Accounts Receivable Collections for Construction Companies
Outsourced, technology driven order to cash for general contractors and subcontractors. Construction carries the highest average DSO of any industry CashLine tracks, 83 days. That's not an accident. Retention, pay-when-paid clauses, lien deadlines, and change order approvals are all built into how the industry pays, and every one of them is a place cash gets stuck.
Why Construction AR Is Uniquely Hard to Collect
Retention held for months or years
Standard contracts hold back 5 to 10% of every payment until substantial or final completion, sometimes long after your crew has moved to the next job. That retained cash still sits on your books as AR.
Pay-when-paid and pay-if-paid clauses
Subcontractors are often contractually tied to when the GC gets paid by the owner, not when the sub's own work is complete, adding a layer of delay you don't control.
Lien rights and notice deadlines
Preliminary notices, mechanics liens, and bond claim deadlines vary by state and are unforgiving, miss one and you lose real leverage on a disputed payment, regardless of whether the work was done correctly.
Change order disputes
Work performed under an unapproved or disputed change order routinely gets excluded from payment until the CO is resolved, and that resolution can take longer than the original scope of work.
Conditional and unconditional lien waivers are exchanged against payment milestones, and getting the sequencing wrong can either delay your payment or give up lien rights prematurely.
How CashLine Solves It
Credit management
Ongoing risk scoring of GCs and owners using financial data, payment history, and third party trade data, so you understand exposure before you commit crews and materials to a project.
Dispute management
Root cause tracking on change order and scope disputes, with documentation trails that support faster resolution instead of the same CO getting re-argued every billing cycle.
Retention and lien tracking
We track retention release conditions against project milestones and monitor lien and notice deadlines by state, so you don't lose leverage on a payment dispute because a filing window closed.
Cash application
Correct allocation of draws and pay applications across multiple projects and entities, so payments post against the right project and retention line.
Collections: U.S. based collectors experienced in construction pay application and lien waiver processes, running structured cadences instead of chasing GCs ad hoc.
A Team That's Already Run This Playbook
CashLine's management team has run credit, collections, and dispute functions for companies from $50M to over $3B in annual revenue, including project based billing structures similar to construction pay applications. Our proprietary software consolidates multiple ERPs and entities into one collection tool, giving you a single view of retention, disputes, and open AR across every active project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. We track each retention holdback against its release condition, substantial completion, final completion, or another milestone, so retained cash doesn't get forgotten once a project wraps.
We monitor lien and notice deadlines by state alongside your AR aging, so a disputed payment doesn't also cost you your lien rights because a filing window was missed. This is not legal advice, and we coordinate with your legal counsel on actual filings.
We track change order disputes from identification through resolution, maintaining documentation trails and coordinating between your project management and finance teams so the same CO doesn't stall payment indefinitely.
Yes. Our pricing is aligned to your AR fluctuations, so cost moves with your actual cash position rather than assuming a fixed collection timeline that construction contracts don't support.
See What CashLine Could Free Up in Your Construction AR
Run the numbers in 60 seconds, or talk to a team that already knows retention, liens, and change orders.