Retainage is the slice of each progress payment an owner or GC withholds until the job is complete — often 5–10%. It protects against incomplete or defective work. But it creates a trap on progress lien waivers.
The problem
A progress waiver releases lien rights up to the amount it covers. If you write the waiver for the full invoice amount but you were only paid the invoice minus retainage, you’ve just waived rights to money you haven’t received yet — the withheld retainage.
Do that across a long job and you can quietly release your lien rights to a meaningful sum that’s still sitting in someone else’s account.
The fix: carve it out
On a progress waiver, the covered amount should equal what was actually paid:
Covered amount = invoice amount − retainage withheld
The waiver should make the carve-out explicit — stating that withheld retainage is not waived by the document. That keeps your lien rights to the retainage intact until it’s released and paid.
Final payment
Retainage is typically released with (or near) final payment. When you sign the unconditional final waiver, you’re releasing everything — so make sure the retainage has actually been paid first. (More on that in conditional vs. unconditional waivers.)
Getting the math right automatically
Carving out retainage by hand on every progress waiver is exactly the kind of repetitive math that goes wrong under deadline pressure. ClearLien excludes withheld retainage from the covered amount automatically, and the free generator has a retainage field that does the same.