Retainage is still inside the lien clock

Every pay app on a commercial job usually leaves something behind: the retainage. Five or ten percent of each draw sits with the owner or the GC until closeout. Most credit teams track it as a number on the aging report. Fewer track the calendar that runs underneath it.

Here is the problem. In many states the lien clock starts from last furnishing, completion, or a recorded notice, not from the day retainage is released. So a supplier can be owed its full retainage, be told "it's coming after punch list," and still watch its lien deadline pass in the meantime.

A few habits make this easier to catch:

• Keep retainage as its own line per job, not folded into the customer's total balance.
• Write down the last furnishing date the day it happens. Pull it from delivery tickets or daily logs, not from memory three months later.
• When a job reaches substantial completion, check the lien deadline that week. Don't wait for the retainage release to schedule it.
• On jobs with partial releases, remember that getting some of the money back does not move the statutory date.

Contract words cause a lot of the confusion. "Substantial completion" in the subcontract and "completion" in the lien statute are not always the same event. If they differ, the statute's version controls the deadline.

When a customer has jobs in several states, the rules and trigger events change from one job to the next. Running each job through a mechanics lien deadline calculator gives the desk a dated answer it can check against the file. If the date is close, the guide to filing a mechanics lien before the deadline walks through what has to happen and in what order.

The short version: retainage is money you are waiting on. Your lien rights are not waiting with it.

LienDeadline team. Education notes for construction credit desks, not legal advice.