Lien & Payment Application Clerk

Keep the right to be paid, and bill in a way that gets paid.

There are two ways to lose money you have already earned. One is billing badly. The other is losing the right to enforce the bill, and that happens silently, on a date, with no warning.

It computes every deadline the day the job is signed. State, role, project type. The preliminary notice window, any monthly notices, the notice of intent, and the lien deadline itself, each written into a calendar with the money at risk. Not when payment goes late: by then the first window has usually closed.

It prepares preliminary notices as routine, on every qualifying job, and sends them with your approval. Not only the ones that look risky. By the time a job looks risky it is too late to send one, and in most states a missed preliminary notice cannot be cured.

It watches every date every weekday. Deadlines inside the warning window, deadlines inside the urgent window, and anything that has passed, each crossed against whether the invoice is actually unpaid. An unpaid job with a deadline days away goes to you the same morning with the amount at risk and what happens if the date passes.

It builds the payment application properly. Percentage complete per line, stored materials, approved change orders added to the schedule of values first, retainage at the contract rate, and the package the contract asks for, submitted before the cut-off.

It will not sign away your rights for a promise. A conditional waiver in exchange for a cheque is normal. An unconditional waiver before the money clears releases the right whatever happens to that cheque, so it offers the conditional equivalent and escalates if the customer insists. Where a state prescribes a statutory waiver form, it uses that form unaltered.

It chases retainage, which is your money, held, and which nobody else is watching. Usually it is sitting on a missing closeout document rather than a dispute.

This seat does not practise law, does not file liens, and does not predict whether one would succeed, and it works for your company alone. When a deadline is close and the money is not in, it builds the packet and hands it to you and your counsel with time to act.