Build a job packet

What a closeout packet has in it

Getting paid on the last draw usually has nothing to do with the work being finished and everything to do with a folder being complete. General contractors and owners hold retainage against a list, and the list is close to the same one everywhere:

• The final unconditional lien waiver, signed, in whatever form the state requires. On a job with anybody under you, theirs as well.
• The final invoice or pay application, showing the retainage being released.
• The warranty letter, with the start date and what it covers.
• Permits and the signed final inspection card, or the certificate of occupancy if the job needed one.
• Operating and maintenance information for anything installed with a manual: equipment, controls, finishes.
• The certificate of insurance, current through the completion date.
• The punch list, signed off, so there is a dated record that the last items were accepted.
• Photographs of the finished work, and of anything that got covered up.

Nobody reads that as eight attachments. Send it as one PDF with a contents page and it reads as a company that has done this before, which is exactly the impression you want in the week somebody is deciding whether to release your money.

The order is the part people get wrong

A packet is read from the front by somebody who is looking for one thing. Put the document that proves the ask first: on a closeout that is the waiver and the final invoice, on a permit submittal it is the application, on a pay application it is the cover sheet with the numbers on it. Supporting paper goes behind in the order it is referenced. The contents page this site prints tells the reader which page each document starts on, so they stop scrolling and go straight there.

Merging in the wrong order is the most common reason a packet comes back. Use the arrows on this page until it reads the way you would hand it across a desk, then build it.

A permit packet, and a pay application

Permits. Most building departments want one file, under a size limit, with the application on top. Plans, the site plan, the contractor license, the insurance certificate and any engineering letters go behind it. If the upload has a size cap, compress the packet after it is built rather than compressing each piece.

Pay applications. A monthly draw is a cover sheet, a schedule of values, and the conditional waivers from everybody who worked that month. That is a packet with a deadline attached to it, and it is the one worth building the same way every month so the person approving it learns where to look.

How this page works

Finish anything on this site and the line under it offers to add the file to the packet. The count follows you around the site at the corner of the screen. When you have all of it, come back here, set the order, rename anything whose filename is not what you want printed on the contents page, and press Build the packet.

The cover sheet uses the business details you have already saved on any form builder, so it goes out on your letterhead and not on ours. A blank template you download empty carries one small line at the foot naming the site it came from. Nothing you have filled in carries it, including this cover sheet, because that document is going to your client and it is yours.

Where the files actually are

In this browser, on this device, in storage that belongs to this site alone. There is no server here to send them to, which is also why the packet cannot follow you from your phone to your laptop. It is cleared when you empty it, and it clears itself after a day so a signed contract is never sitting in a browser store a week later because somebody got interrupted.