Not getting paid: the escalation ladder

The seven steps, with timing

1. Day 0 — confirm the application was received and certified, in writing. Half of all “non-payments” are lost paperwork.
2. Day 5 — send a statement showing principal, days late and interest under the applicable prompt payment act.
3. Day 10 — escalate above your day-to-day contact, in writing, copying the project executive.
4. Day 15 — ask directly whether the owner has paid the general for your work.
5. Day 20 — serve a notice of intent to lien on the owner, the prime and the lender.
6. Day 30 — record the claim of lien, or serve the bond notice on a public job.
7. Before the suit deadline — instruct counsel with a month to spare.

The dates are indicative; your statutory deadlines are not. Run them first on the deadline calculator and compress the ladder to fit inside them.

The first three steps do most of the work

Confirming receipt sounds trivial and closes a surprising share of cases: applications get stuck in an inbox, a certification is unsigned, an invoice was returned to an address nobody reads. Ask a specific question — “was application no. 4 certified, and on what date?” — rather than “any update?”

The interest statement changes the register of the conversation without raising the temperature. It is a computed figure with a statutory basis, and it makes the payable visible to somebody whose job is closing payables. Build it on the interest calculator.

When to stop negotiating and start filing

The moment your recording deadline is closer than the general's next promise, stop negotiating. A recorded lien is releasable in a day once you are paid; an expired lien right is gone. In California a claimant who is not the direct contractor may have as little as 30 days from a recorded notice of completion, and nobody is obliged to tell you it was recorded.

On a public job the equivalent is the bond notice: below the first tier, written notice to the prime within 90 days of your last labour or material, and suit no later than one year after it.

Preventing the next one

Almost every collection problem traces back to something skipped at mobilisation. Preliminary notice not served, the payment clause not read, the schedule of values approved late, waivers sent unconditionally, the cut-off missed once. None of those is expensive to fix in week one.

• Serve a preliminary notice on every job, on the day you mobilise.
• Read the payment article and compute the real gap before signing.
• Get the schedule of values approved before application no. 1.
• Send conditional waivers with applications; unconditional only after funds clear.
• Diarise the cut-off, the certification date and the recording deadline.