Chasing retention left behind after substantial completion
Retention is money already earned and then held back. Release waits on a milestone plus a document set, and a subcontractor often waits for the whole project rather than for the scope that finished a year earlier. It hides in accounting, because a retention receivable is not overdue under ordinary terms and never appears on an aging report as late. The counterparty is a general contractor who is themselves waiting on an owner, so what moves it is a dated request naming the one missing closeout item.
The estimate, the project system and the accounting system each hold a cost code structure, and the mapping between them lives in a spreadsheet maintained by one person.
A project generates a paper chain where each hop is a re-keying. A field condition becomes a time and materials tag, then a potential change order, then a priced request, then an executed change order, then a budget revision, then a line on the next payment application. Every hop is a place the amount can quietly diverge.
- Sage 300 CRE
- Excel
- Outlook
When this is the wrong thing to build
Pick something else if your contracts release retention progressively against completed scope and billing already carries it as a separate receivable. It is also wrong on a job in dispute, where retention is held as security against a backcharge and chasing it turns a negotiation into a queue of letters.
The constraint that shapes it
Lien deadlines are statutory, vary by state and by role, and run from a furnishing date rather than from an invoice date. More on how this sector works.
A list of things that are missing, worked until it is empty. Read what this shape is, or start from one of these.
- Chasing a compliance file to complete
- Chasing a referral fee through to a closing you cannot see
- Asking for the replenishment before the retainer runs to zero
- Chasing medical records until the set is complete
- Getting a deposition on the calendar of every party
- Chasing the warranty credit the distributor has not issued
- How do I track retention held across every open job?
- What has to be delivered before retention gets released?
- Why is retention still held when my scope finished months ago?
- Does retention show as overdue on a normal receivable aging?
Back to construction and contracting, or see how this is priced and scoped.