4.	Accounts Receivable, Transit Accounts Receivable and Transit Accounts Payable

The Company’s accounts receivable are comprised as follows:

	March 28, 2020			December 28, 2019
Billed	$	29,703		$	29,214
Accrued and unbilled		11,374			13,824
Work-in-progress		4,170			4,352
Accounts receivable subject to arbitration		7,387			14,095
Allowance for sales discounts and doubtful accounts		(1,867	)		(1,725	)

Accounts receivable, net	$	50,767		$	59,760

Unbilled receivables primarily represent revenue earned whereby those services are ready to be billed as of the balance sheet ending date. Work-in-progress primarily represents revenue earned under contracts which the Company contractually invoices at future dates.

From time to time, the Company’s Engineering segment enters into agreements to provide, among other things, construction management and engineering services. Pursuant to these agreements, the Company a)

may

engage subcontractors to provide construction or other services; b) typically earns a fixed percentage of the total project value; and c) assumes

ownership or risks of inventory. Under the terms of the agreements, the Company is typically

not

required to pay the subcontractor until after the corresponding payment from the Company’s end-client is received. Upon invoicing the end-client on behalf of the subcontractor or staffing agency the Company records this amount simultaneously as both a “transit account receivable” and “transit account payable” as the amount when paid to the Company is due to and generally paid to the subcontractor within a few days. The Company typically does

not

pay a given transit account payable until the related transit account receivable is collected. The Company is typically obligated to pay the subcontractor or staffing agency whether or

not

the client pays the Company. The Company’s transit accounts payable generally exceeds the Company’s transit accounts receivable but absolute amounts and spreads fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter in the normal course of business. The transit accounts receivable was

$1.9

million and related transit accounts payable was

$2.5

million, for a net payable of

$0.6

million, as of

March 28, 2020.

The transit accounts receivable was

$4.9

million and related transit accounts payable was

$4.6

million, for a net receivable of

$0.3

million, as of

December 28, 2019.

The Company has a dispute with a customer that is a major utility in the United States. Both parties agreed in fiscal

2017

to resolve this dispute through binding arbitration. Arbitration hearings with this customer started in fiscal

2018.

Essentially, the customer did

not

pay the balance of accounts receivable the Company believes were owed for certain disputed projects. As of

December 28, 2019,

the total amount of recorded receivables from this customer on these disputed projects was

$14.1

million. Additionally, as part of the arbitration process, the customer asserted counter-claims of

$10.3

million. The arbitrator rendered a decision in this dispute in

April 2020,

awarding the Company

$7.4

million. The counter-claims asserted against the Company of

$10.3

million were denied in their entirety. For the

thirteen

week period ended

March 28, 2020,

the Company recorded a charge of

$8.0

million, including

$6.7

million constituting the portion of the accounts receivable relating to the disputed projects that was

not

awarded by the arbitrator,

$0.7

million from other projects with this customer that were

not

part of the arbitration,

$0.4

million in professional fees related to the dispute and arbitration, and

$0.2

million of transit accounts receivable associated with disputed projects that were part of the arbitration. The Company decided to write off the

$0.7

million of accounts receivable from other projects

not

part of the arbitration for business reasons.