Friday Payroll Cash-Flow Guide

Construction is paid in arrears and worked in advance. Your workers are owed weekly; your certificates clear monthly, and then slowly. The result is that the same contractor can be owed millions on paper and still short of a weekly wage run. The pressure is predictable, which means it can be planned for rather than survived.

• Valuation is certified weeks after the work is done.
• Retention and defect liability hold back part of every certificate.
• Cash from one certificate is often already committed to suppliers and plant.
• A missed Friday damages trust faster than any late certificate.

The worst move is a Friday-morning scramble for short-term money at whatever rate is available. Plan the float instead: FundiPay offers a 14-day payroll float that advances verified wages while your certificate is in the pipeline. Because the advance is sized against a locked, geofenced muster roll, it covers exactly what you owe — no more — and it is repaid from the certificate when it lands.

A float is only safe if the payroll underneath it is real. When attendance is confirmed by check-in and the muster roll is locked before the run, the amount you advance matches the days actually worked. That discipline also keeps the cash-flow forecast honest: you know your weekly wage exposure to the shilling, so you can see a squeeze coming instead of discovering it on Friday.

A payroll float solves a timing problem, not a profitability problem. For genuine short gaps — an unpaid invoice, a fuel bill before a certificate clears — a fundi emergency loan or advance repaid from future wages can keep a gang working. But if every month needs a rescue, the fix is on the commercial side: certificates, variations and retention, not another loan.

• Use a float for timing gaps you expect to close.
• Use an emergency advance for a single, defined cost.
• Fix the underlying margin if the squeeze repeats every month.