Steward · a service of Stargira Advisors

Credit control for construction subcontractors

Applications chased, pay-less notices answered, retentions tracked and recovered. Run for you, every week, for less than half a day a week of a QS's time.

Who it is for

M&E and electrical

Mechanical, electrical and building-services contractors working under main contractors on schools, hospitals, housing and commercial jobs.

Groundworks and civils

Groundworks, drainage, RC frame and highways contractors paid on monthly applications, measured accounts and certified valuations.

Specialist trades

Joinery, roofing, cladding, fit-out and other specialist subcontractors with roughly 5 to 50 staff, in England and Wales.

If your cash sits in applications that have not been certified, pay-less notices nobody has answered, and retentions that were due back a year ago, Steward is built for you. If the person chasing all of that is the managing director on a Friday afternoon, it is built for you twice.

What Steward does

Chases

Every application, invoice and certified sum is followed up on a fixed rhythm, by email and by phone, with the payer's QS and accounts team. Nothing is left to drift past its due date.

Watches the notices

Payment-notice and pay-less-notice deadlines under the Construction Act are tracked for every application. A late or missing notice is spotted the day it happens, and the sum notified becomes the sum due.

Recovers

A retention ledger for every job, with release dates and reminders. Statutory interest claimed where it is owed. When a debt needs more than chasing, a collections agency or construction solicitor picks it up on terms agreed in advance.

How it works

  1. Connect the ledger. Steward reads your accounting system and your applications for payment. Nothing changes in how you invoice or apply.
  2. Every chase is drafted, then approved. AI drafts each email, call note and notice response from your ledger and contract terms. A named operator reads and approves before anything is sent. In the first months every message is approved by you as well.
  3. You see the ledger every week. A one-page report: what is overdue, what notices are due, what retentions are coming up, what was recovered.
  4. Escalation is arranged before you need it. Debts that need a collections agency or a solicitor are handed over with the file already built. Partner terms are agreed up front; Steward introduces, and the partner acts for you directly.

Steward is not software you log into, and it does not send automated reminders. It is a service, run by people, using AI to do the reading, drafting and deadline-tracking that used to make specialist credit control too expensive for a firm your size.

Pricing

Steward Site

£395

per month, excluding VAT

  • Up to about 30 live applications and invoices
  • Chase and escalate by email and phone
  • Every message drafted for your approval
  • Retention ledger tracked

Steward Managed

£595

per month, excluding VAT

  • Up to about 100 live applications and invoices
  • Routine chasing runs without sign-off; exceptions come to you
  • Payment-plan negotiation
  • Statutory-interest claims
  • Notice-deadline monitoring on every application

Steward Full

£795

per month, excluding VAT

  • 200 or more live applications and invoices
  • Retention recovery campaigns across old jobs
  • Adjudication and legal referral, file prepared
  • Priority operator

Three-month initial term, then rolling thirty days. Launch pricing, held for founding clients for their first twelve months. No percentage of what is collected: the money recovered is yours.

Why now

The Commercial Payments Bill, introduced to the House of Lords in May 2026, proposes a 60-day cap on payment terms, mandatory interest at 8% over base on late payment, fining powers for the Small Business Commissioner, and a ban on retentions in construction, subject to further consultation. Large contractors already file payment-practice reports and, from 2025, retention disclosures. The rules are moving in the subcontractor's favour. Most subcontractors do not have anyone whose job it is to use them.

None of this is law yet. Steward tracks each stage and applies the rules as they come into force.

Founding clients

Steward is taking its first accounts now. Founding clients get the price above held for twelve months, a direct line to the operator, and a say in what the service becomes. In return we ask for candour about what works and what does not, and permission to publish anonymised results: median days to paid, before and after.

If you would rather talk before deciding anything, a twenty-minute call about how your ledger is chased today costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

kyasuda@stargira.com

Steward is run by Kazuhiko Yasuda at Stargira Advisors Ltd. A one-page summary of this page is available as a PDF.