have any way to find out.
You have three, and which one fits depends on a single thing: whether you are checking one bill or protecting a whole build.
Start with one question
Everything else follows from it, so answer this before you look at a price.
A specific charge does not look right.
You want to know whether there is anything wrong with it, and you do not want a commitment while you find out. Start with the free check. If it turns up something, a single audit takes it the rest of the way and costs nothing unless the pole owner actually adjusts the charge.
Make-ready is running continuously and the bills keep coming.
Checking after the fact means every catch becomes a dispute. Monitoring reviews the estimate before you approve it, so the overcharge is corrected rather than recovered. That is a different service, not a bigger version of the same one.
What each one costs
- ✓ One estimate or invoice
- ✓ Plain-language findings summary
- ✓ No account, no card, no sales follow-up
- ✓ 20 / 15 / 12 / 10 percent, stepping down as savings grow
- ✓ Nothing upfront, nothing unless the owner adjusts the charge
- ✓ You keep at least 80 percent of everything found
- ✓ Every estimate checked before you pay
- ✓ Success rate halved: 10 / 7.5 / 6 / 5 percent
- ✓ First month credited against the first fee earned
Or skip the percentage entirely
A not-to-exceed fixed fee with no success component, priced from the same scope as monitoring. Offered by default to public agencies and cooperatives, and available to any client on request. Choose it when a budgeted number matters more than sharing the upside.
The trade, in one line of arithmetic
Monitoring charges a monthly fee and halves the percentage. So it pays for itself once the success fee a single audit would have charged you exceeds twenty-four times the monthly fee.
monitoring = 12 × monthly + fee / 2
monitoring costs less when fee> 24 × monthly
| Plan | Poles submitted for make-ready | Monthly | 12 months | Break-even in success fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project | up to 500 | $395 | $4,740 | $9,480 |
| Build | 501 to 2,000 | $795 | $9,540 | $19,080 |
| Program | 2,001 to 5,000 | $1,195 | $14,340 | $28,680 |
Read that column as: if a year of single audits would have cost you more than this in success fees, monitoring costs you less. In the first year the figure is lower still, because the first month is credited against the first fee earned. The plan is not a choice between three prices. It is set by how many poles you submit for make-ready, so the build picks the plan and the real decision is monitoring against single audits at that size.
What the arithmetic leaves out, and it matters more than the arithmetic
Break-even assumes the same errors get caught either way. They will not be. A single audit cannot catch what you have already paid without opening a dispute. An estimate reviewed before approval turns that fight into a corrected number. If you have no appetite for disputing paid invoices, the estimate-stage review is the only part of this that can help you at all.
What is actually at stake
How it goes
If you buy with public or federal money
The fixed fee is usually the right instrument
A percentage of savings is not a fixed price, so it cannot be encumbered cleanly and you have to estimate total value anyway. The not-to-exceed fee gives you one number to put on a requisition. That is why it is the default offer to public agencies and cooperatives rather than something you have to ask for.
Where the annual figure sits
The federal micro-purchase threshold rose to $15,000 on 1 October 2025. Over twelve months all three monitoring plans fall below it: $4,740, $9,540 and $14,340. Under 2 CFR 200.320(a)(1) a micro-purchase may be awarded without soliciting competitive quotations where the recipient considers the price reasonable and documents that conclusion.
Read that as a planning fact, not a shortcut
Your own threshold governs, not the federal default. A recipient sets and documents its own micro-purchase threshold based on internal controls and risk, it must be permitted under state, local or tribal law, and it may self-certify up to $50,000. Some entities set theirs lower. Nothing here is priced for the purpose of keeping a purchase under a threshold, and none of this is procurement advice.
The term, so there are no surprises
Monitoring is engaged per build project on a 12-month initial term. It does not renew automatically into another fixed term. After the initial term it continues month to month and either side can end it on 30 days notice. You can also elect month to month from the start. If your funding is subject to appropriation and funds are not appropriated, you can end it at the end of the funded period without penalty. Free checks and single audits carry no term at all.
Start with one document
The free check costs nothing and commits you to nothing. If it finds nothing, you have learned that too, and that is worth knowing before the next estimate arrives.
Run a free checkSee what we check, and what we will notIllustrative only. The break-even figures are arithmetic on the published rates, not a projection of what any build will save. PoleProof does not guarantee that any audit will identify overcharges, that any amount will be recovered or avoided, or that any pole owner will accept any finding.
PoleProof is not a law firm and its findings are not legal advice. Nothing here is procurement, legal or financial advice. Rates, bands, plan sizes, definitions, the term and the project cap are set out in the Client Service Agreement, which governs if this page and that agreement differ.
Last reviewed 4 August 2026. The rates and term stated here are taken from the Client Service Agreement. Charter RDOF return per its April 2024 letter to the FCC Wireline Competition Bureau, ECFS 10425099581567. Micro-purchase threshold per the FAR inflation adjustment effective 1 October 2025.