Your clients are holding your money. We'll tell you exactly how much.
Retention recovery and retention management for construction subcontractors. We reconcile your contracts, variations and all, give you the exact sums withheld on every project, and assist in getting the money back.
Retentions withheld, then quietly forgotten.
On most subcontracts, your client withholds a percentage of every progress claim as security. Half is normally released at practical completion, the rest when the defects liability period ends, often a year or more after you finished the work.
That timeline is exactly why the money disappears from view. Projects end, staff move on, and the retention sits on someone else's books, waiting for you to ask for it back. If you never ask, plenty of clients never offer.
Variations make it worse.
Contract amendments change the contract sum, which changes what can be withheld and when it should be released. Every variation that isn't tracked against the contract makes your retention position a little less certain.
Add a few projects running at once and you land where most subcontractors we meet are: certain they are owed money, with no way to put a number on it.
How we get your retentions back.
Reconcile the contracts
We work through each contract from the original scope, folding in every approved variation, so the contract sum and the retention entitlement are exact, not estimated.
Build the retention register
One register across all your projects: what was withheld on every claim, what has been released, and what is still sitting with each client, down to the dollar.
Assist the recovery
With exact figures in hand, the follow-up gets easy. We help you chase releases at practical completion and end of defects, and keep the register current as claims roll on.
Most clients who come for retention recovery stay for the regular processing: once you have seen exact numbers, rough ones stop being acceptable. Progress claims, invoicing and reporting all flow from the same reconciled contracts.
Common questions
What are retentions in construction?
Retentions are monies withheld by your client on each progress claim, typically a small percentage of every claim, held as security until the work is complete. Half is usually released at practical completion and the rest at the end of the defects liability period. On long projects, retentions withheld across multiple jobs can add up to serious money.
Why don't subcontractors know what they're owed?
Because the records are hard to keep. Retentions are withheld claim by claim, contracts get amended by variations, and projects run for months or years. Most subcontract businesses have no reliable register of what has been withheld on each job, so the money slips out of sight.
How do contract variations affect retentions?
Variations change the contract sum, which changes what can be withheld and what should be released. If your variations aren't tracked against the contract, your retention figures are wrong, and usually wrong in the client's favour.
What does Lunar actually do?
We reconcile each contract from the original scope through every approved variation, build a retention register showing the exact sums withheld on every job, and assist with the recovery process, including the follow-up with your clients at practical completion and the end of defects liability.
Stop guessing what you're owed.
Get a retention check