Thirty days, then seven: the day your California invoice stops being pending and starts being late

The work passed. The billing went in clean. Six weeks later the general contractor's office is waiting on the owner, the owner is reviewing, and you are the only person on the job financing it.

California already picked the date you should have been paid. It is not a matter of what your contract says or who has the most patience. On private work the owner pays the direct contractor within 30 days (Civ. Code s.8800), and a prime contractor who receives that progress payment pays the subcontractors out of it within 7 days (BPC s.7108.5). Two numbers, and the conversation stops being "any update on that invoice" and becomes "that was due on the 11th."

Then there is the sentence almost nobody on your side of the table has read, and it is the one that ends arguments. Where there is a good-faith dispute about part of what you billed, the amount that can be withheld is capped at 150 percent of the disputed amount (BPC s.7108.5). Not the invoice. Not the whole progress payment. One and a half times the piece actually in question, and the rest is due on the ordinary clock.

This page is those clocks, that cap, a worked example with real dates on it, the public work version, and the short email that settles most of these before anyone says the word lien.

The two clocks on private work

The chain has two links and each one has its own number. The mistake that costs money is treating them as a single vague delay.

Read the second row twice, because it is the one people get backwards. Your 7 days under BPC s.7108.5 does not start when you invoice the prime. It starts when the prime receives the money that covers your work. That single fact reframes the entire follow-up call. The question is not "when are you going to pay me." The question is "has the owner paid you for the March billing yet," and the answer to that question starts a clock you can name.

It also tells you what to ask for. A prime who has been paid and is sitting on your share for three weeks is outside a statute. A prime who has not been paid is on the same side of the problem as you are, and the pressure belongs one link further up, on the owner's 30 days under Civ. Code s.8800.

The 150 percent cap is the sentence to memorize

Here is how the stall usually works. You bill for the month. Somewhere in that billing is a change order, a quantity, or a backcharge somebody wants to argue about. And the whole payment stops, because arguing about one line is the cheapest way to hold all the lines.

BPC s.7108.5 does not allow that. A good-faith dispute lets money be withheld, and it puts a ceiling on how much: 150 percent of the disputed amount. Everything above that ceiling is due on the normal 7 day clock, whether the argument is settled or not.

Say the progress invoice is $84,000 and the item in dispute is $6,000 of extra work the prime says was never authorized. The arithmetic is one line: 150 percent of $6,000 is $9,000. That is the most that can be held. The remaining $75,000 is due within 7 days of the prime receiving the owner's payment, and the argument about the $6,000 continues on its own without your payroll riding on it.

That reframe is worth having in writing before you need it. It converts a total stall into a small one, and it takes the leverage out of using your money as an argument. If the extras are what the fight is about, get the authorization habit fixed at the same time; written and signed before the work starts is the version that never becomes a dispute, and the mechanics are in the California change order guide.

One billing cycle with real dates on it

Take a subcontractor on a private tenant improvement in Sacramento, billing March 2026 work. Nothing unusual happens. Everybody performs.

Forty days from your invoice to money in your account, with every party inside the statute. That is the honest picture, and it is worth knowing before you get angry on day 22, because on day 22 nobody has done anything wrong yet.

Now the version that pays for this page. Same job, and on 11 May the prime pays you $60,000 against the $84,000 invoice, holding the rest over the disputed $6,000 change order. That withholding is $24,000 against a cap of $9,000 (BPC s.7108.5). You are owed a further $15,000 that no dispute covers, and you now have a dated, arithmetic argument rather than a feeling. One email with the invoice number, the disputed line, the multiplication and the section does more than a month of calling.

The reason to log the owner payment date and the receipt date on every job is right there in the table. Two dates in the job file turn "they are slow" into "the 7 days ran out on 11 May."

Public work runs on its own numbers

If the job is public, do not reach for Civ. Code s.8800. The progress payment rule on local agency work is 30 days with a 7 day invoice review period built in, so an invoice that gets bounced back inside that review window resets differently from one that simply sits.

Retention on public work is capped at 5 percent, and it is released 60 days after completion. That is a different pair of numbers from the private 45 days under Civ. Code s.8812, and mixing them up is the most common calendar error on a contractor's first public job. Both sets are laid out in the California retention guide.

The other thing public work gives you is a bond. On public works over $25,000 a payment bond is required (Civ. Code s.9550), and a claim on it is a claim against a surety rather than against a public agency's accounts payable department. The suit deadline on that bond is six months (Civ. Code s.9558), which is generous by California standards and still short enough to diarize the day the job goes quiet.

The email that closes most of these

Before any notice, any lien and any lawyer, there is a message that resolves a large share of late payments, and it is short because it is dated.

Name the invoice and the amount. Name the date the payment was due and the section that sets it, either the owner's 30 days under Civ. Code s.8800 or your 7 days under BPC s.7108.5. If part of the bill is genuinely in dispute, say so first, name the amount, and do the 150 percent arithmetic yourself: this much may be withheld under BPC s.7108.5, this much is not in dispute and is now late. Then ask one question with a date on it: when is the undisputed balance being released.

That message works for a reason that has nothing to do with legal threat. It moves you out of the pile of people who are annoyed and into the small group who are counting. Offices pay the people who are counting first, because those are the files that turn into problems.

Keep a copy. Every rung above this one gets easier when there is a dated demand sitting underneath it, and the full escalation order is in what to do when a California client will not pay.

What makes the clocks worth anything

A statute with no remedy behind it is a suggestion. Yours has three, and two of them depend on paperwork you either did or did not do at the start of the job.

The preliminary notice is the first one. Served within 20 days of first furnishing (Civ. Code s.8204), it is what makes the lien, the stop payment notice and the bond claim available to you. Served late, it still protects the 20 days before service and everything after, which is exactly why a notice you forgot is worth serving today instead of writing off. The mechanics are in the 20 day preliminary notice guide.

The lien is the one everybody knows. It runs 90 days after completion of the work of improvement, whether you are the direct contractor (Civ. Code s.8412) or a sub, supplier or equipment lessor (Civ. Code s.8414), and a recorded Notice of Completion cuts that to 60 days for the direct contractor and 30 days for everyone below. Those dates are counted for you in the California lien deadline guide and by the California lien deadline calculator, which is free and does not ask you to sign in.

The one most contractors have never used is the stop payment notice, and on a slow-payment file it is often the faster arrow, because it reaches money the owner or the lender has not released yet rather than attaching to real estate. On private work it runs on the lien clock (Civ. Code Part 6). On public work it has its own deadline (Civ. Code Part 6 ch. 5). The stop payment notice guide covers which one fits your file.

Put the two dates in the job file

The competence gap on getting paid in California is not legal skill. It is two fields: the date the owner paid the prime, and the date you were paid. Everything on this page is arithmetic once those exist, and the contractor who has them is the one who can say a number out loud on the phone while everybody else says "a while ago."

On AEC Stack there is no monthly subscription. The platform fee is 2.5 percent of each invoice processed through the platform, so the billing, the payment date and the clock that runs between them sit in the same record.

Pull your oldest open invoice and count the days since the money reached the party above you. If that number is past 7 (BPC s.7108.5) or the owner is past 30 (Civ. Code s.8800), you already have the email. Open a working demo business file and get the rest of your jobs on a dated payment log before the next one goes quiet.