THE GC IS PAYING SLOW. HERE ARE YOUR OPTIONS.
When a GC stretches from 45 days to 75, you have more options than most subs believe, and they work best in a specific order. First, verify your own paper, because a third of slow pay is really rejectable pay apps and missing compliance documents. Second, follow a professional collections cadence that treats every invoice the same way every time. Third, escalate formally with preliminary notice and lien or bond deadlines protected on every job, prompt-pay statute interest invoked where it applies, and notice-of-intent letters that move payment without filing anything. Fourth, use the contractual levers: suspension rights, stop-work notices, and the decision to stop bidding their work.
The subs that get paid aren't the loudest ones. They're the ones whose paper is boring and whose deadlines never lapse. Every rung on this ladder is available to any subcontractor on any job, and none of the first three needs a lawyer or a filing fee. What separates the sub who collects from the sub who waits is whether the sequence is applied to every invoice by default or only to the ones that have already gone bad, because by then most of the leverage has already expired.
WHAT IT MEANS.
The escalation ladder is the ordered set of moves a subcontractor works when a GC pays slow: verify your own paper, follow a collections cadence, use the formal notice and lien levers, then use the contractual and strategic ones.
Slow pay is a system problem on both sides of the table. The GC has an accounts payable department with more invoices than hours, and it moves the files that are easiest to move. Your paper, your cadence, and your protected deadlines are what decide which pile yours ends up in, and all three are inside your control before the invoice is ever late.
WHY THE LADDER NEVER GETS USED.
A third of slow pay is self-inflicted
Before escalating anything, audit your own side. Was the pay app on the GC's own form, submitted by their cutoff date, with the schedule of values math clean? Are lien waivers, certified payrolls, and insurance certificates current? A rejectable pay app restarts the GC's payment clock legitimately, and a sub who escalates over an invoice his own paperwork delayed wastes credibility for nothing.
Angry once a quarter loses to systematic every week
Slow-paying GCs pay the subs who follow up on a schedule and stall the ones who call angry once a quarter. An AP clerk with more invoices than hours works the files that generate contact. A sub with no cadence is the easiest file to move to the bottom of the pile, because nothing happens when it goes there.
The deadlines expire whether you're watching or not
Preliminary notice and lien filing deadlines count from work performed rather than from the day the frustration started, and they close without telling anybody. A sub who protects deadlines on every job from day one always has escalation available. A sub who doesn't is negotiating with nothing behind him by the time he needs something.
Concentration takes the leverage away
A sub who can afford to stop bidding a slow payer negotiates from strength. A sub at 70 percent concentration with one GC negotiates as a hostage. The structural fix behind every collections dispute is keeping no single GC above 40 percent of revenue, which makes diversification a collections strategy and not only a growth strategy.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Client receivables recovered since 2023, operated as a recurring system across SPM clients: the cadence, the notice discipline, and deadlines that never lapse. That's collected money rather than advice about collections. Most of it came in without filing anything, because clean paper plus professional persistence does the bulk of the work.
Recovered at one $2.3M electrical sub with the full ladder in action: pay app and compliance paper verified, the cadence installed, and formal notices where they were needed. The recovered cash cleared the company's debt in 120 days and left $89K in the bank with the line at zero.
The concentration ceiling that keeps leverage real. No GC above 40 percent of revenue, because a sub who can walk away from a slow payer has a negotiating position and a sub at 70 percent doesn't. That ceiling is the reason the rest of the ladder has teeth.
RESEARCH FROM OTHER SOURCES.
These figures come from another company's survey, not from SPM's clients. Each one cites the report and the page.
Billd's 2026 National Subcontractor Market Report found 64 percent of subcontractors reported being paid slowly by general contractors.
Source: Billd, 2026 National Subcontractor Market Report, page 5 (survey of 623 respondents, published May 13, 2026).
Billd's 2026 National Subcontractor Market Report found 28 percent of subcontractors use early pay programs, and only 13 percent of general contractors with less than $100M in revenue offer one.
Source: Billd, 2026 National Subcontractor Market Report, page 4 (survey of 623 respondents, published May 13, 2026).
FOUR RUNGS, IN ORDER.
Audit your side before escalating anything. Was the pay app on the GC's own form, submitted by their cutoff date, with the schedule of values math clean? Are lien waivers, certified payrolls, and insurance certificates current? Clean paper first, because then everything else on this list has teeth.
The cadence is confirmation of receipt at submission, a status check before the due date, a same-week call once it passes due, and a recurring weekly AR review so nothing ages without somebody seeing it. That alone, with no legal step of any kind, recovered $365K at one $2.3M electrical sub and is part of the $10.7M and up SPM has collected for clients since 2023. Scheduled and professional beats loud every time.
Every state gives unpaid subs real leverage: mechanics lien rights on private work with preliminary notice and filing deadlines, payment bond claims on public work, and prompt-payment statutes that attach interest to late payment. The notice of intent to lien is the workhorse, because a filing deadline is a date the GC can't negotiate, and it moves money at GCs who have been processing for weeks. The discipline is protecting deadlines on every job from day one, so escalation is always available and never desperate.
Most subcontracts allow suspension for nonpayment after notice and cure, which concentrates a GC's attention faster than any letter once it's invoked correctly, and dangerously if invoked wrong, so read the contract and get advice first. The second lever is the bid list. GC pay behavior tracked in your 13 week forecast as real days-to-pay decides who gets your next number, and a GC at 75 days either prices that float into your bids or stops winning them. Both outcomes fix your problem.
Electrical takes it hardest where material was fronted, with the gear package paid in March on a job collecting in July, and the compliance document trap is sharpest there too, since one expired insurance certificate gives a delaying GC a legitimate reason. Civil has big monthly pay apps, so each slow cycle is six figures of float, and quantity documentation supporting every billed unit makes those pay apps hard to dispute while suspension rights on a critical-path scope get calls returned within hours. Concrete needs the shortest ladder in the field, because ready-mix suppliers don't accept pay-when-paid, so the GC's float becomes a supplier terms crisis inside one cycle. Multi-site erosion work has small invoices aging out of sight across many sites, where no single one feels worth a dispute and collectively they're the company's cash flow, so per site AR tracking plus one consolidated escalation per GC turns forty small stale invoices into one conversation that gets handled.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | $1,900 to $3,300 | $1,000 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $5,300 | $1,500 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $8,300 | $3,000 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $11,800 | $4,500 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $14,900 | $6,000 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $17,650 | $7,500 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $22,400 | $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.
Every job shows its margin while it is still open.
Everything in Core, plus the bookkeeping and bank reconciliations done for you, and the job costing and WIP software set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed every month. Use your own online software, or move to ours and we cover it.
A bookkeeper we choose does the books and reconciliations. No payroll.
You approve, and the money side gets handled.
Everything in Strategic, plus a controller we choose who handles your bills and receivables for you the way an in-house controller would. They call vendors, pay the bills and keep the accounting current. We plan the cash flow first, and you approve every payment because it is your money.
A controller we choose does the payables and receivables. No payroll, no pay applications, no collections.
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