Never Stress Over Texas Monthly Notices Again

Register for this free webinar on Wednesday to see how to streamline your Texas monthly notices and speed up payments.

We’ll discuss:

Liam Duddy (00:02):
Welcome everybody to today’s webinar. I’m really happy for you all to join in here. As we can talk, we talk about how, you know, yourself can create a more simple process, uh, with sending Texas monthly notice to make sure that you are first in line to get paid, and that you’re protected on that invoice. If you join this webinar, I’m guessing you’ve maybe dealt with complications or stress that come with protecting your lien rights on jobs in Texas. This industry definitely hasn’t made it easy for contractors to get paid or, you know, suppliers as well, but we’re here to change that the lien laws are also in Texas as you know, pretty particular. So we’re going to also address that as well. How you can make that more simple, more simple and less stressful before moving forward.

Liam Duddy (02:02):
I just want to say that we are recording this live session and you’ll receive a link to the recording tomorrow. If you’d like to watch it again or share with your team as well. Like I mentioned at the start, if you have any questions, go ahead and just hit the chat, um, interact on zoom during the presentation. I’ll go ahead and answer them towards the end here. So, um, appreciate you all joining me here today. And my name is Liam duddy. I am a senior account executive here at Levelset. Um, I’ve been here for three years, three years, three years anniversary is today. So I’ve seen it all. I’ve worked with many businesses like yourself to help you get paid faster without payment problems and, um, protect, you know, protect yourself, protect yourself from any potential issues or, um, just put yourself first in line to get paid.

Liam Duddy (02:55):
If this is maybe your first interaction with Levelset as well. I do want to give a brief overview of who we are and what we do. Um, and basically Levelset exist helps subcontractors suppliers to protect their lien rights and collect payment, making sure they’re okay. I’m not shared. That’s good to know. So we didn’t miss anything and boring, sorry about that. We didn’t miss anything important, just a picture of me. And that brings us to just what I was just an overview of Levelset. So just like, just, just to summarize if this is your first interaction, um, I do want to give a brief overview of who we are and what we do, uh, basically Levelset, exists to help contractors, suppliers, even general contractors reduce breasts, you know, save time and get paid fast. If not faster, we all know the construction industry does percent, you know, a lot, all sorts of challenges when it comes to getting paid, especially in Texas, when you have all these different deadlines, different notices that need to go out, um, to solve those challenges, we have all kinds of resources from profiles, outlining contractors, payment histories to educational guides.

Liam Duddy (04:14):
And of course our cloud-based software, which I’m actually going to show y’all today and I’ll make sure I’m sharing my screen. I do. Um, perfect. So, uh, for today’s agenda, we’re going to talk about exactly that those Texas monthly notice requirements, how you can use Levelset to speed up payments or some things that you can do to help even speed up payments aside from, or in addition to those monthly notices. And I’ll do a mini presentation of our cloud-based software, um, how you can have all these notices queued up and ready for you to go. Um, so you don’t have to stress about that monthly notice deadline. You don’t have to prepare that document. You can just have it ready to go when that month rolls around. And then of course, a Q and a towards the end. I see. We actually do have some chats here, so, perfect. Awesome. So like I said, if you want to add chat throughout the, if something comes up, don’t wait, throw it in the chat. We’ll look through that towards the end. We’ll answer those questions.

Liam Duddy (05:19):
So just to start, the first agenda is Texas lien rights requirements. And we could probably spend a lot of time on this. Um, some of you might already be familiar with Texas monthly notices and the steps that you do need to take to protect your lien rights. Uh, but for the sake of those that are new these requirements, or may, if you need to refresher refresher, I’m going to walk through a little crash course just on the basics. Uh, we could get pretty granular and get down deep into these notices and what they look like and the timeline, and based on, you know, if you’re a subcontractor, a second tier subcontractor, we can probably spend a lot more time on this, but since he’s requirements are complex and change, depending on your role on the, you know, depending on your role in the job and the type of work being done, a lot of this information can be new to you, even if you’re familiar with these notices.

Liam Duddy (06:06):
So I do want to touch on it a little bit and perfect. So the Texas subcontractors and suppliers need to send monthly notices in order to retain lien rights on private construction jobs, order, retained bond claim rights on public jobs as well. Now you might receive these notices. If you’re a subcontractor moved from your supplier, they have a different suppliers, have a different notice requirement than maybe a subcontractor would. So what’s really complicated and unusual about Texas monthly notices. Is that just sending a notice once also isn’t enough? So companies are usually required to send these notices repeatedly for every month work was not paid. So depending on your role, if you’re a subcontractor or if you’re a second tier subcontractor or maybe a supplier, um, you might have to send two notices for every month fund paid work. And since, as you all know, some jobs can take months or even years, the number of required notices you need to send can rapidly add up.

