Construction Collection “Hacks” the Pros Use

Join Toby Brutsman, Director of Credit for MORSCO, as he sharpens and revitalizes our construction collections skills.

 Attend this webinar to learn:

• Data- Where to find it and how to use it
• Smarter, Relevant and Effective Collection Practices
• Utilizing the UCC-1 Financing Statement (template included)
• Bankruptcy, Trust Funds, Unclaimed Property
• Templates- Final Demand Notice, Lien Filed Demand, Escalation Notice and more

About the speaker:

Toby Brutsman, an industry expert, has over 25 years of Credit and Collection experience with over 20 years in the Construction Credit Environment. He has handled everything from UCC filings to Lien and Bond Claims and probably mopped a few floors in between.

 “Credit and Collections are a passion for me. I love the “trenches” and try to create a culture for customers, sales, and credit to find a way to help each other be successful each day!” states Toby.

Speaker 1 (00:00:05):
Well, once again, welcome to everyone. Good to have you here on this webinar. It’s gonna be a pleasure to have Toby with us here in just a moment. My name is Alan Francis manager of credit operations. Lori is sorry that she couldn’t be here, but she’s feeling under the weather and we’re just gonna, we’re gonna help her out and take control today. We’ve got Justin Gman on our support staff. That’s gonna be helping us today. Today. We’re gonna be talking about construction collection hacks that the pros used. And for those of you that have met Toby, you already know what a great speaker is. Toby Brotman’s been over 25 years in credit collection experience and 20 years of that in the construction credit environment, he’s handled everything from UCC filings to liens and bond claims and probably mopped up a few floors in between.

Speaker 1 (00:00:50):
I like that statement. That’s great. He’s been with Moscow for 15 years and works as a regional credit manager and just look forward to hearing him and the insights that he has. And once again, we appreciate everyone to be here. When we get a little bit further down into the the program and the slide deck, you’re gonna notice another QR code that will give you a link to more background information on this on lean and UCC filing. So just wanted to make you aware of that as well. So Toby, I’m gonna turn it over to you. If you have any questions, let me know during the, the process and we’ll be happy to hear from you.

Speaker 2 (00:01:23):
Thanks, Alan. I appreciate Alan. If I could ask you to, to run the PowerPoint for me, I’ll kind of keep us going through the slides and things, but I appreciate the time and, and thank you all for, for attending today. Hopefully we can learn a little bit, as Alan mentioned, I’ve been doing the credit and collections for, for quite some time. I don’t have that beautiful radio voice that Alan does. So I have to tell you, Alan it’s a little little bit of a daunting task to try to follow in your shoes. So you sound great though. And I’ve been in the construction industry for as mentioned over 20 years doing the, the, the credit and collection side of it long before this wonderful thing called the internet even happened where we were having to do skip tracing and different levels of, of customer information and things like that.

Speaker 2 (00:02:09):
So learning through these processes over the last 20 plus years has really allowed for me, it’s things have gotten easier in some cases harder than others, but the tools that we have available to us nowadays and the technology that’s out there really does open up the world for us from a collection basis. So if we can kind of move into the slides a little bit, I want to kind of get some information going, or at least starting some things. If a, if you need to pay some bills here, do some, you know PSAs on some items that feel free to stop me, but I’ll keep going, unless you tell me you, you can just slow down. Okay.

Speaker 1 (00:02:44):
You’re doing fine. You’re doing fine. All

Speaker 2 (00:02:47):
Right. So let’s kind of advance into the slide seven guys, or if we can go slide six is where the information is. I wanna talk a little bit about the information and, and how wonderful the data is that we have now available to us at our fingertips. You know, there’s all kinds of information that we have, and, and I will tell you that even going through the pandemic, I think accelerated a lot of companies with the data information and how, how convenient it is to get it specifically about, you know, filing liens electronically. I mean, that’s been something that we’ve seen now come to almost a hundred percent completion around the country where everybody was forced to go to, you know, offsite and do things. So the infrastructure that was in the investments that were done at cities, counties, courthouses, and whatnot, has put all that information almost readily at our fingertips.

Speaker 2 (00:03:36):
And the benefit for us is we can get that information quicker go to the next slide for you guys. So smarter, relevant, effective collection practices. I’m sorry, the next one for me, guys. You good? There we go. Couple things that I put on here that, that helps everybody, or at least helps our team you’ll see the icon for the internet and you can find anything and everything that you want on customers on general contractors on owners you know, that, that that’s available to them. One of the things that we ask our team to do when they’re doing the process, setting up is, you know, take a look at the customer’s website, internet searches on customers, names, and businesses can share so much for you. What would, what name were they before they started this business? Where were they before they had another, another company?

Speaker 2 (00:04:23):
Or did they start someplace else and start this one as a spinoff of maybe they were a project manager or, you know, a, an executive with another company, but they did a spinoff for this company. You can find all that information and it’s just basic skip tracing on, on the previous regime that they had, or the individuals that, that are running this current company now the credit application no matter how old it is, and gosh, you know, most companies now go through mergers and acquisitions. And so you’re getting an older copy of a credit application that probably wasn’t even yours or the company that, that they’re, that they’re buying from now, but there could be old cell phone numbers on there. Old email addresses, old names of, of individuals. Sometimes you’re lucky to even have an old, personal guarantee that was signed on a credit application.

Speaker 2 (00:05:06):
So, you know, I, I, I find those to be very valuable. There’s going to be something somewhere in the notes or some contact information that’s going to lead you to somebody that’s gonna help you. And all that information is so valuable when you’re trying to collect on, on debt and even the older debt, right? It may lead you to, you know a previous CFO or CEO who may know who took over for them. I’ve got joint check agreements listed on here because those I think are, are they’re, they’re a double edged sword. I, I think it’s sometimes it’s harder to manage them on the credit side because you have so many other people to contact, whether it’s general contractors or owners depending upon who you’re selling also there’s several different languages and joint check agreements. Who do you use?

Speaker 2 (00:05:48):
Who do you not, but they are an asset for you sometimes. If you cast a wide net to try to get, you know, the general contractors vested in the payments or the owner vested in the payments to you, I can cut down on, you know, delays of for payment when they’re paying the customer. You’re also getting a check as well. So I think there’s value there. But I would caution you as far as the, the value you can expect from them. And the last thing I got on here is, is the secretary of estates. I chose North Carolina, cause that’s where I’m at, but the secretary of state’s information are, are for us a critical tool because we can find out who the executives are. A lot of times the annual reports are listed, so addresses and whatnot helps us all kind of verify the information of who we’re using or who we’re trying to get in touch with. Maybe there’s an email or contact listed on the secretary of state that we did not have to verify the business or the owner’s names. So all that information and, and again, most of it is available on the internet and don’t be afraid of that because I think there’s, there’s tremendous amount of information you can funnel to yourself just by typing away on, on the internet and finding what you can about the individual or the company itself ready for the next one guys.

