Kindness General Contractors is a highly-rated commercial and industrial contracting firm located in Southern California. Part of their strong reputation is their mission to “do whatever it takes to get the job done,” according to their office manager, Elaine AbuDayyeh.
They are also prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure they are paid on every job they complete. This means they always put themselves in the position to get paid by protecting their right to file a lien. To do this, they send a 20-day preliminary notice (as required in the state of California) at the beginning of their jobs.
Gilda Soriano, the accounts receivable administrator, reports to Elaine, and is in charge of creating and sending these notices. However, the steps involved in the notice process often became overwhelming and it was tough for her to keep up with sending notices on every job.
“During the times where we have multiple jobs happening at once, managing notices becomes extremely time consuming,” explained Elaine. “You’re putting together the notice, making multiple copies, printing, and stuffing envelopes.”
Also, while sending notices is an important part of Gilda’s job, it’s only one aspect of her role in managing the company’s receivables.
As Gilda’s boss, Elaine wanted to make sure that Gilda was able to prioritize protecting their lien rights — but also be efficient with her time.
“Manually creating and tracking notices was just one of those things I wanted to take off her plate because there are other tasks I prefer she focuses on – especially with how busy we are,” Elaine said.
Although they wanted to spend less time on notices, they didn’t want to send fewer notices.
“Prelims are obviously very important in a lot of aspects of construction. Without your lien rights, you’re essentially giving up what could potentially be hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. So we wondered, what can we do to make notices a little easier when there is so much going on, while also still making sure we are protecting ourselves properly,” Elaine said.
With all of this in mind, Elaine and Gilda decided to give lien rights software a chance. They knew that by using software (in this instance, Levelset), they could save a lot of time and still send the right notices on every job.
Here’s how it works:
- Job information from their accounting software is automatically sent into their Levelset account.
- Based on their role and job details, a preliminary notice is created and populated with the required information.
- If any important information (such as the legal property description) is missing or incorrect, Levelset’s Scout Research fills it in.
- Gilda can then send out the notice with a few clicks.
Not only is creating and sending notices much easier and faster with Levelset, but if Gilda ever has a question about a notice, she can quickly get a response from Levelset’s support team.
“When I have a request, I will just send an email and then get a response right away. I really appreciate that because preliminary notices are time sensitive,” said Gilda.
Elaine agreed, “With other services, they often say it could be five business days before you get a response about a notice. And sometimes, we don’t know that we even have those five days if we’re getting close on a deadline. But with Levelset, you know you’re going to get a response within 24 hours max.”
In addition to using Levelset for preliminary notices, Elaine has also used it for other lien rights documents.
“We decided to use a notice of intent to lien a couple of times,” said Elaine. “Usually, when I’m creating a document for the first time, I have to spend time looking up examples online and then put it together myself. With Levelset, I didn’t have to do any of that research or extra effort. Everything for the notice of intent was built into the system, so that was definitely helpful.”
At the end of the day, work is much easier for Elaine and Gilda now that they have the right system helping them protect their payments on every job.
Ready to put more time back in your day?
If creating notices, looking for property information, and tracking lien rights deadlines are taking over your job, it might be time to look for a solution. Like Elaine and Gilda, you can put more time back in your (or your staff’s) day and focus on parts of managing receivables to keep money coming through the door.
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