When can you ask for your retainage back?

Retainage stays on the job until someone asks for it, and no one is assigned to ask. The time limits and the rules for retainage vary by state and by contract, so those answers come from an attorney and from the contract. The company can control when it asks. At 50% complete the PM requests release of half of the retention. At the end the PM sends the final invoice and then bills the retention right away in a second invoice. The controller bills retention at the time it can be collected, because claiming it too early can leave it unpaid for months, reduced by backcharges or never paid. A sub's retention is held and tracked on the sub's pay application, and it's released when it's released to be paid.

The step is number 07, monthly cadence. Weekly bookkeeping, cost to complete, and one CEO report, on the same days every month. It's drawn from chapter 7 of CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System.

Across the 48 trades that publish a figure, net profit at $1M to $5M averages 7% after taxes. If you're well under that and this page describes your month, the two are usually the same story. The published average tells you where the pack is, and your own job costing tells you where you are, which is the number that pays payroll.

Have the PM request release of half of the retention at 50% complete.

You can try, and it doesn't hold. Step 07 depends on step 03, overhead calculation and step 04, estimating system and step 05, software and bookkeeping alignment and step 06, project management. Install it ahead of those and it produces numbers the field won't trust, which is worse than the problem you started with.