Bill the draw in dollars, and sign only the release that keeps your lien

A $38,000 draw, and the general contractor emails over his own release form to sign before the check goes out. You sign it, the way the last four jobs went. Then the money does not arrive. Florida Statutes s.713.20(8) says a waiver or release that is not in substantially the statutory form is still enforceable according to its own terms, so the paper you signed does exactly what it says on it, and the lien that was securing $38,000 is no longer securing anything. At a 12 percent net margin, replacing $38,000 of lost profit means selling, building and collecting $316,667 of new work. One signature, three hundred thousand dollars of catching up.

That is the Florida version of the getting-paid problem. It is decided on the invoice and on the release, months before anyone thinks about a courthouse.

By the end of this page you will have an invoice denominated in USD because the business record says Florida, a tax line that is present or absent because Rule 12A-1.051 says so rather than out of habit, the two s.713.20 release forms on file as the only two you put your name to, a check-clearing condition written into the progress release, and a Contractor's Final Payment Affidavit dated five days ahead of the day you could ever need to file suit. Written against the 2025 Florida Statutes.

Read the three moments where a Florida receivable goes missing

Florida contractors describe this in a consistent order. It starts with the final invoice that has not gone out yet:

"I get a text today stating that because I didn't send him the invoice yesterday, he's considering himself paid in full and I being breach in contract. ... we are a residential licensed and insured general contractor in the state of Florida... and mind you the remainder is 80K"

a Florida residential general contractor, February 2020

Then the release that arrives from upstream with somebody else's numbers on it:

"we were sub contracted with a contractor. He has been low on payments and not paying in full. We sent out NTO and the GC sent over a lien release that does not have the right amount. Need to know difference in release"

a Florida subcontractor, October 2020

And then the last one, from a sub holding a form, a notary appointment and a $38,000 balance:

"Contractor is refusing to pay so builder is the one doing the check and asked to me sign this Final waiver and realease of lien for final payment The undersigned in consideration of the sum of 38,000 hereby waives and releases its lien on the job.. This released is conditioned upon payment and clearance of check # dated on. It has to be signed and notarized I just want to make sure this form would protected me."

a Florida subcontractor, August 2020

The instinct in that third one is right. He is hunting for the clause that ties the release to the money actually landing, and Chapter 713 already wrote it for him.

Put Florida on the business record before you raise the first invoice

A dollar sign is a fact about the business, not a formatting preference, and taking it from the business is what stops a Florida job from quietly inheriting somebody else's tax system.

AEC Stack derives the currency from the market on your business record. The launch carries a jurisdiction code, the jurisdiction carries a currency, and a Florida business produces USD documents because the state it is set up in says USD. Where the market has not been set, the code refuses to open the document and says so: "Set the business market before creating a quote or invoice." A draft that cannot name its own denomination is worse than no draft, so it throws rather than guesses.

The same seam does the harder half. A document on a Florida business does not inherit a Canadian provincial rate, and where the engine has not determined a Florida tax figure it writes no tax and puts the reason next to the tax section rather than printing a rate it invented.

One more thing belongs on the face of a Florida invoice: your license number. Section 489.119(5)(b) puts your certification or registration number on every advertisement, bid, offer and proposal, in all media, and the invoice is the last document a customer reads before they pay.

<!-- Capture belongs here later: the Florida invoice header with the USD totals block and the license number rendered from the business profile. Florida tenant, Florida county. -->

Settle the 12A-1.051 fork in the contract, then let the invoice show it

Whether a tax line appears on your invoice at all is decided by the kind of contract you signed, under Rule 12A-1.051 of the Florida Administrative Code. That rule has not been amended since April 17, 2003, so the version you learn is the version that will be read back to you.

The retailer rows have a single qualifying test, and it happens before the invoice exists: all the materials to be incorporated into the work must be itemized and priced in the contract before work begins. Fail it and the contract reverts to real property treatment, which puts you back as the ultimate consumer holding the tax on the whole material bill yourself. Time and materials is the row that catches people, because it sounds like the most itemized arrangement in construction and Florida still treats you as the consumer on it.

Where you are the retailer, the rate is 6 percent state plus the discretionary sales surtax of the county you deliver into, and the surtax stops at the first $5,000 of the sales price of a single item of tangible personal property. Your county's CY2026 surtax rate is the one number on this page that has to come from you, off the state's own DR-15DSS table. Two useful landmarks while you look it up: Hamilton County is the highest in the state for 2026 at 2.0 percent, and Citrus and Collier impose none at all.

On a Florida quote or invoice the tax panel asks which of the 12A-1.051 types this contract is, in the rule's own words, and computes from the answer. Pick retail sale plus installation and it asks the itemization question the rule turns on; answer no and it reverts the contract to real property treatment in front of you while the document is still a draft. The full fork, the public works five factor test and the DR-15 filing bands are in Florida sales tax on construction contracts, and the same decision drives what you charge in the first place in pricing a Florida job.

Sign the two releases s.713.20 wrote, and condition them on the check clearing

Florida wrote you two forms. Section 713.20(4) is the Waiver and Release of Lien upon Progress Payment. Section 713.20(5) is the Waiver and Release of Lien upon Final Payment. Those are the two documents that go with money changing hands, and they are the two AEC Stack holds for Florida, each stamped with the subsection it comes from and the payment event that raises it.