Liam Duddy (07:14):
Especially if you have different invoices on different months, you’re going to have that deadline come up at different times, and then Texas, the great state of Texas, where I actually am fortunate to live in which I’m sure y’all probably most of you all live in as well. It’s a great state, but it also has some pretty confusing, um, lean deadlines with these notices or with these notice deadlines to make it even more complicated. They decided that the monthly notice has to be due on the 15th of the month, or if it’s, you know, it’s a holiday, the proceeding business day. So these and these notices are typically required to be sent to the general contractor or the property owner, or both, depending on your role. Um, and what this monthly notice does to summarize this protects your rights to file a lien. If you’re not paid, if you don’t send these notices on time, if you maybe go past that monthly deadline, it could potentially impact a contractor’s pliers, right to file about lien claims and what they really do.

Liam Duddy (08:18):
Also from what my experience is when sending them, they actually put that contractor first in line to get paid. Do you think about it, a general contractor or an owner or whoever most times than not, they’re going to pay the contractor that is protecting their rights. So by putting, by sending these notices, you’re putting yourself first in line to get paid. Um, and what I like to call the, to pay first pile, not the, oh, we’ll pay them later pile. I have seen that we actually have a story about that on our website, somewhere about a general contractor who would prioritize who they pay first based on who sends the correct notices.

Liam Duddy (09:02):
So that is just a brief overview of a little bit about those monthly notices. I know it’s kind of a lot of information, um, but that also goes into our next point about how you can actually speed up payment. So the monthly notices, they speed up payment. They help protect your right to file a lien. Now, what do you do if you’re not paid? So what a lot of our customers will do is they will send, what’s called a notice of intent to leave. Now it’s oftentimes the monthly notices, fun, trapping notices, monthly notices, invoice notices, whatever you want to call them. A lot of times people might get those confused with an intent to lien, but in reality, the monthly notices, they really aren’t explaining like, Hey, we’re filing a lien. It’s just a monthly notice for that invoice to protect in case you do have to file a lien.

Liam Duddy (09:57):
So in addition to that, what a lot of our contractors will do is they’ll send a, a notice of intent to leave. And what basically that does is it warns the GC and the property owner that you plan to file a lien on those invoices, that if you don’t receive the payment, um, and then in some cases, the warning itself does I’ve seen work, work wonders. In addition to the monthly notices, the, the, the, the threat of a lien, get the ball moving and your core and kids can get you paid. But if not, um, then as a last resort, the lien itself, um, and then when you have, when you’ve done everything you can, with those steps, put the monthly notices, the lien is valid, and you don’t have to worry about getting to the point where, oh, you didn’t send them up to notice on this date. You can’t file a lien. So now everything we’ve just talked about from sending monthly notices to find the lien, I know it can get extremely complicated. Not only, like I said, if you’re trying to track multiple deadlines, maybe across multiple jobs, you have multiple invoices, know everything needs to be done in a certain way. Um, and I know it can be extremely time consuming and stressful, and even can potentially put your business at risk or lose money. And that is someone that’s called.

Liam Duddy (11:46):
All right, sorry about that. So I’m going to call me always make sure your phone’s on silent, but just back to what I was saying, that, that the reason why you’re here right, is because this is stressful. And now just jumping into the next point. I want to just go ahead and show you all how we can simplify that with Levelset. So I’m going to go ahead and shift screens here, and I’m going to share y’all our software program.

Liam Duddy (12:21):
So shouldn’t be able to see an overview of Levelset here. I think we’d already had some questions coming in here. Perfect. Yeah. Keep asking those questions. Sorry about the brief interruption there with the phone. Um, I’m sure y’all understand. Probably me calling you honestly snowmobile, but, um, so this is, I mean, what you see here, this is the program. I’m not going to dive super deep into this. If y’all do have any other questions about Levelset or how we can simplify these notices, um, I’m going to re you know, you can send me an email. You’re getting an email from me, got an email from me, probably the sign up on this. You can reach out to me and we can talk further, but I do want to show you briefly, you know, how Levelset can, um, you know, automate a lot of this stuff for you and eliminate some of the stress. Cause I mean, that is why you’re here today. You’re probably wondering how we can help. So I went ahead and built a project, um, within Levelset for the sake of this demo. Go ahead and go to that project.

