What to Do When a Nevada Customer Does Not Pay

Read NRS 624.320 before you read anything else

Nevada does not merely penalise unlicensed contracting. It removes the courtroom. NRS 624.320 provides in full that no person, firm, copartnership, corporation, association or other organization "engaged in the business or acting in the capacity of a contractor shall bring or maintain any action in the courts of this State for the collection of compensation for the performance of any act or contract for which a license is required by this chapter without alleging and proving that such person ... was a duly licensed contractor at all times during the performance of such act or contract and when the job was bid."

Three features of that sentence matter to a contractor chasing money. It applies to "any action ... for the collection of compensation," not only to breach of contract. It requires you to allege and prove licensure as part of your own case, so it is not a defence the customer has to raise and lose. And it fixes two moments in time - throughout performance, and at bid - which is a stricter test than most people expect.

The statute reaches work "for which a license is required by this chapter." That is why the NRS 624.031 exemptions matter here as much as they matter to enforcement. If your work fell inside subsection 6 (repair or maintenance under $1,000 including labour and materials, subject to its five exceptions) or another exemption, no licence was required for it and the bar has nothing to bite on. If it did not, the bar applies whatever the merits of your invoice.

Official sources: NRS Chapter 624: State Contractors’ Board (Nevada Legislature)

The second hit: the contract may never have existed

NRS 624.700(4) is a separate provision doing separate work: "if a person submits a bid or enters into a contract in violation of subsection 1, the bid or contract shall be deemed void ab initio." Void from the beginning, not voidable, and not merely unenforceable by one side.

Put the two together and an unlicensed Nevada contractor faces a compound problem. NRS 624.320 says you may not bring the action. NRS 624.700(4) says the instrument you would be suing on was void from the outset. Whatever theory you reach for, the statute has already answered the two easiest ones.

The rest of NRS 624.700 explains why this is treated so seriously. Subsection 1 makes it unlawful both to act in the capacity of a contractor and to "submit a bid on a job situated within this State" without an active licence. Subsection 2 assigns prosecution to the district attorneys, or to the Attorney General at the Board's request. Subsection 3 allows the court to order costs, the Board's investigation costs, and "damages the person caused as a result of the violation up to the amount of the person's pecuniary gain from the violation." Meanwhile NRS 624.710(1) gives the Board an administrative fine of "not less than $1,000 and not more than $50,000" per violation that does not depend on any prosecution at all.

Official sources: NRS Chapter 624: State Contractors’ Board (Nevada Legislature)

The lapse case, which is where good contractors get caught

Most contractors reading this were licensed. The dangerous scenario is a licence that lapsed for part of a job. NRS 624.283(1) makes this easy to do: each licence "expires 2 years after the date on which it is issued," subject to Board regulation for staggered biennial renewals, and "any license which is not renewed on or before the date for renewal is automatically suspended." Automatic, and the section writes in no grace period.

A suspension mid-job runs straight into the words of NRS 624.320, which asks for licensure "at all times during the performance." That is a question a Nevada construction lawyer should answer on your specific facts, not one to resolve by reading the statute optimistically. Reinstatement is available under NRS 624.283(4) on an application filed within six months of suspension with a reinstatement fee, if you are otherwise in good standing and no complaints are pending; if you are not in good standing the Board may demand a current CPA-prepared financial statement or impose other conditions. Past six months the licence "may be cancelled by the Board, and a new license may be issued only upon application for an original contractor's license."

Two adjacent obligations can trigger the same problem indirectly. NRS 624.270(2) requires evidence at every renewal that the bond or cash deposit "is in full force," and NRS 624.270(3) makes failure to file or maintain it "cause for the Board to deny, revoke, suspend or refuse to renew a license." NRS 624.256(3) says the same about industrial insurance. A lapsed bond or a lapsed workers' compensation policy is therefore a potential route to a licence problem, and a licence problem is a potential route to NRS 624.320.

