The Deadline Nobody Tells a Subcontractor About

You finished your part in April. The general contractor said the owner was slow, then said the draw was coming, then said it was coming next week. It is July now. The paperwork that makes a payment problem workable gets created while the job is still friendly, and by the time a job stops being friendly the moment to create it has passed.

What subs get wrong is not the filing. It is the waiting. A sub who wants to keep the relationship gives the general another two weeks, then another two weeks, and the whole time he is treating the delay as a scheduling problem rather than as a clock.

What the timing actually is where you work, what starts it, and who has to be notified are set state by state. Look yours up on a job you are not worried about, not on the one that has already gone sideways. See the mechanics lien guides.

The records that matter are the boring ones. Dated delivery tickets, signed change orders, a log of who was on site and when, and a clear record of the last day you furnished labor or material to that job. That last date is the one subs are least likely to have written down.

Invoices are not records. An invoice says what you billed. A delivery ticket signed by somebody standing on the site says what actually happened and when, and the difference between those two shows up the moment the conversation moves past the general contractor.

Ask about payment structure before you finish, not after. A sub asking in week two how the draws work and who is funding them is asking a scheduling question. The same sub asking the same thing in month three is asking an accusation, and by then the general has a reason not to answer it.

A funded agreement changes what a provider is waiting on. Funded before you start. Released when it's done. What that changes for a sub is which question is still open on the day the work is finished.

Rules about liens and payment timing vary by state, and some states regulate them directly. This article is about what people commonly do, not about what any law requires. For deposits and advance payments, see the deposit guides in the knowledge base.

Nobody is going to tell you when your window opens. The general will not, because he is the reason you are asking, and the owner does not know you exist.