Speaker 2 (00:07:05):
So we’ll start to get into some specific topics here and utilizing the UCC F one financing statement UCC one S if you have not used them before, don’t be afraid. These are, are, are valuable for you in many different ways, but a lot of PE a lot of I’m coming back up a little bit. The experience I have has mostly been with the lean and bond filings for us as you know, I work for a, a construction supplier. And so we’re not so much into the UCCS as we have securitization with the actual material that we supply underground. But the UCCS they can offer leverage for you when you have inventory or consignment items for customers. They’re very valuable to, to assure payment on all those items that you’re not that are not available to be secured with a linear a bond. If you’ve got, you know, consignment items that you’re giving to a customer so they can sell, ’em a pay when they get, when they sell the material, it can help the cashflow for both sides. This financing statement, I believe Alan is available for, for individuals through level set, correct?

Speaker 1 (00:08:11):
That is correct. One thing I will take a moment to step in with is those of you that are not familiar with level set we’re document control, we’re a leaned and we’re a lean filing company. We help people get paid through our document control and handle helping individual subcontractors, general contractors get paid by filing the appropriate documents in all 50 states, and being able to do that professionally and do it without all the headaches, so that we have a software platform that, that will help you keep track of those things. Now, as far as my side of in the material financing section, I’m just like any other credit manager. So Toby’s exactly right with everything that he’s talking about. The UCC filings, where that comes in handy for us is when I’m trying to get a customer across the finish line, we really want to try to do business with the company, but for whatever reason, either lack of credit experience, or they’ve got a few dings on their credit or the projects a little bit weak, you can use the UCC one filing in a lot of different ways.

Speaker 1 (00:09:13):
If they have a piece of equipment, if, if you’re the type of company that doesn’t mind owning a piece of the equipment at the end of the day, you know, that that’s a possibility, there’s the ability to, to go ahead and file a UCC against certain receivables. So it’s just a, like, like Kobe had said, it’s just an extra tool and level set can, can help you with, you know, ask an attorney. We’ve got legal, legal paperwork that we can help you get filed. We even have a new segment of our, our business. That’s actually like legal aid that will help you come to your help, get you an attorney that you can talk to go to our website, almost everything on our website’s free, even. So thank you Toby for that, but yes, you are correct. That’s something that level set does very well.

Speaker 2 (00:09:58):
I I’ll, I’ll piggyback off of Allen cuz we use level set and, and it’s, it’s been vital to us for the success that we’ve had. While this may not, this next day may not be so much for the, the collection purposes. I think all of us have kind of shared in the fact that talent for everybody is hard to find. And you know, you look for great business partners and, and tools that you can do to, to help offset some of that because you can’t get everybody to do the jobs that we need to. And it it’s, it’s something that if you have a partner like a level set, who can do some of these items for you, the UCC filings, the notice filings, the lean filings it’s just one more thing that we can you know, offset to help our team members continue to be successful and contact all the customers that are passed to Alan. There was a question

Speaker 1 (00:10:41):
Look. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. It’s from Rachel, Rachel, thank you for that question. Go back and explain when you would use the UCC one in our situation, you would use a UCC one when there’s literally nothing else to hang your hat on. You’re trying to get the customer qualified in a particular situation and they want to do business with you, but you’ve gotta find something in order to collateralize that decision that you’re making. And that’s what it is. It’s offering a new type of collateral. If you can’t lean the property for whatever reason, maybe there’s, there’s multiple owners at that, that property, maybe it’s it’s too encumbered. So you can’t do that. It, it’s where you’re wanting to go the extra, the extra step in securing your investment in what you’re doing with that. You know, if you’re a material supplier you’re going in and saying, okay, I’m, I’m providing $10,000 worth of material, your credit, your credit score, or your credit worthiness.

Speaker 1 (00:11:37):
Doesn’t really give us enough to be able to push this over the finish line. So if you have a piece of equipment or if you have some, you know, some something of value for one, you’re gonna have to judge as a business, how much you wanna get into that, but it will help you leverage your security and whatever that you’re doing without having to go to court at the end of the day. In other words, you won’t have to Sue in order to, to utilize that UCC, you’ve already got the documentation that the customer has provided you to go ahead and move in on that particular asset, whatever it might be

Speaker 2 (00:12:12):
As a follow up question, Rachel, I think if I understand it, you’re on a construction project. So if you’re supplying material to that project, I mean, UCC might not be the play for you. The lean or the bond may actually be, if you have work being done on the project your company is supplying labor or your company is supplying any type of material to that project, then your securitization rights would be more the lean. Yep. Correct.

Speaker 1 (00:12:39):
And you can also, you can also piggyback the UCC on top of your lane. If you know that if there there’s quite a few people that are supplying that job and you’re, you want that little extra lever, you know, leverage of protection, that’s something else you can also piggyback with it. So we’ve done that before as well. So yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:12:58):
Question right. That’s thank you. Alan’s got a good point guys, you know, lien and bonds are great, but let’s face it. You know, even if we found the Leann and bonds timely and we’ve, you know, done everything that we needed to certain states you know, maybe a defensive payment state. So if our, if our customer’s been paid by the general contractor by the owner, no matter how well we’ve done our lie, you know, you may be left holding the bag, but if you can, and I use this phrase a lot cast, a wider net, right, where you stack it upon the lean and bond rights, but you also have the UCC there. You also have a joint check there, right? The, the, the, then you’re building in layers of protection in the event that a lien isn’t filed timely, where there’s a concern, whether you didn’t notice the right part, the party you know, maybe you got a portion of it, of the lie paid, but not the rest of it.