There is also a specific suspension pathway worth knowing. Under NRS 624.256(4), when the Board is told by the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation that a judgment has been obtained against a contractor for failure to pay unemployment contributions, or by the Division of Industrial Relations that a contractor is not in full compliance with the industrial insurance chapters, the Board must notify the contractor that it "will suspend the license of the contractor" unless proof of satisfaction or compliance arrives within 30 days.

Official sources: NRS Chapter 624: State Contractors’ Board (Nevada Legislature)

What this article deliberately does not tell you

It does not give you a Nevada mechanic's lien deadline, a notice of right to lien requirement, a preliminary notice period, or a prompt-payment interest rate. Those live in NRS Chapter 108 and in the prompt-payment provisions of NRS Chapter 624, and neither was read end to end in this batch. A lien deadline is the single worst thing to get wrong in construction collection work, and a deadline carried across from a neighbouring state or from a generic template is worse than no deadline at all, so we state none.

What we can say is that lien timing in every state we have researched is short, is measured from events you may not be tracking, and is not tolled by the fact that you are still talking to the customer. If money is owed on a Nevada project, the lien clock is a question to put to a Nevada construction lawyer in the first week, not the second month.

It also does not tell you whether your particular work required a licence. That turns on NRS 624.031 and on the classification structure in NRS 624.215 and NAC Chapter 624, and the answer changes the analysis completely: no licence required means NRS 624.320 has nothing to operate on.

Official sources: NRS Chapter 624: State Contractors’ Board (Nevada Legislature)

The practical order of operations

First, establish your own licence status for the whole job, including the bid date, and get documentary proof of it rather than a memory. NRS 624.320 makes that the threshold question and puts the burden of alleging and proving it on you.

Second, establish whether the work required a licence at all under NRS 624.031, because if it did not, the bar in NRS 624.320 does not apply to it and you are in an ordinary commercial dispute.

Third, get the lien question in front of a Nevada construction lawyer immediately, because that clock runs whether or not the licence question is settled.

Fourth, keep the two records that make everything else easier: the bond required by NRS 624.270 and the industrial insurance proof required by NRS 624.256, both of which the Board re-checks at renewal and either of which can put your licence into the state that creates the NRS 624.320 problem in the first place. And keep your business-side records current too: NRS 76.130(4)(a) can put an entity into default over a missed $200 state business licence renewal, which is not a Chapter 624 problem but is a bad fact to be explaining while you sue someone.

Official sources: NRS Chapter 624: State Contractors’ Board (Nevada Legislature); NRS Chapter 76: State Business License (Nevada Legislature)

Check the official page yourself before you file or sign

Nevada spreads contractor rules across three places that do not cross-reference each other: NRS Chapter 624 and NAC Chapter 624 at the Legislature, the Nevada State Contractors Board for the application mechanics, and the Secretary of State for the entity and the state business licence. The Legislature’s site is the most reliable of the three and publishes the full chapter text openly, so where this guide states a figure it is almost always the statute’s own words.

One access gap you should know about before you budget. The Nevada Secretary of State site is behind an Imperva bot filter that answers every request with a challenge document rather than the page, and the state business portal behaves the same way. We could not read either. Every entity and business-licence figure in this guide therefore comes from the statute that fixes it - NRS 76.100, NRS 76.130, NRS 86.263, NRS 86.272, NRS 86.561 - and no Secretary of State processing time, expedite option or practice note is stated anywhere here, because none could be verified. Confirm current filing mechanics in SilverFlume or by phoning the Secretary of State.

One timing gap as well. NRS 624.240 and NRS 624.283 each exist in two published versions, one "Effective through December 31, 2029" and one "Effective January 1, 2030," and they differ on whether the Board may waive renewal fees during a declared rural contractor shortage. If you are reading a citation to either section after that date, confirm which text is live.

Official sources: NRS Chapter 624: State Contractors’ Board (Nevada Legislature); NRS Chapter 76: State Business License (Nevada Legislature); NRS Chapter 86: Limited-Liability Companies (Nevada Legislature)