Billing & Collections
for construction subcontractors.
Subs do the work, then wait — for the GC, for the owner, for the bank, for retention. We run pay applications, lien protection, and follow-up so your money doesn't sit at the bottom of someone else's payment stack.
Your money is at the bottom of a four-link chain.
Owner pays the bank. Bank releases to the GC. GC pays their general account. Then — when they get to it — they pay you. Any delay anywhere up the chain lands on the subcontractor.
Releases funds on a draw schedule.
Submits the master pay app to the owner.
Decides which subs get cut this cycle.
The last link. Funding payroll while you wait.
We don't change the chain. We work it — every link, every cycle — so your invoice never sits behind someone else's paperwork problem.
5–10% of every job, sitting somewhere.
On a $400k job, that's $20k–$40k held back until substantial completion — sometimes for a year or longer after your last truck rolled off the site. Most subs forget about it until tax time.
Every contract gets its retention percentage and release trigger entered the day the job starts.
We know when the punch list closes — because we asked, every two weeks.
Not 30 days after. Not 'whenever the GC's controller gets to it.' At the contractual moment.
Formal demand, prompt-pay statute reference, lien preserved in the background. Quietly and firmly.
Miss the GC's billing window and you wait another 30 days.
Every general contractor runs a monthly pay-application cycle with a hard cutoff. Submit on the 25th instead of the 24th and your draw is in the next cycle. We hit the deadline. Every cycle.
Percent-complete reviewed with your PM, change orders confirmed.
AIA G702/G703 or the GC's proprietary portal — whichever they require.
Lien waivers attached. Backup documentation organized. No back-and-forth.
We watch the GC's approval workflow and address questions before they stall the draw.
Most subcontractors lose more here than to actual bad debt.
Change orders worked but never signed
Field hands a change in the moment, your crew does the work, the change order sits unsigned for weeks. We chase the signature before the work goes in — and after, if the GC drags.
Backcharges applied without notice
GC deducts $8,400 from your draw for a 'cleanup charge' you never agreed to. Daily logs and photos build the dispute pack. We push back, formally, the day it shows up.
Pay-when-paid used as pay-if-paid
GC tells you they 'haven't been paid yet.' We track the owner's draw and invoke state prompt-pay statutes when the legal window has actually passed.
Retention quietly forgotten
Job closed in March. Retention release was triggered in May. It's now October. You hadn't noticed because you're already on three other jobs.
A missed deadline turns you into an unsecured creditor.
Every state has its own preliminary notice window, its own lien filing deadline, and its own rules for who counts. Texas isn't California. Florida isn't New York. We file the preliminary notice on every job — automatically, on day one — so your lien rights are protected before anyone needs them.
Every state has different lien rules. We know them.
Specialty trades we work with
Electrical subcontractor, 18 field crews, Mountain West
$14M annual revenue. Mix of commercial tenant improvement, light industrial, and one large healthcare project. Owner had two pay apps stuck and $310k of retention from prior jobs sitting somewhere.
We started on a Monday. By Friday we'd reconstructed the retention ledger across his last 11 completed jobs — five of which had triggered release months earlier and never been chased. The first demand letters went out the following week.
On the healthcare job, the GC had been quietly applying a 'site cleanup' backcharge against each draw for three months. The owner had argued about it on phone calls but never put anything in writing. We pulled the daily logs, built the dispute pack, and recovered $58k by the next cycle.
Now every job starts with a preliminary notice filed, a retention release trigger on the calendar, and a pay-app cycle on the 23rd of every month. He hasn't missed a cutoff in eight months.
Billing & collections questions subcontractors ask us
What is construction billing and collections outsourcing?
+
It's a managed service where a dedicated team handles your pay applications, lien rights, retention tracking, change-order chasing, and overdue follow-up — on your behalf, using your branding and your existing project systems. You stay focused on the field.
How is this different from a collection agency?
+
Collection agencies pick up accounts after they've gone bad. We start at the beginning of every job — preliminary notices on day one, pay apps filed on time, retention tracked from substantial completion. The goal is for nothing to ever reach collections in the first place.
Do you handle pay applications in AIA G702/G703 format?
+
Yes. We submit pay apps in whatever format the general contractor requires — AIA G702/G703, Textura, GCPay, Procore, or the GC's own portal. Lien waivers, schedule of values, and backup documentation included.
Can you preserve lien rights in all 50 states?
+
Yes. Every job we onboard gets a preliminary notice filed on day one in any state that requires one. Lien deadlines and bond claim windows are tracked on a per-job basis so nothing slips.
Will you chase retention from old, closed jobs?
+
Yes — and this is often the first thing we recover. Most subs have meaningful retention sitting on jobs they finished six months to a year ago that nobody has formally chased.
Do you work with general contractors using Procore, GCPay, or Textura?
+
Yes. Those are the three most common GC payment portals in our day-to-day work, along with Sage 300 CRE and direct AIA submissions. No new software on your side.
What does this cost?
+
Pricing is based on the volume of jobs and accounts we manage, not a percentage of what we collect — so the incentive stays aligned with you keeping good GC relationships. Most specialty trade subs are between $2,000 and $6,000/month. See pricing for details, or reach out and we'll walk you through it.
Stop financing the project with your own cash.
A quick conversation, a clear plan, and your retention stops sitting at the bottom of someone else's stack.