Speaker 2 (00:13:45):
So, you know, there’s, there’s things you can do to stack these they’re, they’re not just standalone. You can do them in, you can do them on top of one another. Really just depends upon. And, and I guess I would question if we’re, if you’re gonna have to stack it, the, the credit risk on top of that from the beginning may not be something you wanna get into, but you know, if you are in a position where you really want to help somebody out and you know, the risk is there ahead of time, and you understand that, then, you know, these are options for you. You can stack these on, on top of one another,

Speaker 1 (00:14:16):
And another I’m gonna move

Speaker 2 (00:14:17):
On. Oh,

Speaker 1 (00:14:18):
I’m sorry. Rachel had one more question. No, that’s fine. Yeah, you do not have to do it at the start of a project. Well, you do. She asked one about, do you need to do it before the project? A UCC does not have to be tied to any project that can be tied to anything that you wanna secure. In other words, you can hold onto that UCC. As matter of fact, if you’ve ever had a, a copy company come in and, and work, you know, give you a lease on a copier, you’ll notice they’re one of the first ones to file a UCC against your company for that particular, that particular item, so that you never own it. It’s always gonna be theirs and it can sit there for five, 10 years as long as you have possession of that, you know, that article. So no, you do not have to do that at the beginning of the process. Go ahead, Toby. I’m sorry. I interrupted.

Speaker 2 (00:15:03):
That’s okay. I think somebody had a question about, is Texas a defensive payment state? No, to my, to my recollection, Texan is not a defensive payment state. You get a chance to make that general contractor or owner pay a second time. And we’ll kind of talk about that on one of the next slides, which is slide nine. If we can move into that when there’s a, on the top of that, it talks about trust funds and there are certain states that have trust funds for you. But Rachel you also had another question and does the customer have to agree to you filing at UCC? Or can you just do it? No. They, they kind of have to have a little bit of understanding, it’s it, it’s something that is filed publicly. So they have to have acknowledge and signatures on it to make sure for a lean in a bond claim, they do not have to have you know their, their knowledge of it.

Speaker 2 (00:15:52):
They, they likely know that it’s coming, if they haven’t paid you and hopefully, you know, you’ve done your part to communicate, but the UCC does have to have knowledge up front. So let’s talk about the next slide that I’ve got here which is the bankruptcy trust funds and other tools. It’s actually one of my favorite slides. So Justin, if we could move to the next slide on the PowerPoint for us, that’ll help me kind of transition. There we go. I want everybody to understand that bankruptcy while we all know it as kind of the ugly tool. I don’t want anybody to think that it’s a complete loss. Bankruptcy actually has several little nuances to it that can still get you paid. Now, it’s not going to be likely your entire balance, but there are ways for you to, to recoup or offset your full loss in bankruptcy.

Speaker 2 (00:16:47):
One of those is to file the proof of claims timely. I’d seek your attorney’s advice as, as the PowerPoint says other options such as critical vendor status could position you for better recovery. But if you’re filing your proof of claims and you’re usually, you know, you’re getting them in timely, you’re usually going to get a payout, you know, maybe pennies on the dollar, but at least you’re recouping something. And then let’s face it guys in, in the credit world that we’re after, or that we, we all live in. We are after reducing any type of bad debt or losses that we can you know, I’d rather write off, you know, $10,000 than a hundred thousand dollars, but I’d still write, rather write off, you know, zero, but how do we get to that point? And, and what do we have to do when it comes to us and it’s in a bankruptcy status?

Speaker 2 (00:17:31):
The best thing we can probably do is start to backstroke as best we can and, and try to fill as much of that void that we know we’re gonna take. Another one of those in the bankruptcy option is the reclamation of removable clause. And you can do that within a certain timeframe of material that’s supplied to the job. But that also helps to reduce the debt. You know, if you’ve got $45,000 that you ship to a project and you’ve done it within, you know, 30 days and they file bankruptcy, well, you can likely go claim most of that and reduce the debt, if not all of it. And therefore you’re not having to take any type of bankruptcy loss on it. This next one is, is the one that, that I recommend everybody do on any project that you can that’s file all notices, lie, and bond claims timely to secure the money that is owed to you liens and bond claims are, will likely outlive the bankruptcy where you can get paid by the general contractors and the owners on the projects.

Speaker 2 (00:18:28):
If your customer has filed bankruptcy. But again, guys, I will preface this work through your attorneys on this because bankruptcy does have some fun little clauses in it and things like that that you need to navigate through and is always best to, to pursue those from a legal perspective. I, I mentioned this a few minutes ago pursue the trust fund statutes, and this is only in certain states. I’m a, I, I, I believe I know Texas is one and I believe Tennessee has a trust fund statute as well, but I’ll talk about tech, Texas specifically, since I’m more familiar with that one and Texas construction funds are considered trust. So the general contractor or the owner has to fiduciary responsibility to, to stay in charge of those funds and make sure they are allocated to the parties that need them, or can claim them.

Speaker 2 (00:19:15):
If you’ve got customers that are, you know, Robb Peter to pay Paul they’re robbing this job to pay that job, to pay the next job that could lead to concern. And you wanna make sure that if you are not paid on those projects, but a customer says, you know, Hey or general contractor says, Hey, I paid the customer and he didn’t pay you. That could be something that you, you have some, some opportunity go collect upon. It is a little difficult because, you know, you, you really then have to transfer into more of a a, a, a built collector type of deal. And you wanna maintain relationships as much as possible in, in our industry, even if they owe you money, but the trust funds are something that I think you can look into and, and go down certain roads.

Speaker 2 (00:19:57):
It depends upon, you know, how much you’re willing to go. And if this is something that you really want to invest the time and money and legal spend into, but it’s an option for me to recover, utilize joint check agreements on high risk accounts or jobs. I talked about this previous, previous slides ago, this is again, part of that passing a wider net, right? You can layer this on top of UCC filings on top of lean notices or whatever that you use. It, it takes some of this sting out of it. It, it, it develops for our team. It develops a relationship with the general contractor or the owner so that we have an understanding early on when payments are being made to our customer. And, and with all the pricing and everything that’s going on increases and whatnot, supply chain.

Speaker 2 (00:20:45):
This actually for me, is gaining a lot more of acceptance. It used to have a really negative connotation to it. Oh, you gotta do a joint check. You don’t pay your bills on time, but that’s actually not. What, what we’re seeing now is general contractors are more receptive to this because they don’t want to have linger bonds file on their projects. And so they are happy to know who was actually on the job. And if a joint check is required, then they can start cutting checks directly to the vendors, as well as the customers and get everybody paid. So that leans, don’t get files. It can be a difficult portion to manage cuz there’s a lot of, you know, different contacts and things like that, but we’ve done a really good job on our end of, of incorporating these into our projects and taking some of that sting away on, on marginal customers.

