The Per-Job Lien and Notice Calendar: Set the Dates the Day the Job Opens

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Open this page the day the job opens, well before the account goes quiet.

The working companion to Protect Your Right to Get Paid on a Commercial or Public Job: Lien Rights and Notice Deadlines. The guide explains the mechanisms. This page turns them into five dates and five reminders on a calendar somebody else can see.

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Reviewed October 2026. Lien, bond and notice laws change, and they vary by state. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with your state agency or a construction attorney before you rely on it.

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Why this page is a calendar. A missed lien deadline is permanent and uninsurable: no court reopens it and no policy you carry pays for it. Most other collection problems can be fixed with time and pressure, so this one gets dates and alarms instead of checkboxes.

The second reason is timing. By the time an invoice is 90 days old and you are drafting a demand, the windows on this page may already have closed. The work of protecting the remedy happens while the job is still open and nobody is worried.

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Step 1. The seven facts that decide everything

None of the dates below can be calculated until these are written down. Fill them in on day one and correct the last-furnishing date later.

State the work is performed in:
Private job, or public:
If public, whose property: federal, state, county, or municipal
Your tier: direct contract with the owner, or a tier below
Date of first furnishing, meaning first labor on site or first material delivered:
Date of last furnishing, filled in when you know it:
Is there a construction lender, and who:

The track this puts you on. Read it once and stay on it.

What you wrote	Track
Private property	Mechanics lien track. Use your state's block below
Federal property	Miller Act track. There is nothing to lien. See the federal block
State, county, or municipal property	Little Miller Act track. Your state's public bond statute governs, and it is a different statute from your state's lien chapter, often with different numbers. Do not read one and apply the other

Step 2. Find the triggering event before you calculate anything

This is the field people get wrong, and a wrong entry here can lose the remedy while the contractor still thinks it is protected. The clock almost never runs from your invoice date, and it frequently does not run from your last day on site. (State rules as of October 2026.)