Terms of Use

HeldBack is a product of Kynth Studios, operating from New York. These terms govern your use of heldback.kynth.studio and anything you buy through it. If you do not accept them, do not use the site.

We are not a law firm and nothing here is legal advice. We are not accountants. We are not the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries, we are not the awarding agency on your contract, and we have no affiliation with either. We have no access to any record you could not look up yourself.

It compares Washington L&I’s published Statement of Intent records against its published Affidavit of Wages Paid records and shows you Intents with no approved Affidavit recorded against them. A result means exactly that and nothing more. It is not a finding that anyone failed to file, and it is not a determination that money is owed to you.

Intents stay open for ordinary reasons: the job is still running, the contract was cancelled, or the affidavit was filed on paper and never reached the published extract. We exclude contracts under $5,000, where the affidavit is folded into a combined form, and anything that started within the last two years. Retainage is estimated at the statutory 5% of your own contract amount, so it is an estimate, not a balance.

A one-time closeout packet for one contract: a record sheet, a statement of what the published file shows against your Intent, a map of the prime chain above you, the awarding agency’s public works contact, a letter you can send that agency, and a checklist of what to file. It is prepared from public records and delivered by email, normally within two business days.

The Affidavit of Wages Paid must be submitted from your own My L&I account, by you or whoever handles your filings. We do not file it, we cannot file it, and we will never claim to. We do not contact the awarding agency on your behalf or represent you to anyone.

A monthly re-run of the same comparison across contracts you file, with an email when something new appears blocked. It is billed monthly, it renews until you cancel, and you can cancel at any time from the link in any billing email or by writing to us. Cancelling stops the next charge; it does not refund the month in progress.

If a packet has not been prepared yet, write to heldback@kynth.studio and we will refund it in full. If it has been prepared and you believe it is wrong, tell us what is wrong and we will either correct it or refund it. We do not refund on the basis that the awarding agency declined to release retainage, because that outcome was never ours to promise.

The packet we prepare for you is yours to use however you like, including sending it to the agency, your attorney or the prime. The site itself, its lookup tool and its underlying code remain ours. The public records inside a packet were never anyone’s property to begin with.

Do not scrape the lookup, run it at automated volume, or resell its output as a data feed. It is there so a contractor can check their own contracts. If you want bulk access, write to us instead of taking it.

The service is provided as is. We do not warrant that the published records are complete or current, because they are published by a third party. To the extent the law allows, our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to what you paid us for it. We are not liable for retainage that is not released, for a filing deadline you miss, or for any consequential loss.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, and the state and federal courts sitting in New York have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

We may update these terms; the date at the top of this page shows when they last changed. Anything you already bought stays governed by the terms in force at the time you bought it.