Liam Duddy (13:31):
Now, when I click on that project, you’re going to see an overview here of maybe some upcoming deadlines and notices that I need to be sent out. So right here, we actually, off the bat, we have, what’s called a notice of contractual retainage. This is actually a notice in Texas that not a lot of people are familiar about. Um, but it actually goes in protects a contractor’s right to file a lien on the retainage. I’m not going to go into detail on that, cause I know the whole topic here is monthly notices, but that is another notice that can impact or help you get paid on time, especially with retain it. But you’re also, your invoices are going to pull over, uh, whether it be from, you know, you provide those invoices to us in interim here, or you have some sort of integration with an accounting software.

Liam Duddy (14:20):
And then when we have those invoices pulled over, that allows us to generate the monthly notice deadline or requirements. So you’ll see here, based on the September invoice, we have a monthly notice that is due in two months on the 15th to create that notice. It’s just going to populate the required information from that invoice. And this is just an example right here of what that non re what a monthly notice would look like, maybe for a subcontractor on a non-residential job now to send it, it’s a couple clicks of a button and you know, we’re getting a sent out for you and we’ll LA that’s simple. We can also cue these up for you to make it where all you have to do is go to a list. And when that deadline is coming up, you can pull it from the mail queue. So a lot of people like to give their customers as much time as possible to send this notice.

Liam Duddy (15:21):
So what we can do, we can actually, if you see here, you see notices, we have approved monthly notices. Basically we can just queue up those documents based on those invoices, have those monthly notices ready to go, and you have up until 10:00 AM on the 15th to pull that notice from the mail pile per se. And we won’t send it out, or maybe if it’s marked paid, then it won’t create that notice. Um, there’s none here currently that are approved, but it would look similar to right here where I have you have your notices queued up and all you would essentially have to do is just approve and those notices would be sent out. So if you go back to that, that project I’ve built, you’ll see here, this is a project I built for a subcontractor on a non-residential job. If this was a secretary subcontractor or a supplier on a, on a, on a, on a residential job or whatever it may be, it would generate, it would look a little bit different with some different deadlines. It might be a second month notice or a, um, you know, a notice due at a different time, especially even the leap. So to also show you the intent to lean, I think we even had that as a question. What exactly would you, when exactly, would you send an intent to lean? Um, that’s a good, that’s a good question.

Liam Duddy (16:45):
It’s really up to y’all. Um, people send it at any time, basically, if you’ve done everything you can with sending out these monthly notices, you’re still not getting paid. Maybe they told you they were going to pay in 30 days. This is just an example of that. Other notice then tend to lean that we can send. And it’s going to look a little bit different. It actually is specifically saying if you don’t pay us, you know, we will be filing a lien and it’s the same process. We can send that out. And of course, as a last resort, you have the lead itself, which is something that most of our contractors don’t send. So I know that’s a, you know, 30,000 foot view of the program and how it would work, but we can really make it easy for y’all or y’all not having to spend, um, you know, hours or days tracking these invoices and having to prepare these documents on different invoices. I’m super, I would say get kind of bogged up in my mind when I have a lot of stress and messiness going around. So I wouldn’t, I couldn’t imagine doing this for 20 projects with 10 different invoices, so we can just make sure all you’re doing is entering that invoice or generate that monthly notice and we’ll get it sent out for you on that day.

Liam Duddy (18:01):
So that is a little bit about how Levelset can help. I do want to also talk about a customer of ours, Wendy, um, at concrete related projects, uh, products. So Wendy is an HR manager and HR manager, sorry, at concrete related products here in Texas, not sure what town exactly, but here in Texas, uh, before she had a process of managing, uh, monthly notices in house, uh, their company was dealing with all sorts of payment problems. Can you pay slowly, um, maybe missing deadlines? And she really had no idea how to send them. It was a new process to her. They didn’t have really, um, a proactive process to protect these, or didn’t really understand how to maybe send them. So for Wendy each month was filled with stress of calling customers, um, sending emails, asking for payment and not really knowing, um, when money would come from the door.

Liam Duddy (19:03):
There’s a lot of, uh, there’s a lot of, I guess, doubt that they would get paid. So she knew something had to be done and to help our company get paid. She is the HR manager, that’s, what’s her job. And she decided to reach out and try our Levelset. And what we did, we helped her stay on top of these monthly notices and change was really instant. Not only was she able to get these notices sent quickly and easily, but their average payment collection time went from 127 days to 65 days. And that collection time has been getting faster and faster as time goes by. It’s pretty incredible. And that is something that I have seen not only with Wendy at concretely of products, but a lot of other, um, a lot of other companies have used us and there may be getting paid 90 days or they know they need to send these notices, but there’s just, it’s I have so much other stuff on their plate.