Speaker 2 (00:21:29):
Our government, the question in the, in the chat are government agencies likely to accept a joint check agreement. You know, I, I don’t think I’ve ever had that come across. My guess is probably not since the government projects are likely gonna go out for a bid, at least on our end. And those bids are going to have to be secured with likely bonds of some kind. I don’t think anybody who, you know, puts up a bond is, is going to be much of a credit risk since they have to go through a betting process, much more diligent than, than we do cuz that involves insurance companies and banks. But I, I wouldn’t be surprised maybe you have a general contractor who won the bid and they’re willing to do a joint check for a subcontractor who’s working for them while it would be on the government project itself. But I don’t know if agencies you know, FDA or things like that are gonna do joint checks. They’re probably gonna stay clear of that. And they’re probably gonna be able to have solid general contractors. Alan, do you have any information on that or do you have any experience?

Speaker 1 (00:22:28):
I do have a little bit of experience on it. There are some especially municipalities and state governments that might be more willing that might be more willing to, to help you with that and help you, help you be able to get a joint check put in place. But what I have noticed, and this is something I was gonna bring up a little later very important that you do a preliminary notice. It’s not required in all states, but as soon as you put out a preliminary notice and Toby, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this when you send a preliminary notice nine times outta 10, a joint check is going to follow because the, the general contractor now knows you’re on the job. It’s, it’s not a required document. It’s not an ugly document, it’s it doesn’t say that a lien’s gonna be filed or anything else, but it just tells everybody, and this is something that level set does for its customers. We send out that preliminary notice in what’s considered by most attorneys’ best practice by letting everybody on the job know, Hey, I’m here. So and that usually in some cases, for example Clark county in Nevada, I send out a preliminary, preliminary notice and they, they added us to the joint check run for our customers. So it, it does happen from time to time, but Toby’s right. It’s not, that is usually the exception, not the rule.

Speaker 2 (00:23:47):
Yeah. I, I love notices. In states that that do preliminary notices usually we’ll see a lot tighter collections and turnaround with cash. Some states don’t require the, the prelims and it it’s a little bit more in depth for us to get the collections done. But when notices go out, as Alan alluded to, it’s kind of like a red flag to everybody, Hey, you know, before your books are closed, please make sure we’re paid otherwise, you know, we’ll do what we have to do. And it’s a, it’s a it’s good practice because it, it puts everybody up front at the beginning of jobs, right? Everybody’s happy. We’re all shake hands. Thanks for the job. We’re all awarded. Everything is great. And then payment starts to slow down and of course money starts to, you know, fracture some relationships, but the best time to get that information for the job is upfront.

Speaker 2 (00:24:35):
And, and that’s even, you know, when for us public work, right. And I think we’re gonna see a lot more of that public work as we start to, you know, see interest rates and things go up, you’re gonna see some commercial work, be hard to come by, but the public work is going to increase. And those public jobs are secured by those those bonds that are out there and the good time, the best time to get that information is at the front of the job when everybody’s all friends. And everybody’s good. We get that information. You call to verify that information with the bond company to make sure you, you know, who the bond holder is, you know, the bond name, sorry, the bond number the time of the bond, the effectiveness of that, or the effective date of it. So that you’re not shipping before.

Speaker 2 (00:25:13):
It’s, it’s ready to go. All of that information, the due diligence that you do in front of the project before the invoices start to roll past due become so much more important. Because at some point likely gonna have those invoices roll and it’s probably towards the end of the project when money’s running out, you’ll be thankful that you verified, embedded all that stuff up front to make sure that your notices were sent correctly, your notices were sent timely in the states that you were in another question by Catherine, is there a way to obtain a, the bond info on the backside? I, I, I love that question, Catherine, because guess what? If you are 90 days past due and now you’re chasing the bond, they, everybody knows why you’re asking for the bond. So they’re gonna be much more hesitant to give it to you.

Speaker 2 (00:26:03):
Yeah, you can probably get it. And yes, bonds are supposed to be public. But if we were sitting in an audience, I would ask you guys to raise your hand and say, how many times have you tried to get a bond and not been able to get it? That’s why we have a, a on our end, we won’t open a project until we have the bond information and it’s been verified so that we can avoid that very scenario. Once we start calling for it, they’re all gonna know why we wanted, and they’re all gonna stop answering phones and emails and everything. So, you know, you can go to the owner or the public entity that’s a municipal project, or if it’s a, a federal government project on a military base, you know, they’ve gotta provide it for you and you can have your attorneys send out the demand letter for the, that information. But if you’re running up close to time, you’re probably going to do everything they can to delay it. So you miss your, your filings.

Speaker 1 (00:26:57):
Yeah. Hey, Toby. I have a funny story about that. Sure. so we have a we, we, we had a customer that hates to have us talk to their general contractor. They just, they want nothing to do with it. So we always say, can we go ahead and get the bond information that your GC has? And we also like to be the ones we don’t wanna be the ones that say, no, we want the customers to say no, if somebody’s gonna have to give the bad news, let ’em give the bad news to themselves. So a little trick I’ve learned is, you know what I completely understand. You’re not wanting to ask your, you know, your general contractor. So instead of that, if you would go out and get your own bond for this project, we’d be more than happy to accept that. Well, what that will do that bonding company is gonna run their, credit’s gonna do all the bad stuff that you don’t wanna have to do. They’re gonna have to pay for it. And that’s kind of just a, a sneaky way of knowing whether or not this customer or somebody you really wanna do business with. So just some, just some fun ways to work with customers so that you’re not always the bad guy, cuz if you’re a credit manager, I know Toby. And I probably, sometimes we don’t always like giving bad news. We will. We like to be the one giving good news. Sometimes

Speaker 2 (00:28:04):
I just wish I had more good news to give. That’s you know, there’s actually a very good point to that, Alan. A lot of our customers, you know, we’ll ask them, Hey, do you have a copy of the bond? And they said they’ll say, well the bond, the job isn’t bonded. Okay. Well that means we know differently. Right? We know that in, for example, in the state of Texas on a project that has $25,000 or more, which is nothing right now on a public project, a bond is gonna be required. And they say, well, I’m only supplying $7,000, but because we’re in the credit world and we’re credit professionals, we know that that’s $25,000 of the entire project. That’s not what the, what our customer is supplying. It’s actually for the landscape, the electric, the plumbing, you know, the roofing.

Speaker 2 (00:28:48):
So it doesn’t take much in today’s world to get over $25,000. So we have to educate our customers and say, look, you know, it’s not your bond. We’re after it’s the general contractor that you’re working for. One of the questions I always ask him, Allen is all right. So if the general contractor doesn’t pay you, how are you gonna get paid? And I could you’ll hear crickets because they don’t even think, oh, I don’t know. Well, that’s where we have to help them understand, Hey guys, you know what? And, and this guys, honestly, from a good news perspective, this I think really helps your customer because it’s a chance for credit to spread some good news where you can join in the fight a little bit. Hey, if you can give me a copy of their bond, you know and, and if you, if they have trouble getting pay or payments to, to you, I can help you with that, right?

