Subcontractors & cash

Insolvency partway through a package raises questions about payment, materials, retention and completing the work. The answers depend on what was in place before.

Set-off is legitimate and routinely done badly. Without a valid pay less notice and a quantified basis, the deduction fails and the full sum falls due.

A subcontract described as back-to-back with the main contract usually is not, in the ways that matter. The gaps show up in payment dates, notices and delay.

The worst day on a subcontract, in plain terms: what your unpaid certificates become, why a dead pay-when-paid clause can come back to life on this exact day, and the direct-deal offer from the employer.

Half an hour at Companies House before appointment is worth more than any amount of contract drafting afterwards. Most people do neither.

A claim is only recoverable upstream if it fits the main contract too, and the two sets of provisions rarely align as neatly as assumed.

Everybody knows which package is late. Very few files contain what would actually be needed to do anything about it.

A variation instructed above does not become a subcontract variation automatically. The two accounts are separate and they routinely diverge.

Money in a ring-fenced account, released to everyone on the same date. It protects the supply chain and constrains the main contractor.

A justified deduction made without the contractual mechanism is an unjustified deduction. Notice requirements, evidence, and why netting a contra charge inside a valuation is the wrong place.

QScope turns the valuation cycle and the final date for payment into a cash flow forecast, so a contractor sees when money lands, not just when it is earned.

Two contracts, two timetables, and a main contractor in between funding the difference. How the gap arises, how large it gets, and what can be done at procurement.