Cashflow is the lifeblood for contractors. Without a steady stream of income, they can’t pay their suppliers, any subcontractors, or their employees in a timely manner. This could lead to unnecessary borrowing, lost money due to payment penalties, or unhappy workers leaving for greener pastures.
In the past, contractors relied on word of mouth to find out a certain company’s payment practices, but a new system hopes to make that process much easier and much more public. Levelset, a cloud-based payment platform, has recently unveiled Contractor Profiles, a free-to-access database of more than 5000 contractors and their payment histories.
On each Contractor Profile, you can find reported speed of payment, any payment problems such as mechanics liens or bond claims, and reviews from other contractors and suppliers. Contractors can be sorted by slowest paying and fastest paying, as well as by city or state.
Levelset provides an informative page on their website explaining how payment speed is calculated for each contractor. In addition to Levelset’s own database containing information on over 3 million construction jobs since 2005, the payment speed calculation also takes recency of slow/non-payments, payment documents like preliminary notices and lien waivers, public data, and other 3rd party sources into consideration.
Reviews left on a contractor profile are reviewed and verified by the Levelset team to confirm their validity, according to the webpage. As you might imagine, in order to possibly score better on the platform, Levelset suggests that you use their platform to upload your payment documents to build a more positive history, as well as paying your subs and vendors more quickly.
Contractors can also submit corrections requests for any information you believe to be incorrect about your company. There is also an advisory panel that contractors can join to help improve the quality and accuracy of contractor profile scores.
“We designed the Levelset Contractor Profiles with both general contractors and subcontractors in mind,” said Scott Wolfe CEO of Levelset in a press release. “These profiles provide an important forum to exchange information about the payment practices that can benefit the whole industry. By adding a new layer of transparency to how payments are exchanged, it’s now possible to stay on top of issues and potential bad outcomes like mechanics liens.”
I’m interested to hear how our readers feel about this database. Do you think a public database will help your company make better decisions about who you work with? Do you think this extra transparency will make contractors with a poor history of payments think twice about how they do business?
Shane is the creator of Construction Junkie and an active construction project manager. In his career, he has managed interior remodel projects, site development, construction safety, governmental project compliance, and facility maintenance. He has a strong passion for construction technology and safety, as well as sharing the knowledge or insights he has gained throughout his career.