Speaker 2 (00:29:32):
I mean, we can call a general contractor and, and get us paid for the material that you owe us, Mr. Customer, because we have that bond information. He keeps the, the customer from having to worry about hounding the GC for his money, for our project, although they should anyway. And we can’t get them paid for their labor, but at least we can get our materials paid. And, and guys, I hate to sound greedy, but really that’s what we’re after. Right? Our job is to protect our company’s accounts receivable and to get us paid in the ways that we can. And if we can do it with our customers, writing a check with a smile on their face and not, you know, blaming us for all the things that went wrong. Well, that’s a win because that means likely we’re gonna be able to save that customer and do another job with them.

Speaker 2 (00:30:13):
So it’s, it’s, it’s the tricks of the trade, right? Of going through those avenues to do what you can to, to make the customers happy, but also educate them along the way as to why those bonds are important and why they need them as well. Another question guys, keep the questions coming. I, I really do enjoy those. That means you guys are engaged and you can find what I consider to be useless, information valuable. I forget, I forgot, you know, all about this stuff, cause I’ve done it for so long. So it’s nice to be able to, to share it with people who, who find it to be useful. Rochelle’s here in California, the contractor state licensing board has the bond info on their website on every contractor and man, oh man, do I wish we had that across every state because sometimes finding these bonds is like a needle in a haystack.

Speaker 2 (00:30:56):
So kudos to California for being able to put that out there for everybody. And then someone else mentioned to public entity’s accounts payable department will always have a copy of the bond. Very true. If you can find somebody in the public entity’s accountant department to, to contact you that’s right. I, I I’ll give you a, I’ll give you guys a real quick story. Years ago I was trying to get something from the city of Dallas. There’s only about 400 people in the, in the department, in the accounts payable, the city of Dallas and nobody answered. So it was so difficult. Let’s see. Larry asked my boss has asked me to look into raising the company’s credit score. We had some tax lie filed against us a few years ago, but they have been resolved any suggestions or resources. I’m gonna kick that to Alan. So he can kind of give you a little bit more information on that one.

Speaker 1 (00:31:49):
Yeah, absolutely. What you wanna try to do is do as much free as you possibly can. And the way to do that is pull your credit report, pull your credit report, where everything is showing up. If you already know that there’s tax lie, that you’ve paid, go ahead and pull a DMB or an Experian commercial report against your company so that, you know, what’s out there, that’s being judged. Follow up. It’s gonna give you a list of every bond. And I mean, every bond, excuse me, every tax lie, every, any type of judgment, anything out there, UCCS, et cetera, and, and compare those two reports together and then go to the absolute, go to the entity that filed those on, in most cases, Dunham Brad street and Experian will have quite a bit of information with the, the filing dates and everything that you need to be able to contact that government entity to get it, get it cleared up.

Speaker 1 (00:32:39):
The other thing you can do is contact dun and Bradstreet experi yourself. You have to do it in writing, unfortunately. And let them know that this is, you know, send a, any type of proof that you can. It doesn’t have to be that detailed. Even a letter that says this was satisfied on these dates and what will happen is they will in turn, try to verify that information after 30 days, almost exactly like it would do. If you were disputing your own personal credit if they cannot get that verified, it will automatically drop off. So in about 45 days, you will start to see your credit climb back up. So, you know, and, and a lot of times you’ve got things on your business credit report that that’s an error and they have to take that off if they can’t get verification of it.

Speaker 1 (00:33:23):
So very similar to what you faced with a personal with your personal credit, but on a business side done on Bradstreet has been lately. They used to be horrible about it. They have been better lately helping you clean that up. And fortunately if you, unfortunately, if you have to go any further than that, there are several attorneys out there. I know I hate to keep ringing level sets bell, but when I said we had legal program, we have a thing called legal guard and there are attorneys out there that can help with this very specific thing. So hopefully that answered your question.

Speaker 2 (00:33:58):
I wanna oh, another question too. Inny the statute of limitation of limitations of consumer debt has been reduced to six from six to three years. How does that affect a lean that is being renewed every year? I’m not sure I understand that

Speaker 1 (00:34:15):
Question. Yeah. That that’s kind of an apples and oranges type situation because the, the consumer debt, the lean is not gonna be affected by that. If I think you’re at, if I think I understand what you’re asking the liens and the consumer debt are gonna be two separate in, those are two separate things. Those liens are actually on physical property are they’re on the project and it really would not have anything to do with personal debt per se. Unless it was an, you know, unless it was your residence or your personal house, and that would be, you need to get an attorney for that situation, for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:34:54):
I’m keep the questions coming guys again. I really appreciate them. I’m going jump down to the assignment of lean, right? Lean and bond rights of selling outside the normal tier. This is something that we we’ve utilized in the past quite successfully, where we may be contacted by a sub sub for the project, right. Which would put us outside that what’s considered letter of supply, where we would have lean rights to it. We would and have in the past gone to some of our customers who were selling and say, look, assign us the, the position that you are in so that we can assume a lean or a bond filing in the event we’re not paid. That’s another way to, to layer or reduce some of the risk and put yourself in a position that you have some security on material or labor that you’re supplying to the project.

Speaker 2 (00:35:44):
If you’re not, you’re not familiar with ladder of supply, please make sure to take a look at those from the lie in the states that you’re dealing with. Sometimes if you are outside those, those first three general contractor subcontractor, I’m sorry, owner general and subcontractor. If you’re outside of those three, you don’t have the ability to reach back and, and secure your rights on it. But this assignment of right position could actually work in your favor, giving you the security to make you more comfortable with lending material. And the last one on this slide is the personal guarantees on credit applications. I, I think this is an undervalued tool. A lot of people, a lot of customers who are submitting credit applications refuse to sign this, and I totally get that right. From a personal perspective. Why do you wanna guarantee your company’s debt?

Speaker 2 (00:36:27):
But sometimes, and as we’ve talked about in some of these questions, you know, their, their, their comp, their, their company credit is not solid, or it may be a very new company and they have to use some of their personal collateral to get this set up. And sometimes that may be their own personal credit, if they are willing to sign a personal guarantee for the debt that they’re going to incur. That’s a, that’s a good thing sometimes when you pull their credit report and you see that their personal credit is, you know, sub 600, maybe it’s not worth it to have that. So you have to find some other tools. But I have seen this actually save a company, a lot of money where a customer forgot. They had signed a joint check agreement. The, the, the partners dissolved and one partner didn’t pay their portion.

