EVERY BID IS A LOAN. CHECK WHO IS BORROWING.
A bid is an application to finance somebody else's project for 45 to 90 days, and most subcontractors qualify the scope carefully and the counterparty not at all. Five things can be known before the number goes out: a commercial credit report showing payment timeliness and any active lien filings, the GC's payment-speed record from other subs, direct references asked about retainage and never about quality, licence and insurance verification, and who is funding the project behind the GC. All five are available before you commit, and declining to bid is the cheapest decision available at that point. After award it costs a claim.
This is not about avoiding difficult general contractors. It is about pricing them, or walking, with the information in front of you, before the second missed pay application.
WHAT IT MEANS.
GC qualification is the work a subcontractor does before submitting a bid to establish whether the general contractor pays, pays on time, and can be paid by the owner behind them, using credit records, lien filings, payment-speed history and direct references from other subs.
THE SCOPE GETS QUALIFIED. THE PAYER DOES NOT.
Estimating owns the bid and estimating does not own collections
The bid is built by the person who prices work, and the consequence of a slow payer is carried by whoever runs the bank account. In most subcontracting businesses under $12M those are different people, and on the smaller ones they are the same person wearing the estimating hat at the moment the decision is made.
A new GC is treated as an opportunity, which it is, and as a risk, which it also is
The first job for a new general contractor is where the least is known and the most is assumed. A sub will run a credit check on a homeowner before a $40,000 remodel and put out a $600,000 commercial bid to a GC nobody in the office has heard of.
The money behind the GC is a separate question and it is rarely asked
A general contractor who pays reliably still cannot pay out of a project whose financing has stalled. Who the owner is, whether the project is lender financed, and whether the loan has closed are questions about the source of the money, and never about the GC's character.
By the time the evidence is obvious, the leverage is gone
A sub learns how a GC pays on pay application two or three, which is after the crews have run, the material is installed and the work is inside somebody else's building. The moment of maximum leverage is before the bid, and it is the moment with the least information gathered.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Dun & Bradstreet, Experian Commercial and Cortera report payment timeliness against terms, current distress indicators, the size of vendor credit lines, whether the payment trend is improving or deteriorating, and active negative filings including mechanics liens. The trend direction is the most useful line on it and the one a single snapshot misses.
Contractor payment profiles built from roughly 3 million active projects and more than 750,000 payment documents score a general contractor's payment speed as fast, medium or slow. It is other subcontractors' experience aggregated, which is the closest thing to a public record of how somebody really pays.
Ask a GC's other subs about RETAINAGE, not about whether they were paid. Anybody will say they got paid. How long retainage took after substantial completion, and whether a dispute was ever opened, separates a 45 day GC from a 90 day one.
The site's collection ladder is 90 days weak, 45 target, 30 strong. On a $600,000 scope the difference between a 45 day GC and a 90 day GC is 45 days of carrying most of that value, which is working capital the next job cannot use.
Mechanics liens filed against a general contractor's projects are county records. A GC with recent liens from other trades is telling you how the last several jobs ended, and it costs nothing but time to look.
FIVE CHECKS, ONE AFTERNOON.
One report, on any new counterparty above a threshold you set once. Read the payment trend and the filings, never the score alone. A single number tells you less than the direction it is moving.
A GC who will not produce references from subs is answering the question. A GC who produces them is worth calling, and the question is how long retainage took and whether anybody opened a dispute.
It is a normal commercial question and a reluctant answer is information. A project financed by a lender whose loan has closed pays differently from one carried by an owner's own cash while a refinance is pending.
A 90 day GC is not automatically a bad GC, and the cost of carrying the work for 90 days is a real cost that belongs in the number. Qualifying the counterparty is what lets you bid it at a price that survives the wait, and decline only where the price will not clear.
Any new GC above a set contract value gets the five checks. Setting the rule once removes the argument in the week a bid is due, which is the week nobody has time to have it.
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, and no add-ons.
Pricing
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
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.
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 rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
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 job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