Liam Duddy (19:57):
So not only can we save them that time, but make sure they’re protected and get paid faster. So that’s just a quick story about Wendy. I hope. Um, if y’all, if that sounds like something that you can relate to, I hope that maybe we can also, you know, help you as well. So I know, um, that does wrap up a lot of the information I wanted to talk about. Um, my colleague, Caroline has some questions for me first, and then we can start jumping into questions for y’all. Um, Caroline, if you want to go ahead and kick it off. And then during this time too, while Caroline’s asking these questions, I see we do have, um, a couple of questions here being asked, um, melody, Maria, go ahead and answer more and more and you’ll put in more and more in there and I’ll I’ll

Caroline Rafferty (20:49):
All right. Cool. Yeah. I’ll kick those after. Yeah. I’ll keep those to you after, um, the couple of questions I have, um, first, some contractors and suppliers in Texas don’t protect their lien rights at all. Do you think that’s because, um, they don’t know that these lien rights exist or that they’re so complicated or that they just don’t have the time and energy or ability really to, to manage them or, or is it like a mixture of both? Like, what’s your take on that?

Liam Duddy (21:20):
Yeah, that’s, that’s a good question. I think it is a mixture of both, a lot of people, a lot of contractors get these notices from suppliers and they may not really understand that they need to be sending them as well, or they may not really even know what they are. Um, so with lean lobbying confusing, and we’re not all attorneys here, maybe some of us are, uh, but we’re all not attorneys here. We all don’t have that, that patience to read all those, uh, scan through all those legal construction books to learn all this. Um, but you know, that lack of knowledge maybe, which is, you know, you can’t blame contractors, you know, that lack of knowledge of just understanding what their lien rights are, um, which is, is means no disrespect to contractors, but the, the, the hard part should be, you know, the hard part is going to be getting paid. And with those lien notices and those deadlines, it makes it hard for contractors to get paid and just having that information and being aware of what their rights are as part of it, but also the, the time and stress that it takes to do that. No knowing is one thing, but having to spend all the time to actually do it, um, I think it goes both. It’s, it’s really a combination, but

Caroline Rafferty (22:39):
Yeah, for sure. And I just have one more question before we get to, um, all these questions that people are throwing in the Q and a box. Um, what’s Texas monthly notice day, like it Levelset for the teams who prepare, um, our customers.

Liam Duddy (22:56):
Yeah. So we all, as when I did show you that program, I know it’s a fancy software, uh, but it’s not all just robots and softwares. We actually are a team of, up to, we have about 300 people, I believe now. And we have a dedicated team specifically to help with these monthly gnosis, it’s kind of like a party every month. Um, you know, we order pizza, we get together, um, you know, basically like a holiday, um, when that 15th month comes around, it’s like, we’re celebrating a birthday party, but we’re doing so in a, in a responsible way for you to help you get those notices prepared and to make sure that our customers are protected. So you don’t have to worry about that stress. So you can actually go have a fun party, a real fun party and not, not one that’s preparing notices and researching information and getting those sent out to you. So it is, uh, it is a pretty, um, you know, it’s a big deal here at level, so

Caroline Rafferty (23:49):
Cool. Well then I’m going to hop to some of these questions. Um, we have one from [inaudible], uh, when exactly do you send it, send an attentive intention, which you answered her follow question to that is we have a few customers that like to wait until the last hour on the 15th. Can we just send the notice ourselves after the deadline and pay our own postage?

Liam Duddy (24:12):
Yeah. Um, that’s a good question. Um, a lady, um, so I may have not touched on that. I think I briefly touched on this. So when that, with that monthly notice deadline, that 15th day sending the notice after that deadline would essentially make a contractor’s right to file a lien invalid. So sending the notice after the deadline is definitely something you don’t want to do. You want to make sure you’re sending it on that deadline or before, um, and waiting until the last hour, if that makes total sense, we have a lot of customers that do that. They wait until the last hour until, um, they do get paid because we understand that people can pay, you know, maybe on that 15th day, even. So when you do have Levelset, you actually have the ability to have that notice prepared and you can pull it. So it doesn’t get mailed out on 10:00 AM on that notice date on that 15th day. Um, so we can make sure that you are giving as much time as possible to send that out. And then to answer your question too, before the question about the intent to lien people, most people will send that certified mail as well. The monthly notices they have to be sent certified, but the intent d’Alene, um, I generally it’s sent certified mail as well.

Caroline Rafferty (25:30):
Okay, great. Thank you. Maria asks, if you send a monthly notice and are not paid a month later, do send the notice again. And if so, does Levelset track that and create another monthly notice?

