Lien waiver form, filled from the pay app

A lien waiver form names the claimant, the customer, the project, the amount and the date the waiver runs through, then ends with a signature. Made from a pay app, most of those blanks are filled from figures already on the page, the payment due and the period end date, so the form and the pay app agree to the cent.

This guide goes through the blanks one at a time on the first pay app of a drywall job, and shows which of them change from one kind of waiver to the next. What each kind means, and which States print their own wording, is in the lien waiver guide.

The pay app the form is made from

Delta Line Drywall LLC, a drywall sub, has a $120,000 contract with Northgate Builders Inc. on the Maple Street Clinic job, with 5% retainage. Its first pay app bills mobilization in full, 40% of framing and 10% of hanging. Nothing has been billed before, so every figure on the continuation sheet is new work.

The waiver is about line 8. The sub is asking to be paid $24,367.50, not the $25,650.00 of work billed, because the $1,282.50 of retainage stays with the GC for now. A waiver that named the work billed would not match the check.

The blanks of a general form, one at a time

States that print their own waiver wording use that wording word for word. In every other State the app offers a general form in our own words, in the four usual kinds. The conditional progress version has eleven blanks, and this is where each one comes from for the drywall job.

The claimant appears twice on the form, once at the top and once above the signature, and the app fills both from the one account name. The form’s own words are never edited by the fill. Only the blanks change: the app fills what it knows from the project and the pay app, you type the rest on the waiver screen, “None” or “0.00” where there is nothing to state, and only the signature and notary lines are left for hand.

Names: who is the customer and who is the owner

A sub’s waiver usually goes to the GC, and the GC passes its own waivers up to the owner. That is why the form has both names. The customer is whoever pays the claimant, which on a subcontract is the GC. The owner is the party whose property the lien would attach to. Writing the GC’s name in the owner blank, or the other way round, is an easy slip on a waiver, and the app heads it off by filling each blank from a separate field of the project.

What changes from one kind of waiver to the next

The four general forms share the party blanks. They differ in the amount and the date, because each kind says something different about the money. This is how the blanks are filled on the first pay app of the drywall job.

The unconditional progress row has a consequence on a first pay app. There is no earlier pay app to take a payment from, so the amount and the through date open as empty blanks. From the second pay app on they fill with the earlier payment and its date. Every blank on the screen can be edited before the waiver is saved, so a different figure is one keystroke away when a contract calls for it.

The same exercise on California’s form

California’s conditional progress form has other labels and a different order, and the app fills them in the same way. Name of Claimant: takes the company name, Name of Customer: the GC, Job Location: the site address, and Through Date: the period end date. The statute words the payment as a check, so the form asks for Maker of Check:, Amount of Check: $ and Check Payable to:. The app puts the GC in the first, the payment due in the second and the claimant in the third.

Two blanks under the form’s exceptions, the dates and amounts of earlier conditional waivers still unpaid, are on the fill screen too: type them, or “None” and “0.00” when there are none. The California page prints all four forms in full.

Terms on the pay app that feed the form

Why a waiver gets sent back, and what the app does

Signing, and what is recorded

The waiver can be signed typed or drawn, or sent as a signing link to the person who signs. Signing records the signer’s name and title, the time in UTC, the IP address and a fingerprint of the form, its fields and the parties. The waiver page then shows the record and whether the fingerprint still matches the stored waiver. Where a State’s form has a notary block, the PDF prints one; notarizing is done by a notary, outside the app.

Making the form here

1. Finish the pay app the payment is for, so its figures are frozen.
2. Open the project’s lien waivers and pick the kind: conditional or unconditional, progress or final.
3. Check the blanks the app filled: amount, through date, names and signer. Type any exceptions.
4. Save the waiver, then sign it typed or drawn, or send a signing link to the person who signs.
5. Download the PDF; it carries the pay app, the waiver and the backup files together.

The pay app comes first because the waiver reads its figures. A draft pay app has no frozen total yet, so the waiver is made from the finished one.

Sources: California Civil Code 8132, Nevada NRS chapter 108.

Related guides

For the four kinds side by side, see conditional vs unconditional; for the waiver that goes with a monthly payment, the conditional progress waiver; and for where the payment due comes from, the pay application guide.

We fill the blanks and print the form’s wording; we do not say which waiver to sign.