Nowadays, it can feel like you need a team of back office superheroes to stay on top of the tangle of paperwork required for smooth projects and healthy cash flow. In Part 1 of our 3-part Lien Waivers, Simplified series, we explained what liens and lien waivers do. Today, we’ll share some quick tips to help you keep your primary lien waivers flowing like clockwork, month after month.
In Part 3, we go over the final piece of the lien waiver puzzle: Managing lien waivers from your lower-tier vendors and subcontractors.
Why should I care about lien waivers?
Managing lien waivers can be particularly tricky: thousands of dollars of payments can be held up just because a single waiver is missing. From keeping track of specific waivers for each project to making sure the right waivers go out at the right time, the dozens of primary and lower-tier lien waivers required across your projects each month can easily overwhelm even the most experienced back office teams.
To help you and your team perform at your best and keep your business going, here are some ways to stay on top of your lien waivers and make sure nothing slips through the cracks.
Tips to manage primary lien waivers
Primary lien waivers are the ones we work with the most — these are the ones that waive your right to file a lien for the work that you’ve performed, and a single missing waiver could mean a hold on tens of thousands of dollars you’ve earned!
1. Incorporate conditional waivers directly into your billing process.
The simplest way to do this is to directly incorporate conditional waivers into your pay app package. That way, you’ll know that if a pay app is signed, the conditional waiver will always be signed as well.
2. Track unconditional waivers in the same place you track outstanding payments.
Having this information in the same place means you and your team know to always send an unconditional waiver as soon as you receive payment, protecting you from future payment holds.
3. Set up easy-to-use lien waiver forms that can be quickly updated each month.
Simplifying and standardizing your lien waiver forms so that your team only needs to fill in a few blank spaces per project per month can keep things moving quickly and reduce room for mistakes. Better yet, you can find a way to automatically fill in this information each month so all you have to do is sign and send!
Finding a system you can lien on
Savvy trade contractors rely on Siteline to send out the right primary lien waivers—all automatically filled out and right on time, like clockwork. Managing lien waivers in Siteline has helped trade contractors eliminate waiver-related delays and even improve payment times by a week, helping your business run like a well-oiled machine.
With primary lien waivers under control, you’re already well on your way to securing your cash flow to keep your jobs running smoothly. In Part 3, we go over the final piece of the lien waiver puzzle: Managing lien waivers from your lower-tier vendors and subcontractors.
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