Homes built for a head contractor
The business is a residential building contractor in the lower North Island. Its work comes through a head contractor that holds a contract with a government housing agency.
That puts the business a step down a chain. It does the building and invoices the head contractor. The head contractor claims the money from the agency. Only once that claim is paid does the money come back down to the business.
When the head contractor is waiting too
Government housing work is good work to have. The catch is that nothing in the chain moves faster than its slowest link. The head contractor can’t pay until the agency pays it, and the agency works to its own timetable.
When they signed up in May 2025, the owner told the FundTap team the wait between invoicing the head contractor and the agency’s money arriving kept dragging on, and a payment they’d been expecting still hadn’t landed.
The costs of building don’t sit still while that happens. Materials and labour on the next house are paid for long before the last invoice comes back down the chain.
Funding the invoice stuck in the chain
Their bookkeeper pointed them to FundTap. They signed up in May 2025 and were approved that month, with no charge until they chose an invoice to fund.
They chose the invoice the head contractor still hadn’t paid, saw the fee before they committed, and funded it. The head contractor still paid that invoice to the business, in its own time.
Building on while the agency pays
That one invoice did its job. The business could keep going on the housing work without waiting for the agency’s payment to work its way through the head contractor and down to them.
They’ve funded one invoice since May 2025, and the rest of the time the account has sat ready at no cost. The next time an invoice is caught between the head contractor and the agency, it’s there.
The timeline
- May 2025 Referred by their bookkeeper and signed up, with a head contractor invoice waiting on the agency.
- May 2025 Approved, with no charge until they chose an invoice to fund.
- May 2025 Funded the invoice held up in the chain, and kept building.
In numbers
- 2nd in line for the money: the agency pays the head contractor, who then pays them
- 1 invoice funded, the one caught between the head contractor and the agency
- 17 months as a customer, to September 2026
Sound like your business?
You’ve built the homes and invoiced the head contractor, but the money has to come from the agency first. Fund the invoice that’s held up and keep building.
Get paid now for work you’ve already done.
Invoice finance for construction and trades • All case studies
