YOU ALMOST MISSED PAYROLL. HERE IS WHY.
Subcontractors near-miss payroll for one reason: cash is not converting from backlog fast enough to cover weekly obligations. Billing is slow, AR is aging, and there is no 13-week forecast showing the gap 6 weeks before it hits. The work is there. The money is earned. The financial system is not moving it fast enough.
A payroll near-miss is the financial system sending a distress signal. It is not a bad month or a slow GC. It is a structural problem with billing velocity, AR management, and cash forecasting. Every subcontractor who nearly misses payroll once will do it again — unless the system changes.
BACKLOG DOES NOT PAY FRIDAY. CASH DOES.
A $4.2M civil contractor has $1.1M in active backlog and $287K in receivables. Payroll is $68K every two weeks. By any reasonable measure, the business is healthy. But on the Wednesday before a payroll run, the owner checks the bank balance and it reads $54K. They need $68K by Friday.
The $287K in receivables is real. Two pay apps submitted 38 days ago have not been paid. The GC owes it. But the cash is not in the account. The payroll date does not move because the GC is slow.
This owner will either call their bank to draw on the line of credit, call the GC and beg for an early payment, or delay payroll and hope nobody quits. All three options are symptoms of the same system failure: there is no early warning signal, no collection process driving AR in, and no cash model that shows this coming 6 weeks out.
CFOS installs the three systems that prevent this: a billing calendar that eliminates billing lag, a weekly AR collection process that keeps receivables moving, and a 13-week forecast that shows the owner every cash gap before it becomes a crisis.
THE PAYROLL NEAR-MISS HAS THREE CAUSES.
Most subcontractors submit pay applications on a monthly cycle — whenever work is completed or whenever someone gets around to it. A contractor who bills on the 25th of the month for work completed through the 20th is already 5 days behind. If the GC has a 20th cut-off for the following month's payment cycle, that pay app misses a full cycle and the cash arrives 45–60 days after the work was done.
CFOS builds a billing calendar around each GC's cut-off date. Every active job has a billing deadline. The pay app goes out 2 days before the GC's cut-off, not after. That single change on a $400K job accelerates cash receipt by 15–20 days — which is often the difference between making payroll and not.
Submitted pay apps that are not paid on time do not collect themselves. Most subcontractors follow up once — maybe twice — and then wait. The GC knows this. A GC managing 40 active subcontracts will prioritize payment to the ones who push. The ones who wait get paid last.
CFOS runs a weekly AR report every Monday. Any invoice over 25 days gets a call or email that day — not next week, not when the owner has time. The follow-up is systematic, not reactive. Subcontractors who implement this see AR aging drop from 38 days to under 22 in 60 days. That recovery — on a $3M company — is typically $80K–$120K in cash that moves from outstanding to collected.
A payroll near-miss is never actually a surprise. The conditions that produced it — slow billing, aging AR, a big payable coming due — were visible in the numbers weeks before the crisis hit. The problem is there was no model showing them.
The 13-week rolling cash forecast is the system that removes surprise from subcontractor finance. It models cash inflows from scheduled billing and expected collections, maps them against fixed weekly outflows — payroll, insurance, equipment payments, rent — and shows the resulting bank balance week by week. A forecasted low point 7 weeks out is a collection call today. Without the forecast, it is a panic call Thursday morning.
THREE SYSTEMS THAT MAKE PAYROLL A NON-EVENT.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Two tiers based on trailing 12-month revenue. No hourly billing. No payroll. No add-ons. Everything included in the flat monthly fee.
| Revenue | Core Financial | Executive Financial |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | $1,900/mo | $2,900/mo |
| $1M–$3M | $2,600/mo | $3,600/mo |
| $4M–$6M | $3,800/mo | $5,500/mo |
| $7M–$9M | $5,100/mo | $6,900/mo |
| $10M–$12M | $6,100/mo | $8,500/mo |
| $13M+ | Quoted | Quoted |
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