Speaker 2 (00:37:18):
And we had an old personal guarantee that stood up in court, and we were able to get $300,000 from the personal guarantee who actually walked away from the business but never let his personal guarantee you know, be exempt. And so he still was on the hook for it. So those are options that I think it’s something that, that you can look at most credit applications do have personal guarantees on them now. And I strongly encourage you to, to take a look at those and use them where you can well, head down the next, I’m

Speaker 1 (00:37:48):
Sorry. Sandra Lee, I’m sorry. Sandra Lee Concho asked can you file against a customer’s credit and add a lie that is open ended to the point, if you’re filing, if you don’t have a personal guarantee in place, you would have to file. You would have to go through the entire process. Actually, even if you do have a personal guarantee, you’re gonna have to file suit against that individual to be able to do any type of lie filing against that individual. Unless you have some other contract in play, but if this is a, a business situation, a business account, they, they signed a personal guarantee. You are going to have to have a court action to be able to add them or add a lean to the situation that would be basically enforcing a judgment. And that’s a, that’s a totally different ballgame, but yes, you can do that, but you definitely going back to the personal guarantee, you’re gonna wanna make sure you have a valid, personal guarantee in place. If they’re in some states, if you need to check your individual state, if they are married, the spouse has to sign that personal guarantee. And in no place, can they put their title of the company? It has to be John Smith or Mrs. John Smith with no president, no secretary, no title next to it. Or that would basically invalidate the personal guarantee. Sorry to interrupt

Speaker 2 (00:39:06):
A, there’s another question in here from Jennifer. I’ll let you take on that one. Why does my employer often get the Texas non-residential monthly notices for unpaid subs on properties that are so

Speaker 1 (00:39:16):
I’m so glad you asked this <laugh> I’m so glad you asked that because I ran into this, I run into this almost every day. You can thank your state legislature for a disaster of, of anything of, of just huge proportions. You can tell there’s a lobby in play in Texas, what they have done, and what they have made happen is every month that something has not been paid or, or any, or a project has not been paid on your individual company that you’re dealing with is required to file this notice. It’s almost like a notice of intent to lean, but you’re doing it by the 15th of the month or around the 15th of the month. If you’ve ever dealt with any business that does a lot of construction work, they hate the 15th of the month because the way the statutes are written, these notices have to go out almost immediately after you’ll, you’ll do 30 days.

Speaker 1 (00:40:10):
And then the following month on a commercial job, you’ve gotta go ahead and send out these letter notices. It’s something it’s become such a normal part of business practice. Just tell your employer this, you know, if they don’t like this, they really need to tell their, their local Congressman for the state of Texas that, you know, they want either general assembly need to overturn this. It’s getting a little bit better, but that’s why you get those unpaid notices when your Bill’s not even due yet. And and, and, and you, a general contractor has to get them. The owner of the property has to get them, the subcontractors have to get them and any a sub-tier contractors have to get them. So kind of answers your question. It’s not a good answer, but it is the answer it’s, it’s literally because that’s the way Texas law was written. The only one like it, by the way,

Speaker 2 (00:41:05):
Texas is a beast of its own. And in some states I know California, we have anybody here on California. I bless you all for that. Texas and California are some pretty interesting states with regards to lean and bond filings, but every state has their nuances. And, and if I can give you all one piece of advice, learn your lean laws inside and out for the states in which you have or which you do business in. It is so critical for what we do.

Speaker 1 (00:41:32):
And if this is a property that you no longer own. So you’re, you’re saying you receive this, or your employers receiving this for a property. They no longer own. They need to send a certified letter to that company. And let them know that that, that property has been, that the ownership has been transferred, let them know where they can find the title of that in their own municipality, because chances are good example. We were doing business in Minneapolis and we found out that there was a change of ownership of a piece of property before the tax assessor in, in Minneapolis knew it. So sometimes they they’re so far behind, especially since COVID these transfer of, of records and ownership are just so, so backed up. So just do your due diligence, send out certified letters to all the right places. And, you know, and you find that based on the information that you were sent in that letter, all the ever all the players have to be listed on that letter, hope that helped.

Speaker 2 (00:42:29):
So Justin, if you could go to that next slide for me, the one that says UCC one lean file demand, escalations, thank you. Consignment agreements. And again, this is something we mentioned a little earlier I’d use an attorney approved document to assure protection on this, but I think UCCS are I’m sorry, consignment agreements are actually something that is an option for a lot of people to deploy and help both the customer as well as you. It takes a lot of the risk out of which we’re selling them, but still allows them to have the inventory. And right now inventory seems to be a, a heartache for a lot of people, but we’re seeing more and more of our customers do the consignment agreements, UCC. One S we’ve talked about, I talked about these must be filed publicly as they legal notices, demand letters.

Speaker 2 (00:43:16):
I I’m, I’m kind of somewhat, you know, neutral on demand letters. Sometimes they have some great success using attorneys to send them they usually get sent via certified mail. So you gotta sign for them. If customers aren’t responsive to your communications with calls or emails or letters of your own that they do, they, they tend to get some attention. I think sometimes they can be costly. But again, I wanted to give everybody the options of what we’ve done in the past contracting contacting general contractors and owners alerting players up the chain on past due balances. I, I will tell you that this is a, a very critical tool for us. If we see invoices or we see customers that, you know, are not responsive to our notices, that we send out to our collection protocols that we have.

Speaker 2 (00:44:08):
And at some point in time, before we file a lie or a bond claim, we’re gonna want to contact the general contractors and owners. If we’re doing a bond claim, it’s likely that the general contractor’s bond that we’re gonna be filing on. I, I wanna avoid the surprises to everybody, right? No, no. I don’t think any other than Christmas, I don’t think anybody likes surprises, right? So you file, you wanna make sure the GCs have at least an awareness of, Hey guys, you know, your customer or your subcontractor, hasn’t paid us. And I have had so many general contractors say, thank you so much for calling me ahead of time. I was getting ready to cut them their next draw, but I didn’t know they hadn’t paid you so I will stop it. And I will make sure you get paid. They usually want invoices and things like that, or they will say, Hey, let me call this customer because he is supposed to be valued here tomorrow to pick up a check and I’m gonna call him and find out why he hasn’t paid you.

