Closing out the season so you get paid over winter

Every contractor in this part of the country knows the shape of the year. Work gets squeezed into the back half of the season, the last pours go in while everyone watches the forecast, and then one week in November the trucks come home and the office is suddenly very quiet.

That quiet is when last season's money either arrives or goes missing. And the difference is almost never about how hard you chase it in February. It is about what got recorded, submitted and dated in the two weeks before you walked off.

Here is the close-out order we use. It is written for New York, because that is where we work and the clocks are specific. It is a description of how these contracts and statutes are written, not legal advice — on anything with real money behind it, your attorney reads your documents, not our article.

1. Final quantities get agreed on site, while the evidence is still visible

On unit-price work this is the whole game. Once the site is backfilled, graded and under snow, the only version of what you installed is whatever is written down. If your number and the engineer's number differ in April, the engineer's number wins by default — not because they are right, but because they have a record and you have a memory.

So before demobilization: walk the final quantities with the inspector, item by item, and leave with something signed or at minimum emailed. Photograph anything that is about to be buried, with a date and a station or location in the frame. Reconcile your daily quantities against the last pay estimate now, and if there is a gap, raise it while somebody can still go look.

The standard conditions on most public jobs are better for you here than people assume. The engineer's determination of quantities stands except as modified to reflect changed factual conditions or more accurate data, and the engineer is generally required to review preliminary determinations with the contractor before anything becomes final. Both of those are only useful if you have the better data in hand.

2. Get the punch list in writing, and treat it as the clock it is

“We'll let you know what's left” is not a punch list, and an open-ended one is how retainage sits for six months. Ask for the remaining-work list in writing the week you finish.

On a New York municipal public improvement contract, the law actually puts a deadline on this: the public owner has 45 business days after the project reaches substantial completion to give the contractor a written list of the items still to be completed or corrected. That is a real obligation, and most people on both sides of the table have never read it. Asking for the list is not being difficult. It is asking for the document the statute already says you get.

Then close the list fast, in writing, item by item, with dates. A punch list with nine items closed and one argued is a one-item conversation. A punch list with no record of what got done is a ten-item conversation every time.

3. Know what your retainage is actually allowed to be — and when it is due

Retainage is the single biggest pile of money sitting out over the winter, and the rules changed recently enough that plenty of contracts in circulation are out of date.

• Private commercial work in New York: under the Prompt Payment Act as amended in November 2023, for contracts entered into on or after 17 November 2023 with a contract sum over $150,000, an owner may hold no more than 5% of the contract sum as retainage. The same cap flows down — a contractor or subcontractor can hold no more than 5%, or the actual percentage the owner is holding. The same amendment lets a contractor submit its final invoice at substantial completion rather than waiting for final completion.
• When private retainage is due: no later than 30 days after final approval of the work. Late release carries interest at 1% per month from the date it was due.
• Municipal public improvement work: the public owner may retain no more than 5% of each progress payment — with one exception, up to 10% where the owner has not required both a performance bond and a labor-and-material bond in the full contract amount. If you furnished both full bonds and somebody is holding 10%, that is worth a letter.

Two practical notes. First, a contract clause that holds more than the statute allows does not become legal because you signed it — but you are far better off catching it at execution than at close-out, which is an argument for reading the payment article before the bid goes in. Second, go find out what “final approval” or “acceptance” means in your documents. It is usually a specific act by a specific person, and until it happens, the 30-day clock has not started. Knowing which signature you are waiting on is better than waiting generally.

4. Put the interest on the invoice

On a New York municipal contract, an approved requisition is payable within 30 days of receipt — 45 days where elected officials have to approve payments. Past that, interest runs at the state tax department's overpayment rate, published quarterly, and it accrues automatically from the day after payment was due. You do not have to ask for it for it to be owed.

The reason to invoice it anyway is not the money. At six percent, a hundred thousand dollars held late is about sixteen dollars a day — real, but not life-changing. The reason is that an interest line has to be explained, and a municipality explains things at a public meeting. Name the statute, show the arithmetic, keep the tone boring. Conversations move.

5. Know your filing clocks before they run, not after

This is the part that actually bites over the winter, because the clocks start whether or not anyone is in the office. In New York:

• Private work — mechanic's lien. Notice of lien may be filed during the progress of the work, or within eight months after completion of the contract or the final performance of work or final furnishing of materials. On real property improved with a single-family dwelling it drops to four months.
• Public improvement work — public improvement lien. It may be filed during the progress of the work and no later than 30 days after completion and acceptance by the public entity. Thirty days. That one disappears while you are plowing.

A lien is not a strategy and filing one has consequences you should take advice on first. But the date is not optional, and the useful move in November is cheap: for every job you are owed money on, write down the date of last work and the date the clock runs out, and put it on a calendar somebody actually looks at. Most contractors who lose a remedy do not lose it on the merits. They lose it because nobody knew what day it was.

One wrinkle worth knowing on public work: “completion and acceptance” is a question of fact, and your contract probably defines it more concretely than the statute does. Go read that definition now, while it is a filing exercise and not an argument.

6. Close the paperwork loop the contract actually asks for

Before you can get final payment, most contracts want some combination of: as-builts and record drawings, warranties and guarantees, final certified payrolls on prevailing-wage work, lien waivers and releases from you and your subs, the maintenance-bond paperwork, and the affidavit that prior payments were applied to prior obligations. None of it is hard. All of it takes a week to collect from subcontractors who have already gone quiet for the winter.

Collect it in November, while those subs still want something from you. Chasing a sub's final waiver in February, after their final check has cleared, is one of the most thankless jobs in this business.

7. Build the one-page money ledger before you shut the office down

One sheet per job. Date of last work. Final quantities as you have them and as the engineer has them. Amount invoiced, amount approved, amount paid, amount retained. Retainage percentage held and the percentage the contract and the statute allow. The date final approval or acceptance happened, or the name of the person you are waiting on. Days late and interest accrued. The filing deadline.

That page is the entire winter collection effort. It takes an afternoon in November and it replaces four months of guessing. It also turns every phone call from a conversation about feelings into a conversation about dates — which is a conversation you win, because every date on it came out of their own files.

The honest summary

None of this is clever and none of it is new. It is reading the payment and close-out articles of a contract you already signed, writing down the quantities while they are still in front of you, and knowing which day each clock runs out. The reason it does not get done is not that contractors do not understand it. It is that the last two weeks of the season are the busiest two weeks of the year, and the paperwork that protects your money looks optional right up until the moment it is the only thing that matters.

So do it in the order above, finish it before the trucks are parked, and spend the winter building next season instead of relitigating this one.

Owed money from this season? Tell us what the documents say →