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You do not have to accept every carrier and TPA on the same terms. Some pay faster, communicate better, and fight you less. Knowing which ones you want, and which you do not, is a legitimate strategy that protects your cash flow and your margin.

A RocketLevel guide for restoration owners and accounts receivable (AR) leaders, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 6-minute read. Grounded in the 2026 C&R State of the Industry Report.

Getting paid is the industry's number one problem, ahead of hiring, in the 2026 C&R State of the Industry Report, published by Cleaning & Restoration (C&R) magazine and powered by KnowHow, which covers calendar 2025 (Chapter 2, Getting Paid). The same chapter says knowing which carriers you want to work with, and which you do not, is a legitimate business strategy. The rest of the report backs that up: 64% of restorers use third-party administrators (TPAs) in some form, yet 61% of restorers, including many who use TPAs regularly, would not recommend them to their peers (Chapter 3), and for the first time the report asked restorers which carriers they prefer, who pays fastest and communicates best (Chapter 8).

Plenty of shops treat every carrier and TPA as the same customer with a different logo. Ask your AR lead and you will hear otherwise. One pays in a few weeks and approves supplements without a fight. Another sits on files, reopens closed jobs, and takes three escalations to reach anyone who can decide. Your payment sources are not interchangeable, and treating them as if they are quietly costs you.

Measure pay speed by source

Plenty of companies chase payment reactively and never tally which sources actually slow them down. The same report looks back at 2024 as the backdrop: by the end of that year, nearly three-quarters of restorers said it took 30 days or more to receive payment, and the share waiting 60 days or more grew. Start tracking, by carrier and by TPA: days from invoice to payment, how often supplements get approved and how long they take, and the friction in communication.

Score and tier your payment sources

Once you have the data, sort your carriers and TPAs into tiers by what they actually cost you. Do not tier on impression. Score each source on four measured lines, one point each, and let the total decide the tier so two people scoring the same source land in the same place.

Score one point for each of these that is true of the source over your last ten jobs with it:

  1. Pay speed. Its average days from invoice to cash is at or below your book-wide average.
  2. Margin. Its average job margin, after the documentation and rework hours the program costs you, is at or above your book-wide average.
  3. Supplements. More than half of the supplements you submitted to it were approved, and the median approval took two weeks or less.
  4. Friction. You reached a decision maker within one business day on your last three escalations with it.

Then tier on the total, with the boundaries stated so nothing falls between them: A is 4 points. B is 2 or 3 points. C is 0 or 1 point. A source with fewer than ten jobs is unrated, not a C; get the tenth job or drop it deliberately. If a line cannot be measured yet because you have not tracked it, score it zero and write "unmeasured" beside it, so the tier says what you actually know rather than what you assume. Plenty of owners are carrying C sources they have never named.

Build the alternative before you cut

TPA and program work offers something real: steady assignments when the phone is not ringing on its own. Chapter 3 of the same report names cash flow as the honest reason shops stay in programs they complain about. You accept thinner margins and heavier paperwork because the files keep showing up. That can be a legitimate choice. The mistake is dropping a slow source before you have built the direct and commercial pipeline to replace the volume. Line up the replacement work first, then trim the low tier.

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