Speaker 2 (00:45:02):
And nine times outta 10, you’re gonna get a phone call from your customer either. Why did you call my GC or, Hey guys, I’m sorry, I haven’t called you back, but I’m gonna get a payment tomorrow, right? That also helps the general contractors, because I know from a supplier’s perspective, at least for who I work for, you know, that we’re trustworthy. Look, we’re gonna do our due diligence so that we don’t file and incur the cost of filing the lien in the bond before. And somebody else may be able to pay you. So I ask my team members before we do any type of filing, we make sure we try to call the general contractors and owners prefer not to do that. I’d prefer our customers call, call us, but if they’re gonna go dark and, and, and ghost you, then I think you kind of have an obligation to make sure that we alert the people up the chain.

Speaker 2 (00:45:45):
One of the other things we’ve used in the past is letters of credit. It’s a bank guarantee, backing a buyer for the payment in full for you. And usually within the terms of what you’ve agreed to. If the customer can’t pay you, then you call the bank and say, Hey, you guys backed them. You guys said they’d pay us. They haven’t. So they’re outside their terms that we agreed to, and they owe us X amount of dollars. And the bank will come through with what, what you have and then promissory notes. This is what I put on there. This is kind of a last ditch resort. You know, you got a customer who owes you a lot of money and, you know, you’re trying to do whatever you can. And they’re trying to repay you on, on certain, you know, monthly payments, put it on a promissory note.

Speaker 2 (00:46:22):
It’s a repayment of debt over a time with the likely security of a judgment. If the default occurs, at least we put those in our promissory notes for default judgements. If we can get them it usually comes with a specific payment monthly with interest on that. Making sure that, you know, you’re getting paid where you need to those are our, our solid pieces and, and shows that you have done your part to work with the customer as much as possible in the event you go in front of a judge. I think we got some questions out. So I, I was I’m behind them all. So if you wanna read ’em out and let me know, <laugh>

Speaker 1 (00:46:56):
Okay, here’s where we at. And let’s see, what do we do if we’re owed on projects, but the GC refuses to be pay because of dispute on a separate project. Boy, I hear this a lot. Jeffrey King asked that, do you want, can I take that one, please?

Speaker 2 (00:47:10):
I will I’d to, if a, if a general contractor refuses to pay because of dispute on a separate project, he can’t do that. He’s got to handle those projects individually. And if he has a dispute for another project, he has one of two options, and I’ve been faced with this before. Completely understand your concern. However, the two jobs have nothing to do with one another and either you get paid or you have to file your lien or your bond claim on that project. They can’t, you, you can’t distinguish between bond times on, on different projects. Material started and shipping and ended shipping on one job different than another. And your lean times are specific to that. They can claim to hold it, but I wouldn’t miss out on your lean time. And, and I would assure that, okay, look, Mr. General contractor, I understand if that’s, if that’s your stance, know that I’m gonna file on this project because I have timeframe running out and you’re gonna have to pay that. So I always take the stance of never miss your lean and Bon time.

Speaker 1 (00:48:15):
Totally agree with that. The next question we have Gina Spalding how long I hope I pronounce that correctly. How long should we wait before calling the owner? I typically wait about four months. Is that too soon? I would make sure, like I’d said before, and I think Toby agrees preliminary notices. Let, always let the owner know that you’re there. And if you start seeing any payments, slow down, you need to have a conversation with that general contractor, Hey you know, what’s going on and if they give you anything less than a good, solid answer, there’s nothing keeping you from contacting that owner. Matter of fact, it’s something I do regularly. If I need to, to make sure that I’m being communicated with, and there’s a follow up of how do you find out if your client has been paid? That is probably at the beginning set the relationship with your customer that says, listen, it’s with us, it’s pay when paid up to a certain number of days.

Speaker 1 (00:49:13):
So it is up to them to be honest with us about when they paid, but you know what, contact the GC and say, Hey, I’m just doing a balance verification. Have you paid any monies against this project? As you know, by the preliminary notice, I’m your supplier or I’m this person, I’m that person, I’m the subcontractor. Have you paid anything towards this project? You can get the information that way. Another thing that levels it can help you do. We’ve now gotten to a situation where we give our customers the opportunity to link their bank accounts. And it gives us access to looking at when their deposits have been made to help them better utilize their funds. And I know when a direct deposit’s been made, that sounds creepy to everybody. And I know it sounds like something. Why would anybody ever do that? But it’s such a, it’s such a good use of technology to speed the process of getting these projects done and the, you know, the sooner and the more transparent you can be the better off everyone is and, and everybody wins.

Speaker 1 (00:50:11):
But in the meantime, keep those lines of communication open. I would encourage you Toby. You probably agree with this. I’m sure they have it with their company, a job sheet, make your, your customer and or the salesperson that’s working with them. Fill out a job seat. So you know who all players are. Who’s the GC, who’s the accounts payable person at the GC, you know, is it a public job? Is it, is it a private job? Have them fill out all the specifications where the job is specifically that way before the project even begins, like Toby had said before, you’re asking all these nice questions before anything goes wrong and that’s gonna help you find out when you get paid. So I,

Speaker 2 (00:50:50):
A few question, Rachel asked, and now I, I do agree with everything that you had said, you know, get the information, cuz it’s all helpful, but there’s a, a question Rachel asked and Chad that I, I cannot wait to answer where her statement is, their excuse is they is always, we haven’t been paid and, and we don’t know how to verify that. I love to hear that from a customer. Well, we can’t pay you till we get paid. My response is no problem. Let me reach out to your general contractor and see if I can speed up the payments for you because that then verifies your answer. Rachel, a general contractor, most likely has a contract with the owner to do the job lean and bond free. And if he knows that one of his subcontractors has not paid their suppliers, he is likely in jeopardy of having his contract voided because someone’s gonna file a lien or a bond on the project.

Speaker 2 (00:51:42):
So it is the general contractor’s best interest to be transparent with everybody to say, yeah, he did, he got paid. So and so, you know weeks ago, here’s the check. And the customer has, if they haven’t been paid, I wanna believe them as much as possible, but it’s business guys. And you know, we understand we we’re in construction. There’s a reason why it is the number one industry for fraud and embezzlement in the world. Right? we wanna be able to check with those general contractors and sometimes those owners to find out if money is flowing, they have a job of responsibility to make sure that they prompt pay everybody. I think most states have a prompt pay, you know clause for it. They pay money within a certain timeframe may be written in their contracts. So they get paid 45 days or whatever, but you know, it shouldn’t impact the suppliers.

