The arithmetic nobody does

What does waiting actually cost you?

You finished the phase. You already paid for the material and the crew. Until the money lands, you are financing your client. Put in the numbers and see how much.

Your numbers

Phase amount Days you wait to get paid What your money costs you, a year

Use the rate on your line of credit, or on the card you float the material with. If you do not borrow, it is still what that money would have earned somewhere else.

You are lending your client, interest free —

What carrying it costs you, on this phase —

And across a year of phases like this one —

That is the cost of the wait alone. It does not count the phase you could not start because the material was not bought.

What shortens it

The wait is not the invoice. It is the argument before it

Most of those days are not the bank being slow. They are the days between finishing the work and everybody agreeing that it is finished. When the percentage comes out of field evidence instead of a typed number, that argument does not happen, and the request goes out the day the phase closes.

See how a phase closes