Your aging report is also a lien calendar
Most accounts receivable advice treats every overdue invoice the same: it's slow money, chase it. On a construction job, that's not the whole picture. An invoice sitting at 75 days isn't just late — depending on your state, it may be approaching the point where your strongest recovery tool quietly expires.
The numbers
A 2026 survey of 492 construction finance and operations professionals, run by Siteline, found:
- 56% had missed a mechanic's lien deadline in the past two years.
- 43% of subcontractors wait 90+ days for final payment and retainage, and roughly 20% wait six months or more — against only 15% of general contractors reporting the same wait.
- 92% had floated payroll from their own pockets in the past year to cover the gap; 28% did it most months.
- 67% spend 11 or more hours a month on pay-application preparation and tracking.
Retainage itself typically runs 5–10% of contract value, held back until final completion — on top of however long the invoice itself takes to get paid.
Why the standard aging buckets miss this
Most accounting software ages invoices in 30/60/90-day buckets, because that matches typical commercial terms. A mechanic's lien deadline doesn't work on that schedule. It's set by state statute, usually measured from last furnishing of labor or materials, and can fall well inside the 90-day column — meaning an invoice can look merely "getting old" on a standard aging report while the legal window to file is closing.
Two things make this worse:
- Pay-application cycles delay the invoice itself. Between submitting a pay app, waiting for GC approval, and the payment terms that follow approval, a month of real elapsed time can pass before an invoice is even properly "in the system" — eating into the lien clock before collections even starts.
- Retainage is invisible on a normal aging report. The withheld 5–10% doesn't show as overdue until final completion is reached, so nobody reviews it against a deadline at all.
A review routine that accounts for both
- Log the lien deadline when you invoice, not when it goes overdue. Your state's deadline is usually counted from last furnishing, not from the invoice due date — the two are not the same clock.
- Review open receivables against their lien deadline weekly, separate from your normal aging review. A 45-day-old invoice might be routine on a 30/60/90 report and be three weeks from a filing deadline on the lien calendar.
- Track retainage as its own aging category, tied to the project's expected completion date, not to an invoice due date it doesn't have yet.
- When a deadline is close, that changes the conversation. A polite reminder is the right first move for a slow-paying invoice. A closing lien deadline is a different, more urgent conversation — and usually the point to involve whoever handles your contracts.
This isn't legal advice, and lien law varies by state — check your state's specific notice and filing deadlines, ideally with a construction attorney, before relying on any of the above.
Catching this before it becomes urgent
The hard part isn't knowing the rule, it's noticing in time — which means someone has to actually open the aging report regularly, cross-reference it against project dates, and do it before month-end. CashWatchdog checks your QuickBooks Online company every morning and emails you the invoices that just went past due, so the review starts on day one instead of whenever someone next has time to look. It won't calculate your state's lien deadline for you, but it makes sure an aging invoice isn't sitting unnoticed while that clock runs. See overdue invoice alerts for contractors for how it works on a job site.
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