Liam Duddy (25:42):
So, yeah. Good question. So, Maria, yes. Um, in most cases that monthly notice would be required to be sent that following month or in some cases generally after that, um, monthly notice deadline that following month is actually the lien deadline. So if this, the monthly notices have been sent and it’s getting to that, that month where the lien is due because in Texas, the lien is actually due on the third or fourth month, I believe, depending on the contractor role on the 15th day as well. So keeping so Levelset we’ll track that it will create another monthly notice or create a lien ready on that next month. So a good question.

Caroline Rafferty (26:26):
Okay, great. Thank you. Um, John asks, I’m a general contractor that has sent a notice of intent to lien and our deadline for lien filing is coming up in a couple of weeks. We’re expecting payment before the lien deadline. However, if we go back out and perform additional work, does that extend deadline?

Liam Duddy (26:45):
Yeah, John, that’s a, that’s a good question as well. Um, totally valid question, because I know when you’re bringing up main deadlines, it’s generally the last date that a contractor performed work, um, or materials, but like I did say earlier, I am not an attorney. I don’t want to, um, be liable for giving you legal advice. The good thing about that actually is we have attorneys here in Texas that we can connect you with. Um, we have even an expert center, you can post these questions. So John, actually, what I can do, I can, I can actually get that question answered for you. Um, if you, if you, if you want to sync up, um, after this, I can maybe give you some insight to that specifically. Um, that is a good question. Um, generally I do want to say contractors. It is if you know, they maybe go perform additional work that, um, you know, it’s based on that last day, performing labor materials, but I want to make sure to give you, uh, a correct answer.

Caroline Rafferty (27:47):
Cool. Okay. Um, and one from Dawn, we use Procor and we also have started with Levelset since Levelset can be integrated with Procor. How has that done and do I have to have both programs open?

Liam Duddy (28:06):
Yeah. So Don, that’s a good question. If you are set up you’re with Levelset, I can make sure to tell your account manager, um, if you have a, uh, a full service account with us that does give you the ability to log in directly, um, from pro core into Levelset. So one thing I can actually show y’all here, this might relate to everyone it’s not just pro core, but you see here, you’ll see integrations, and you’ll also see, you’ll see QuickBooks you can integrate with and pro core even think about getting set up with us, Don too, is that you do have full support of an account manager, a training onboarding manager. We’ll walk you through getting this installed. So it’s going to pull over all the information from your pro core, um, and you can get that easily set up for you. Um, so Don, I’m going to write down your name and I’ll make sure that we get that set up for you. We can walk you all through that. Good question.

Caroline Rafferty (29:08):
Great. Thanks. Um, that was really helpful. So that those are all the questions that we have. Um, if you have more give you guys another minute or so to throw them in, otherwise, back over to you, Liam, to close it out.

Liam Duddy (29:26):
Yeah. Um, yeah, I appreciate everyone’s, you know, setting time aside here today. I know it was, uh, a lot of information, but like I said, if there’s anything that y’all still have questions about, you will be getting an email. Um,

Caroline Rafferty (29:41):
Sorry. How do I, melody, how do I import without quick books? Or do you employ,

Liam Duddy (29:48):
Yeah, there’s, that’s a good question. There is a lot of ways that we can take your projects and get them in Levelset. Uh, whether it be through like an Excel spreadsheet or you send them to us and we enter them, or you just interim yourself. Um, there is a very, it’s very simple just to enter a project takes about 30 seconds and then we kind of fill in the missing pieces. So, um, I have everyone’s name right here. I’m gonna make sure that if there is any additional questions, um, my lady Dawn, I’ll make sure we get everything set up with pro core, um, and make sure to answer your question about the lean deadline, John, um, you know, I’ll make sure to get those questions answered to you and, and, and reach out you, you will be getting, um, like I said, uh, the reporting, so you can go through this.

Liam Duddy (30:35):
I know there’s a lot of information here today. You also get an email, I believe it will come from me, so you can just reply to me directly. Um, and my information is right here. So this is my email. It’s just my name, liam.study at Levelset dot com. You can email me right now if you’d like, and I might be able to get those questions answered for y’all, um, or you can reach out, give me a call, whatever I’m pretty available. So, um, definitely want to make sure we, if there’s any questions after this, that you have, somebody can contact, uh, Caroline did just put it in the chat if y’all want to go ahead and shoot me an email. Yeah, I appreciate y’all’s time. Thanks for, uh, y’all’s time. And, uh, sorry about the brief interruption with the phone call. Probably have probably in this 30 minutes, I’ve probably missed about 10 calls. I’m sure all of us have as well y’all can delay. Um, but yeah. Um, thanks for attending and, uh, hope to be in touch with all of you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. So y’all.