The work passed inspection. Your pay app went in on time. And the GC has moved into the vocabulary of not paying: the owner hasn’t funded, the change order is “under review,” accounting runs checks next cycle. Meanwhile your own payroll and suppliers don’t reschedule.
Here’s the short answer: in Texas you have four levers, and three of them run on clocks measured in weeks. Prompt-payment interest starts the day after payment was due. Lien rights die on strict monthly deadlines. Construction payments are trust funds, which can put the individuals who diverted them personally at risk. And on public jobs there’s a payment bond behind the contract. If every lien deadline has already passed, the debt itself is still collectible — you’ve lost security, not the claim.
The mistake that costs the most money isn’t picking the wrong lever. It’s waiting one more cycle before pulling any of them.
Know your deadlines before you decide anything
Texas lien deadlines don’t count in days from the invoice — they count from the month in which you furnished labor or materials (or, for an original contractor, the month the work was completed, terminated, or abandoned), and they land on the 15th.
| Step | Non-residential | Residential |
|---|---|---|
| Notice to owner + original contractor (subs and suppliers, § 53.056) | 15th day of the 3rd month | 15th day of the 2nd month |
| Lien affidavit filed and recorded (§ 53.052) | 15th day of the 4th month | 15th day of the 3rd month |
| Suit to foreclose the lien (§ 53.158) | 1 year from the last day the affidavit could have been timely filed | Same |
Two warnings about that last row. First, it used to be two years — H.B. 2237 changed it effective January 1, 2022, and a lot of guidance still online hasn’t caught up. Second, the extension to two years is not automatic: it requires a written agreement with the current property owner, made before the first year runs out, and recorded with the county clerk.
Your exact dates depend on your tier, your contract, and the project type. Confirm them with construction counsel — but confirm them this week, not after the next pay cycle.
Lever 1 — Prompt-payment interest starts automatically
On private projects, Texas sets the payment clock (Tex. Prop. Code § 28.002):
- The owner must pay the contractor no later than the 35th day after receiving a payment request.
- The contractor must pay its subcontractors within 7 days of receiving the owner’s payment — and that 7-day duty flows down each tier below.
Past due, the amount accrues interest at 1.5% per month — 18% a year — starting the day after payment became due and running until it’s paid or judgment is entered (§ 28.004).
Be straight about the limit: a party may withhold an amount subject to a good-faith dispute over how much is owed or whether the work was done properly (§ 28.003). So “35 days” isn’t an unconditional guarantee — but a GC withholding your whole payment while calling it a dispute has to actually have one. A written demand that computes statutory interest to the day, and states what the dispute is and isn’t, changes the tone of the conversation quickly. It also creates the record you’ll want later.
Lever 2 — The lien, if you’re still in time
A perfected mechanic’s or materialman’s lien attaches to the property and follows it into any refinance or sale. It is the strongest security a sub or supplier gets, and it is also the one that expires fastest — see the table above.
Related, and frequently forgotten: statutory retainage. Texas requires the owner to reserve 10 percent of the contract price (or 10 percent of the value of the work) during the job and for 30 days after the work under the original contract is completed (Tex. Prop. Code § 53.101). That’s a fund specifically meant to be there when someone downstream doesn’t get paid — and claims against it carry their own notice requirements.
Lien preparation, filing, and foreclosure are legal work. ASA is a collection agency, not a law firm: liens and suits are handled by licensed attorneys, and we work alongside collection counsel when that’s the right path. If you want the mechanics of the filing itself, see our mechanic’s lien guide and the Texas lien deadline reference.
Lever 3 — Trust funds, and the personal exposure nobody mentions
This is the lever most subcontractors have never heard of, and it changes negotiations.
Under the Texas Construction Trust Fund Act (Tex. Prop. Code Ch. 162), construction payments and loan proceeds are trust funds. The contractor or subcontractor who receives or controls them is a trustee, and the subs, laborers, and suppliers who furnished the work are beneficiaries. Diverting those funds without first paying the beneficiaries can be misapplication — and the penalties are not civil-only: misapplying $500 or more is a Class A misdemeanor, and doing it with intent to defraud is a third-degree felony (§ 162.032).
Two honest caveats. The statute provides affirmative defenses — including funds actually spent on job-related expenses, and full payment made within 30 days of written notice of a complaint — so this is fact-specific, and not every unpaid invoice is a trust-fund violation. And the criminal side belongs to prosecutors, not to creditors or their agencies; nobody should be threatening charges as a collection tactic.
What it does do is reframe the file. A GC who has been treating your invoice as a corporate cash-flow question may reconsider once the question becomes whether individually controlled trust funds went somewhere other than the beneficiaries. That’s a conversation for counsel to have precisely — and it’s why the paper trail of where the owner’s money went matters as much as your own invoice.
Lever 4 — On public jobs, follow the bond
Public work in Texas is generally bonded, and a payment bond gives you a solvent party behind an insolvent one (Tex. Gov’t Code Ch. 2253). The deadlines are tight and specific:
- Claim notice must be mailed to the prime contractor and the surety on or before the 15th day of the third month after each month in which the claimed labor was performed or material delivered (§ 2253.041).
- Suit on a payment bond must be brought within one year of the date that claim notice was mailed; suit on a performance bond, within one year of final completion, abandonment, or termination (§ 2253.078).
Notice per month, on the 15th, or the claim for that month can be gone.
If the deadline already passed — read this part
Most of the internet’s construction-payment advice is published by companies that sell lien filings, so it stops here. It shouldn’t, because this is where a lot of real files sit.
A lien is security for the debt. It is not the debt. Missing a lien or bond deadline costs you the collateral and the leverage — a genuine loss. It does not extinguish what you’re owed. The contract obligation survives, and in Texas most commercial contract and open-account claims run four years from accrual (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.004) — see the statute of limitations breakdown.
What’s left is ordinary commercial collection, which is exactly what an agency does: demand with the documentation assembled, negotiation with someone who now has no deadline pressure of their own, skip tracing when a GC dissolves and reappears under a new name, and legal enforcement through counsel where it’s warranted. Contingency means a lapsed-lien file costs you nothing to pursue — no recovery, no fee.
Where to start
- Date the file. When did you last furnish labor or materials on this project? Everything above counts from that month.
- Pull the paper. Contract or PO, change orders, pay applications, daily reports or delivery tickets, and the payment correspondence.
- Send a real demand — the amount, the documents, statutory interest computed, and a specific escalation date.
- Escalate before the clock does. If the notice or affidavit window is close, that’s counsel today. If it’s already gone, place the account.
Construction collections rewards the sub who moves in weeks over the one who waits for the relationship to fix itself. Working in the Metroplex? We’re based here — see construction collections in Dallas.
A GC or developer stopped paying? Get a free case review — no recovery, no fee. This article is general information for commercial creditors, not legal advice. Lien and bond deadlines are strict and depend on your tier, contract, and project type — confirm yours with qualified construction counsel.
General information for commercial creditors, not legal advice. Laws and deadlines change and depend on the facts — confirm specifics with qualified counsel.