$180K IN AR. 30 DAYS. COLLECTED.
A $3.2M commercial electrical contractor had $180,000 in overdue AR spread across four GCs — work completed, invoiced, and not followed up on. The billing cycle was broken: T&M work billed monthly instead of within 48 hours, pay apps filed late, retainage never formally requested. CFOS restructured the billing process and collected $180K in 30 days.
WHERE THIS CONTRACTOR STOOD.
A $3.2M commercial electrical contractor — new construction, tenant improvement, and industrial retrofits — came to SPM in early 2025. The owner was a working foreman with a master electrician license who had grown the company from a two-man operation to a crew of 14 over eight years.
The company was fully booked. Four active GC relationships, $2.1M in backlog. Cash was tight anyway. Three weeks before the call, the owner had pulled $40,000 from a personal savings account to cover a supplier payment. He had no idea why. The jobs were profitable on the estimate.
When we pulled the AR aging on the first call, $180,000 was sitting past 60 days. All work completed. All invoiced. Nobody had called on any of it.
WHAT THE OWNER WAS EXPERIENCING.
Cash showed up after big pay app collections and disappeared before the next ones cleared. The owner assumed slow GC payment was just part of the business. He'd been told it was normal. He'd started to believe it.
T&M work — service calls, change order labor, small additions — was being invoiced at the end of the month, sometimes the following month. On a $3.2M company, that float represented $35,000–$50,000 in permanent unbilled receivables sitting in the field. Switchgear on the largest active job required a $62,000 deposit four months before installation — no stored materials billing line on the SOV.
The owner didn't track pay app submission dates or GC payment due dates. He submitted when the paperwork was ready. The GC paid when the GC paid. That gap — between what was owed and when it was asked for — was the actual problem. And it was entirely within his control to fix.
WHAT CFOS FOUND.
The diagnosis was a Cash Flow Cycle System failure. Three billing failures were stacked on top of each other:
Failure 1 — T&M Billing Lag. T&M work billed monthly instead of within 48 hours of completion. On four active GC relationships with regular T&M scope, this created a permanent $40,000–$55,000 float of completed work that hadn't been invoiced. That float was funding itself from the operating account.
Failure 2 — Pay App Timing. Pay apps were being submitted 10-14 days after the billing period ended — well past most GC cut-off dates. Late submissions meant the pay app missed the current billing cycle and sat for an additional 30 days. A pay app submitted two weeks late could add 45 days to the actual collection time.
Failure 3 — Stored Materials Not Billed. The $62,000 switchgear deposit on the largest active job had no SOV billing line. The money was out. The billing hadn't been set up to recover it early. See how the Cash Flow Cycle System fixes billing velocity →
WHAT CHANGED AND WHEN.
Pulled the full AR aging. Called the four GCs with the owner on the line — structured conversation, documentation attached, specific payment timeline requested. Three GCs paid or committed to a payment date within the first week. $93,000 collected. Established a 48-hour T&M billing rule: any T&M work completed gets invoiced within two business days, no exceptions.
Added a stored materials SOV line to the largest active job for the $62,000 switchgear deposit — submitted an amended pay app to recover it in the current billing cycle instead of waiting for installation. Filed pay apps on all four active jobs within 5 days of the billing period end, aligned to each GC's stated cut-off date. Collected the remaining $87,000 in AR from the fourth GC by week 3.
Built a billing cut-off calendar showing each GC's pay app due date, payment terms, and expected wire date. Pay apps now filed 5 days before each GC cut-off. T&M billing running at 48-hour cycle. Set up ControlQore with cost codes by trade division — rough-in, trim, gear, T&M — matching the estimating structure. Weekly job cost variance visible for all active jobs for the first time.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
Time to headline outcome: Total time from first call to $180,000 AR fully collected: 30 days.
DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS STORY?
Electrical contractors with billing cycle problems usually share the same patterns. If any of these describe your business, the failure chain is likely the same:
The 73-day mobilization-to-first-payment gap on commercial electrical is structural. But the billing cycle failures on top of it are entirely controllable. See how CFOS applies to electrical contractors specifically →
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