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Ontario

Getting paid on Ontario construction

The work is the easy half. These guides cover the gap between finishing and being paid: an invoice that cannot be sent back, the prompt payment clock that starts when you hand one over, surviving a client on net 60, charging for the estimate up front, and the order to do things in the week somebody stops answering the phone.

Try this on a real business

Open a seeded business in your trade. Nine jobs on the pipeline, a quote sent and viewed, a deposit paid, an invoice overdue, and a holdback on the current month.

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No card, no form. Sign in later and everything you built stays on the same account.

19 guides on this

How to run the businessWhat an hour costs youThe wage is roughly half what a worker costs. Add the employer side, the truck, the tools and the insurance, divide it across the hours you can actually invoice, and get a floor under your rate before the quote goes out.How to run the businessChange orders that get paidThe extra was agreed in a hallway and refused three months later. Raise it in a minute, send it to the client from your own business, and let them approve it where they read it, so the yes has a time stamp on it.How to run the businessAdmin by emailLogging in to answer a one line question costs more than the question is worth, so it waits until night. Your business has an email address: ask it what is outstanding and the answer comes back with your own invoices, jobs and calls in it.How to run the businessCharge for the estimateSomebody wants a boiler sized or a panel schedule laid out, and what they are buying is your judgement. Put the design fee on the quote as its own line, credited against the contract, and make paying it a single tap.How to run the businessRun it from ClaudeBy year three the estimating has become the job and the billing waits for Saturday. Connect AEC Stack to Claude and the errands around the estimate happen by asking, from the van, with nothing changed until you confirm it.How to run the businessBrand, website, documentsThe decision takes a sentence. The admin that follows takes a fortnight: a logo, a colour picked in a hurry, a website that never gets finished, and documents written the night before a builder asks for them. One press produces all three, in one brand.How to run the businessOne screen every morningThe worst part of running a contracting business is the twenty minutes before the work, spent reconstructing what happened yesterday. A briefing written each morning from your own invoices, deals and books, ranked so the top card is the one that matters.How to run the businessTry it as a working businessAn empty trial account tells you nothing. Pick your trade and land in a business partway through its year: money in play, an invoice fourteen days overdue, change orders on a live job, books that balance.How to run the businessSurviving net 60Materials and payroll go out weeks before the money comes in. Bill against a schedule of values as the work happens, see what is outstanding against what is genuinely late, and keep the holdback out of the number you think you have.How to run the businessWhen a client will not payFive steps in the order that costs least: check whether they ever opened it, send the reminder from your business, read the statutory dates, put it in writing, then pick the remedy that matches the amount.How to run the businessConstruction liens in OntarioSixty days to preserve, ninety more to perfect, and the clock starts on your last day on site rather than on your invoice. Get your date first, then decide whether a lien is the right instrument at all.How to run the businessDid I make money this monthThe bank balance is a mix of last month's invoices, next month's HST and a deposit on a job that has not started. Read the month, split it by job, and learn the difference between a job losing money and a job you have not invoiced yet.How to run the businessGoing independent, pricedWSIB, CPP at both halves, income tax, HST after $30,000, insurance and plates all arrive together. Add up your real monthly overhead, run it through a six-month cash forecast, and get the number that has to go on top of your rate.How to run the businessOne place, not five toolsContractors build their own spreadsheets because every app was missing the thing that makes construction different, and because a monthly bill for something that still needs a workaround is infuriating. Holdback, per-job profit and the T5018, in one place, with no monthly bill.How to run the businessBooks that stand upThe fear is being asked a question about your own business and not being able to answer it. The way out is records made as the work happens, by the system that raised the invoice, so there is nothing to reconstruct in March.How to run the businessPrompt payment clocksOntario gives the payer 28 days to pay a proper invoice and 14 to dispute it, and gives you 7 to pay your own subs once you are paid. Put in one date and every deadline it sets is counted, with the section it comes from.How to run the businessHST without the surpriseNobody writes to tell you that you crossed the threshold. Register on time, charge it on the whole invoice, keep the collected money separate, and read your return on the CRA's own line numbers before you sit down with your accountant.How to run the businessInvoice and get paid on timeBuild the invoice straight from an accepted quote, with HST at 13 percent and the 10 percent Construction Act holdback computed for you. Send it with a timestamped record, log partial cheques, and put every held-back dollar on a countdown.How to run the businessGet your 10% holdback backTake the 10% off every invoice automatically, on the pre-tax value, so your client sees what is payable now. Record each release date once, and every held dollar lands in one tracker that turns red the day you are allowed to collect it.

Count it instead of estimating it

Ontario prompt payment calculatorOne date in: the day you gave them a proper invoice. Out comes the day they have to pay, the day they had to dispute it, and the day you owe your own subs whether or not you were paid.Free, no signup.

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The rest of the Ontario library

Finding construction work in Ontario Bidding and prequalification in Ontario Pricing construction work in Ontario Change orders and extras in Ontario Construction holdback in Ontario Construction liens in Ontario HST for Ontario contractors Construction bookkeeping in Ontario

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