Speaker 2 (00:52:31):
And on our credit application, we specifically have a clause that says we are not pay when paid or paid if paid, right. We give out terms to our customers of net 30 days. And I, I understand where, you know, the industry uses suppliers like a bank. But we try to tell them that’s where I think your, your credit investigations come up so important at the beginning of the project, does the customer have the ability to pay? Do they have the willingness to pay on time? And I think that’s valuable information. So you find out if you know, the customer’s gonna be 60 to 90 day terms. I mentioned to our salesmen, sometimes guys, we know we’re gonna get paid at 60 or 90 days. So please don’t get cheap on the job because we’re gonna have to finance this one for three or four months. And you know, that that’s a, that’s a profit leak. So do that investigation up front to make sure that you’re, you’re, you know, who the customers you are dealing with and what their pay habits are, cuz it’s information. It’s all out there.

Speaker 1 (00:53:29):
Toby, this has been really great. I just wanted to give us a five minute warning before we have to, to conclude. So anyway, these crap questions I tell you what Toby, I don’t know about you. This has been exciting. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:53:40):
Absolutely. I, I,

Speaker 1 (00:53:41):
We probably can go for another couple of hours.

Speaker 2 (00:53:44):
<Laugh> I’ve never been on a, on a presentation that actually has had this much interaction. So I really appreciate that. Thank you guys. You’ve been great if we have a, so if we haven’t built a customer’s building yet, they’re wanting to hold funds till repairs are done. Do we file the moment the plan is to hold our funds or do we risk time ING the parish till are they’re done. I’m not sure I understand that, but I, if I, if I can gather sounds

Speaker 1 (00:54:12):
Like retainage, doesn’t it? Yeah. It sounds like, sounds like they’re doing some type of retainage. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:54:17):
There, there are retainage clauses in certain states that you have to file specific notices for. I would definitely check with your state statute to see what you have, if it is retainage. If it’s not retainage and, and they’re going to hold funds again, your timeframe to file liens is usually based upon the last time you supply the project to work on the project. But I’ll always fall back to guys. The sooner you file, the sooner you’re gonna get paid, if a general or prime is your client, it’s even more important to let the owner know you are there with a prelim notice. Amen. Jenny absolutely send the notices for everybody. If we filed our prelim notices and a client didn’t pay, but they are a public utility line. Would we still be able to file a lien? I guess it’s depending upon the, the, the work that was done, it was at a public or a private project.

Speaker 2 (00:55:10):
I I’m assuming there was likely a bond put up for the project if there, if they’re a public entity. But yes, I would. I would look at at least filing your bond claims on there. There may be, and I’ve had this come up before where it can be a public private partnership in certain cases where, where there’s some schools that have, you know, public funds, but also private funds in there. There may be a duality involved with that. But look into that a little deeper. You may want to consult an attorney on it just to see what your obligations are and see if you can find information and I’ll let you kind of take some of these other questions so we can speed up time. I don’t wanna run over.

Speaker 1 (00:55:54):
Oh, you’re doing fine. Let’s see. Where are we here? Basically what it looks like if you’re having issues, if try to, and this, hopefully this will answer all these at once. I always like to stay really. I do status checks on all my projects. I’m sure Toby does too. You, you call, find out, talk to your project. Managers know who your project managers are say, Hey, what’s going on with the project? Have you gotten any money yet? Your project manager is most likely to be very honest and upfront about what’s going on. You know, are you having any troubles on the job? Anything that we need to know about, and as it starts approaching where you think some money should have started flowing towards you, cuz you really wanna look at the contract. We always collect the contract, not only between us and our customer, but you want the, the contract between the general contract and your customer.

Speaker 1 (00:56:48):
You wanna find out what are there progress payments. I always like to know what they’re doing with the money that they received in advance, because I have you ever known of a major project where there wasn’t some fronted money for materials or anything else it’s, it’s not too uncomfortable to ask those questions. And the first person, you know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I mean, it may sound like a cliche, but boy, that, that always comes to be true. And a couple of these questions about emailing PE, you know, how often should you email if your GC or your cus the owner of the property, if they have not responded, there is nothing keeping you from emailing them all the time. But what I would recommend is always make sure everything you do has impact you, you don’t wanna overwhelm them. You know, cuz if you’re gonna, if you’re going to text them or email them or call them every day, the less impact you’re gonna have by the end of the week.

Speaker 1 (00:57:44):
But you set some reasonable parameters as like, okay, I plan on hearing from you by this time or this time, if you haven’t heard from this customer in a given 30 day period and you really need an update and you think money’s already been there. If you haven’t, if you’ve already filed your liens, you’ve already filed. Every notice that you can file get with a company like us with legal guard or get with your own attorney to send at least a demand letter on an attorney stationary so that you can at least let them know you are serious because after a lie is filed, the next step is enforcement and enforcement can be an ugly, ugly thing. I mean, that’s, that’s where you start really getting into putting people out of the property seizing what’s there. It, you’ve got a lot of levels of things you can do, but always stay professional.

Speaker 1 (00:58:34):
You, you know, you can, you can always ramp up, but you can’t take back. You, you, it also, especially for mom and pop companies, we appreciate you. You’re the backbone of this country, but always try to maintain a professional communication because I tell you what, whoever goes down the negative path first loses. Sometimes you just have to, you just have to bite your lip and, and keep it professional. And, and don’t stoop to their level. You already know that they owe you the money, use all the tools you have at your disposal to make that happen. I see that we’re running up to time. I tell you what

Speaker 2 (00:59:11):
Toby’s question real quick. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. I wanna answer one question cause Jeff King has it in there and Jeff this question actually kind of brings it full circle time to file in’s past. What can the sub do? I would strongly encourage you taking a look at the trust fund statute if your state has it. That may be some information in there that you can look into from a subcontractor perspective if Ale’s already passed. But other than that, Alan, thank you so much for the time today. You guys, everybody that’s been on the call. Thank you so much for, for attending, for the questions for all of the information. Again, truly appreciate it and very honored to, to be on here. Thank you again,

Speaker 1 (00:59:48):
Toby. This was great. I learned something a lot of new things today. Tony, it’s always Toby. It’s always good to hear from you. And thank you very much. Thank you for everybody that attended. Justin’s gonna be getting an email out to you with copies of this recording for those that would like it. Justin, did you have anything for us? I’m looking in to see if you respond to that. Okay. Justin’s replying over there. So that will be it. We’re getting ready to wrap this up. Have a wonderful day. And we look forward to you talking to you all again.