BILLD — TERMS BUILT FOR CONSTRUCTION.
Billd is a construction-specific financing company that gives commercial subcontractors access to working capital on terms that match how construction actually pays. Two products: material financing with up to 120-day payment terms so subcontractors stop fronting material costs out of pocket, and Pay App Advance so contractors can unlock up to 100% of what they have already earned on a submitted pay application without waiting 30, 60, or 90 days for the GC to process it. Founded in 2018 by industry veterans who understand that construction's broken payment cycle is a structural problem — not a cash management failure.
SPM and Billd have collaborated on webinars, blog content, and financial education for commercial subcontractors. The financial control layer (CFOS) and the working capital layer (Billd) address the same contractor from two different angles — and understanding both is how a subcontractor builds a complete financial strategy.
TWO WAYS BILLD SOLVES THE CASH GAP.
The subcontractor cash gap has two distinct causes. The first is material cost — contractors have to buy materials weeks or months before the project pays for them. The second is billing lag — contractors earn money when work is complete but do not collect it for 30, 60, or 90 days after the pay app is submitted. Billd built a product for each one.
Material financing gives commercial contractors up to 120-day payment terms with any supplier. Here is how it works: the contractor submits a material quote from their supplier, Billd pays the supplier upfront in full, the supplier ships directly to the job site, and the contractor pays Billd when the project pays — up to 120 days later.
The result: the contractor preserves their existing cash and credit lines instead of deploying them on material purchases that will not be reimbursed for 60 to 90 days. That preserved capital can be used for payroll, bonding capacity, equipment, or the next job's startup costs instead of being locked in material invoices.
Because Billd pays suppliers upfront, contractors can also negotiate cash discounts with suppliers — which offsets some or all of Billd's purchase fee. A contractor who negotiates a 2% cash discount on a $500,000 material purchase is recovering $10,000 that would otherwise have been unavailable without Billd fronting the payment.
Pay App Advance is Billd's pay application financing solution. When a contractor has submitted a pay application and the work is done but the GC has not yet processed payment, Pay App Advance unlocks up to 100% of what the contractor has already earned — minus a purchase fee — before the GC pays.
On a standard commercial project, a contractor submits a pay app on the 25th, the GC processes it in 30 days, and the contractor collects on day 55 to 65 after the work was complete. That 30 to 45 day gap between earning money and receiving it is funded from working capital or a line of credit — neither of which is free. Pay App Advance shortens that gap to days rather than months.
For contractors managing multiple concurrent projects, the cumulative pay app float — money earned but not yet collected across all active jobs — can be $200,000 to $500,000 or more at any given time. Pay App Advance makes that float accessible rather than frozen in the collection cycle.
WHY CONSTRUCTION'S PAYMENT CYCLE CREATES A STRUCTURAL CASH PROBLEM.
A commercial subcontractor who wins a $800,000 contract typically needs to purchase $200,000 to $400,000 in materials before the first billing cycle closes. That material has to be on site — or in fabrication — before the work can start. The first pay application covering those materials is submitted at the end of month one. The GC pays it in 30 days. The contractor has funded $300,000 of project cost from their own capital for 45 to 60 days before seeing a dollar of reimbursement.
On a pipeline of five or six concurrent projects, the cumulative material float can exceed $1M at peak exposure — funded entirely from cash, credit lines, or both. That is not a cash management failure. It is a structural feature of how commercial construction projects are financed. Billd is built specifically to address that structure.
The standard payment cycle in commercial construction — submit pay app by the 25th, GC processes in 30 days, contractor collects on net 45 to 60 — was not designed around subcontractor cash flow. It was designed around the GC's cash flow. The GC collects from the owner first, then pays down the chain. Subcontractors absorb the float at every level below them.
Pay-when-paid clauses push that float further. Retention holds 5 to 10% of every billing until the project closes. Change orders take weeks or months to approve while the work they cover is already in the ground. By the time a subcontractor finishes a project, the cash they are still owed can be 15 to 25% of the contract value — held in retention, approved but unpaid change orders, and outstanding pay applications.
Billd's financing terms are built around this reality — not around a bank's underwriting model that does not understand construction payment cycles.
A bank evaluating a subcontractor's creditworthiness looks at historical financials, personal credit, and collateral. It does not understand that a subcontractor with $4M in active backlog and $800K in outstanding pay applications on current projects is a fundamentally different credit profile from a retail business with the same revenue. Construction AR is project-specific, collectable, and secured by lien rights — but a traditional lender cannot quantify that.
Billd built a proprietary methodology to quantify construction-specific risk — evaluating the project, the GC, the contract terms, and the subcontractor's track record rather than applying a generic creditworthiness model. That methodology is what allows Billd to provide higher credit limits and more flexible terms than any traditional lender — and to serve subcontractors that a bank would turn away.
FINANCIAL CONTROL AND WORKING CAPITAL ARE NOT THE SAME PROBLEM.
CFOS fixes the financial control layer — job costing, overhead rate, billing velocity, collections process, WIP reporting, and monthly CFO advisory. When CFOS is running correctly, the contractor knows exactly what each job costs, bills on time, and collects systematically. That foundation is what makes working capital decisions intelligent rather than reactive.
Billd solves the working capital layer — the cash that is needed between when costs are incurred and when payments arrive, regardless of how well the billing and collections process is running. Even a contractor with a perfect CFOS implementation still faces the structural reality that commercial construction requires fronting material costs and waiting 30 to 60 days to collect earned revenue. That is where Billd operates.
The connection between the two is the cost of capital. A contractor who does not account for the cost of using Billd — or any working capital product — in their project estimates is subsidizing the GC's payment cycle out of their own margin. SPM and Billd collaborated on a webinar specifically on this topic: how to calculate the cost of working capital and build it into project pricing so the financing decision is always a net positive rather than a margin drag.
WHAT WE HAVE BUILT TOGETHER.
SPM and Billd have collaborated on content designed to help commercial subcontractors make smarter financial decisions — specifically around working capital, billing strategy, and the cost of financing. The content lives on Billd's platform and is available to any contractor who wants to go deeper on these topics.
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