Now the part that circulates backwards. Section 713.20(6) says a person may not require a lienor to furnish a waiver or release of lien that is different from those statutory forms. That is usually reported as though it settles the matter: the GC cannot make you sign his form, so you are covered. It settles half of it. Section 713.20(8) says a waiver or release that is not in substantially the statutory form is enforceable according to its terms. The risk inverts. You hold a right to refuse a broad form, and if you sign one anyway it binds you exactly as written.

So the protection is a decision you make at the moment the form arrives, not a shield that operates afterwards. Send back the statutory form, and the conversation is about a document the legislature wrote rather than about your goodwill.

Then condition it. Section 713.20(7) allows a waiver or release to be conditioned on payment being received and the check clearing. On a progress release that clause is the difference between releasing your security for money and releasing it for a promise, and the Florida form that AEC Stack holds is flagged as conditionable for exactly that reason. The subcontractor quoted above had that clause on his form already, which is why his instinct was sound.

One detail to check on the final release: the payment it recites should be the actual final payment, retainage included. Retainage released later is its own payment, and a final release signed against a draw that leaves the retainage outside it closes out money you have not been handed.

Deliver the final payment affidavit five days before the day you would sue

If you contracted directly with the owner, Florida puts one more document between you and enforcing your lien, and it is the one that quietly ends otherwise good claims.

Section 713.06(3)(d) requires a contractor in privity with the owner to execute and deliver a Contractor's Final Payment Affidavit to the owner at least five days before instituting an action to enforce the lien. It must be in substantially the statutory form, headed CONTRACTOR'S FINAL PAYMENT AFFIDAVIT with the state and county at the top, sworn, and it lists every lienor who is unpaid and the amount owed to each, or states that all lienors have been paid in full. Miss it and the condition precedent to suit is unmet, and the action fails on that alone.

Five days is not a deadline you can feel coming, because it is counted backwards from a date you have not picked yet. The Florida rule row in AEC Stack fires only for a direct contractor, anchors to the day you intend to sue, offsets five days back from it, and carries a consequence class of claim barred so it alerts louder than a filing reminder.

Run one job's whole chain off one date you already know:

There is a compressed version of that last row worth knowing about. If the owner has the clerk serve a Notice of Contest of Lien on you, your year becomes 60 days from service under s.713.22(2), and the affidavit's five days come out of the same 60. A contractor who already has the sworn affidavit drafted is answering a contest with paperwork in hand. The Florida lien deadline calculator counts the whole chain from your furnishing dates, contest notice included.

Keep the 45 and the 90 running underneath every draw

An invoice is a request. The lien is what makes the request worth answering, and it runs on dates that come from the job rather than from the billing cycle.

If you did not sign with the owner, s.713.06(2)(c) puts a Notice to Owner in front of your lien rights: served before you commence or within 45 days of first furnishing, carrying the prescribed capitalized warning that Florida's lien law allows unpaid contractors, subcontractors and suppliers to lien a property even where the owner has paid in full. It also has to precede the owner's final disbursement made against the contractor's final payment affidavit, which is the affidavit from the section above seen from the other side of the table. Every lienor then records the Claim of Lien within 90 days of their own final furnishing under s.713.08(5). The counting and the service proof are in the Florida Notice to Owner, and the recording chain is in the Florida lien deadlines.

Public work runs on different rails, and this is where a widely repeated summary is the wrong way round. There is no lien on public property; you claim against the payment bond under s.255.05. The Notice to Contractor is a 45 day CEILING counted from when you commence furnishing. The 45 day FLOOR belongs to the sworn Notice of Nonpayment, which cannot be served earlier than 45 days after first furnishing and no later than 90 days after final furnishing. Summaries that put the floor on the Notice to Contractor have the two instruments swapped, and a contractor working from one serves the wrong document on the wrong day. The window, the oath and the forms are in Florida public job bond claims.

One address problem sits underneath all of it. The owner's Notice of Commencement holds the owner, lender and surety addresses that later notices are served to, it is required where the direct contract exceeds $5,000, and it is void if work has not begun within 90 days of recording. Getting a certified copy at job setup is covered in the Florida Notice of Commencement.

What it costs

There is no monthly subscription. The platform fee is 2.5% of each invoice processed through AEC Stack, collected on payment due dates.

The state's side of the same job is a separate set of numbers, and they belong in the bid rather than in a surprise:

Put the release and the affidavit on the job you are billing this week

The three contractors quoted above are on three different jobs with one shape between them: a document arrived from somebody else at the moment money was moving, and it got signed because the alternative was an argument. The fix is not nerve. It is having your own version of that document already drafted, with the section number on it, before the form shows up.

Two habits carry most of the value. Put your first furnishing date and your final furnishing date on the job record the day each one happens, because the 45 and the 90 are counted from those and from nothing else. And keep the two s.713.20 forms as the only releases you sign, with the progress one conditioned on the check clearing.

Open the job you are billing this week, set its market to Florida in your business file, and look at the tax panel on the draft invoice. If the contract type field is empty, the fork that decides whether a tax line belongs on that invoice is still undecided, and it is decidable today rather than at closeout.