CONSTRUCTION CASH EMERGENCY: WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW.
Before you call an MCA broker, draw on personal credit, or do anything you can't undo, do this first. Call your top three GC accounts and request immediate payment on the oldest outstanding invoice. Most acute cash crises resolve within 5 to 10 business days through aggressive AR recovery, not new debt. The money is almost always there. It's just sitting uncollected.
The instinct in a crisis is to find money from outside the business, and that's almost always the most expensive route available. Financing turns a timing problem into a permanent cost, and it does nothing about the reason the cash was late. Collections turn the same problem into a phone call. A subcontractor with real receivables and a payroll deadline has an asset already earned, already billed, and sitting in somebody else's payables. The work in the first 48 hours is finding that money and asking for it directly, in dollars, by invoice number.
WHAT IT MEANS.
A construction cash emergency is the point where payroll, suppliers, or debt service come due before the money you already earned has been collected.
SPM has recovered over $10.7M in client AR since 2023, in situations that looked like they required a loan. In almost every case the cash existed. The process to collect it didn't. This playbook is that process.
When a subcontractor hits a cash wall, the instinct is to blame outside forces: slow GCs, retainage holds, delayed pay apps. Sometimes those are real. More often the acute crisis comes from something internal, which is AR that was submitted and never followed up on. A $4M civil subcontractor with $287,000 in receivables averaging 52 days outstanding isn't being victimized by slow GCs. They have $287,000 sitting in unpaid invoices because no one called to collect them. The GC is slow because no one is pushing. A systematic collection call on Monday morning changes that within two weeks.
THE MOVES THAT MAKE A CASH CRISIS WORSE.
Taking a merchant cash advance
An MCA on a $3M company at a 40% factor rate costs $110,000 per month in payments on a $300,000 advance. That payment comes out of cash flow that was already short. The business is now fighting the cash crisis and the MCA payment at the same time, and the second one doesn't negotiate.
Drawing on personal credit or home equity
Once personal assets are pledged to business debt, the math changes completely. A business failure becomes a personal financial catastrophe, and the family balance sheet goes down with the company. Don't cross that line until every business level option has been used up.
Delaying supplier payments without calling them
Suppliers who aren't contacted go on credit hold. Credit hold stops material delivery. Stopped delivery stops billing, and stopped billing makes the cash crisis worse than it was before you skipped the payment. The call costs nothing and it's the difference between a payment plan and a shutdown.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A subcontractor with $220,000 in AR over 45 days and payroll due in 10 days looks like they need a bridge loan. They don't. They need a Monday morning collection call to three GC accounts. A GC who receives a call requesting immediate payment on a 52 day invoice, with a clear statement that the subcontractor needs it processed this week, releases payment in 3 to 7 business days in most cases. Not all, but most. On $220,000 in AR, even recovering 60 percent, which is $132,000, in 10 days resolves a payroll crisis. The remainder follows in the next billing cycle. No debt, no MCA, no personal guarantee, and no escalation.
WHAT TO DO FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD.
Pull every open invoice and sort by days outstanding. Every invoice over 30 days gets a call today, not tomorrow. Start with the largest dollar amounts and write down the GC, the invoice number, the amount, and the days outstanding. This takes 20 minutes and it gives you the information you need to act.
Pick the three largest outstanding invoices and call the GC's AP contact directly, not the PM and not the project executive. Request immediate payment and give them a specific amount and specific invoice numbers. Be direct. Most GC AP departments respond to direct requests from subcontractors who ask clearly and professionally.
Call any supplier with an overdue account before they put you on credit hold. Explain the timing, give them a specific payment date, and ask to keep the account open for essential deliveries through next week. Most suppliers will work with a subcontractor who calls first. None will work with one who goes silent.
Once the acute crisis is stable, build a 13 week cash forecast and map every expected collection against every known outflow. This shows you the next shortfall before it happens, so the collection calls get made ahead of the deadline instead of after it. The forecast is what prevents the next emergency.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing. No payroll. The one-time onboarding fee is right here in the table.
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee | One-time onboarding |
|---|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 | $1,000 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 | $1,500 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 | $3,000 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 | $4,500 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 | $6,000 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 | $7,500 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 | $9,000 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually | Quoted individually |
The onboarding fee covers migrating your books back to the start of your last taxable year and getting you fully operational in 60 days. It's billed once, with your first invoice. It's the same for all three tiers. Your first month is prorated, and your monthly engagement starts on the first of the first full month.
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items. The onboarding fee is right here in the table.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions and never in a report.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we do the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Your office stops answering coding questions and stops fixing a reconciliation that will not balance on the last day of the month.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it is still open.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the books, the job costing, and the software. No payroll.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
