Getting Paid for the Final Stage

Why the last payment is the hard one

By the time you reach it, you have started the next job. Coming back for half a day to adjust a door and touch up paint costs you a morning somewhere you are being paid.

Meanwhile the customer is looking at the finished room, and the small unfinished things are the only things they can see.

Both positions are reasonable. The gap between them is where final payments die.

Close the job properly

Walk it with them. Do not send a message saying you are finished. Go round the job together, in good light. It takes twenty minutes and it turns a vague ending into a defined one.

Agree the snagging list on the spot, in writing, and be honest about what is on it. A trade who identifies two items before the customer does buys a great deal of goodwill.

Give a date for completing them, and hold it.

Then invoice, referencing the completed list.

When they keep adding items

A list that grows every time you clear it usually means one of two things: they are unhappy with something they have not named, or they are using snagging to delay payment.

Ask directly whether there is a wider problem. If items keep appearing, put the list in writing as final, complete it, and invoice.

Genuinely new faults appearing later are a different thing and are covered by your obligations regardless.

If you have already been paid in full

Then you have no leverage and neither do they, which sounds neutral but is not. In practice the snagging does not get done, the customer feels let down, and you lose the recommendation.

This is the argument for holding a final stage even when you trust the customer. It is not protection against them; it is what makes the end of the job happen.