Articles
How the money actually moves on a subcontract.
Guides for the people who run billing, change orders and job costs at a commercial specialty subcontractor. Written for your side of the contract, not the GC's.
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Billing & draws
Billing stored materials: how to get paid for gear that is on site and not installed
Switchgear lands in March and gets installed in July. Here is how to bill it in March: the SOV line, the support package, and the drawdown.
8 min read -
Billing & draws
The subcontractor WIP report: how over- and underbilling is actually calculated
Your surety and your banker ask for a WIP schedule. Here is the arithmetic, the four numbers it needs, and why a sub hunts for all four.
9 min read -
Change orders & extras
Change event vs. change order: two records, two owners, two clocks
A change event is your dated record that something changed. A change order is a contract amendment someone else signs. Mixing them up loses extra work.
7 min read -
Change orders & extras
Back charges in construction: how a sub stops paying for somebody else's mistake
A back charge arrives as a deduction on a draw you already submitted, months after the event. What makes one stick, what kills it, what to do day one.
9 min read -
Billing & draws
Every GC bills on a different calendar: how to run them all at once
The five dates in every GC billing cycle, what to record for each GC, how to plan billing week backwards from the deadline, and what one missed cutoff costs.
8 min read -
Billing & draws
How a subcontractor builds a cash flow forecast that is actually right
Your forecast fails because billed is not collectible. Build it from four facts you already have, in weekly buckets, with retainage on its own line.
9 min read -
Field & cost
Construction safety documentation: what a subcontractor actually has to keep, and who asks for it
Four different audiences ask a sub for safety paperwork and each wants something different. What the prequal needs, what the site needs, and why expiry dates are the real office problem.
9 min read -
Field & cost
Choosing a construction time clock app as a commercial sub: the questions that actually matter
Most time clock apps prove attendance. A commercial sub needs hours that land on the right job at the right rate. Eleven questions to ask first.
9 min read -
Field & cost
Crew scheduling for commercial subcontractors: you schedule commitments, not appointments
A commercial sub does not have a dispatch problem. It has a commitment problem across nine GC schedules. The four questions a crew schedule has to answer, and how double-booking really happens.
8 min read -
Field & cost
A foreman daily log template that holds up nine months later
The eleven fields a commercial subcontractor daily log needs, what makes an entry useless in a dispute, and a template a foreman can finish in two minutes in a truck.
8 min read -
Billing & draws
The GC is not paying you. What to do, in order.
A draw is late. Before you escalate, find out which of four places it is actually stuck — the answer changes who you call and what you ask for.
9 min read -
Field & cost
How to calculate your labor burden rate, and the divisor that ruins it
Labor burden is what an hour costs above the wage. The components, where each number comes from, the divisor most subs get wrong, and when to redo it.
9 min read -
Billing & draws
How to close out a commercial construction job when you are the sub
Closeout decides whether you collect the last five to ten percent of your contract. The sub-side sequence, starting before your crew demobilizes.
8 min read -
Field & cost
How to manage lower-tier subcontractors when you are the one hiring them
Buy lump-sum work and you are somebody’s GC with none of a GC’s tools: scope exclusions, two payment clocks, flow-down retainage, COIs that lapse.
9 min read -
Billing & draws
Lien waiver tracking in Texas: the document that gives up rights, and the one that keeps them
Texas subs sign lien waivers monthly and, when a month goes unpaid, owe a statutory notice too. How to track both without losing a draw.
8 min read -
Billing & draws
Percent complete or unit price: the billing decision you only make once
How percent complete and unit price billing actually differ, which one fits each trade, where the quantity risk sits, and the three ways subs lose money choosing badly.
8 min read -
Systems & software
Your GC uses Procore. Do you need your own system?
An honest answer for commercial subs: what the GC platform is genuinely good at, the four things it structurally cannot do for you, and when a spreadsheet is still the right call.
9 min read -
Field & cost
The purchase order process for subcontractors: money spent before the invoice arrives
When a PO is worth writing, what belongs on it, and why open purchase orders are the reason a commercial job can look under budget and already be over.
8 min read -
Systems & software
QuickBooks job costing for subcontractors: what it does well, where it stops, and what to put in front of it
QuickBooks can cost a job. What it cannot do is hold your schedule of values, your pending change orders or your committed costs. Where the line actually falls, and how to work either side of it.
9 min read -
Field & cost
A subcontractor PM's day: what the routine looks like when the office runs five jobs at once
A realistic day for a commercial specialty sub's PM, hour by hour — the morning check, the GC calls, the paperwork that only gets done if it gets done today, and the twenty minutes that decide the month.
8 min read -
Field & cost
How to track labor hours by job and cost code without three sets of numbers
Why payroll hours and job-cost hours disagree, how to build a cost-code structure a foreman will actually use, and the five rules that make labor hours reconcile the first time.
9 min read -
Billing & draws
When is retainage released on a commercial job?
Retainage is not released on a date — it is released when four gates clear. What controls the timing on commercial work, why your scope finishing early does not help, and how to chase a balance on a job that closed last year.
8 min read -
Change orders & extras
How to bill for extra work without a signed change order
No signed change order for work your crew already did? What to put in writing today, why not to slip it onto the pay app, and how to get it approved.
7 min read -
Change orders & extras
The change order log a subcontractor actually needs
The eleven columns a sub's change order log needs, the two numbers it exists to produce, and the four ways a spreadsheet log still fails.
7 min read -
Change orders & extras
How to price a T&M ticket so the number survives review
What goes into a T&M ticket price: burdened labor by classification, overtime, material markup, equipment and standby, and the O&P your contract allows.
7 min read -
Change orders & extras
The subcontractor change order process, from the sub’s side of the table
The change order process from the subcontractor's seat: the seven stages, who owes the next move at each one, and where subs lose the money.
8 min read -
Billing & draws
Schedule of values for subcontractors: how to build one that bills clean
A practical guide to building a schedule of values as a commercial subcontractor — how to break out line items, where retainage and change orders sit, and why the SOV you build in week one decides how every draw goes.
8 min read -
Change orders & extras
T&M tickets in commercial construction: getting signed, and getting paid
How commercial subcontractors should run time-and-material tickets — what belongs on one, how to get it signed before the crew leaves, and how to turn a stack of tickets into a change order the GC will actually approve.
6 min read
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