How to inspect a website
before you pay the last invoice

Someone told you it's done. The last invoice on the job is sitting in front of you, waiting for you to hit send on a payment.

You don't write code. So the one thing you can judge for yourself, right now, is whether the site looks right on your phone.

That's real, and it's worth something. But it's the smallest part of the check, and you already own the rest of it. You run a finished-work walk on every job you close or hand to a sub. This is that same walk, pointed at a website instead of a roof.

Boil it down and the question is not "does it look done." It's three checks you can actually run: is it real, is it yours, and does it match the paper you signed.

How it looks barely matters here. What matters is whether it's finished, yours, and in Google.

One more thing before we start, and it's the whole reason this page is about timing and not just checking. Your pull to get anything fixed is strong right up until the money moves, and close to gone the second after.

Looks finished is not the same as finished

A site can look sharp on your phone and still be a stock template with your name and logo dropped into the blanks. Polish and substance are two different things. A screenshot can't tell them apart, and neither can you, by looking.

A badge in the footer doesn't prove it. A wall of other companies' logos doesn't prove it. A confident answer to a plain question doesn't prove it. Those cost the builder nothing to hand you, which is exactly why they prove nothing.

A cut-rate shop swaps your logo onto the same template it sells every other trade and calls it custom. The outfit that answers "does it load fast?" with a paragraph about modern web platforms is running the same move with words instead of pictures. Neither one answered what you asked.

If something about the thing feels off, don't talk yourself out of it. Your gut is matching against every job site you've ever walked onto. It just hasn't been handed a list yet. The rest of this page is the list.

Looks finished (proves nothing)	Is finished (you can check it)
Looks sharp on your phone	You hold the logins in your own name
A badge or award in the footer	The phone number on it actually dials you
A wall of client logos	The contact form actually reaches your inbox
A confident "yes, it's fast"	It comes up when you search your name in Google
"It's fully custom"	Every invoice line maps to the signed proposal

Get your own keys before the last dollar moves

One contractor described logging in to his own website and email and finding both gone — and every phone number he had for the people who built it was disconnected. He had never known who hosted his site, or whether he owned any of it, until the day it stopped working.

That's the whole case for doing this before you pay, not after. Right now, a login you don't have yet is something a builder hands over to keep the job moving. After the final payment, it's something you're chasing.

So before you send that last payment, make sure three things are in your own name, not a seat on somebody else's account: the domain (your web address), the hosting (the space the site lives on), and the login you'd use to edit the page. This page only tells you when to run that check. The full stack, and the exact login-by-login test for each one, is here.

One line to send in writing before the final invoice clears

"Before the last payment goes out, send me the domain login, the hosting login, and the login to edit the site, all in my name."

A builder with nothing to hide sends that in one email.

Built is not the same as being in Google

Here's the check that looks done and can quietly not be. A site can be live, load fast, and look perfect — and still not be in Google at all. Being built and being findable are two separate things, and one does not come with the other.

"In Google" has a name: indexed. It means Google has read the page and put it in the list it pulls from when someone searches. A brand-new site is not automatically on that list.

You can check it yourself in ten seconds, no tools, no account. Type your business name and one full sentence copied straight off a page of the new site into Google. If the page doesn't come up, it isn't in Google yet.

A clean, finished-looking site can sit unindexed on purpose or by accident. Google does not index every page it crawls, and it says so plainly: "You should not expect all URLs on your site to be indexed, only the canonical pages." A crawled page "may or may not be indexed in the future." So a brand-new site can go live and still sit un-indexed for weeks while Google decides whether the pages are worth keeping. SEO practitioners describe this as a probation period weighted toward quality and engagement; Google itself just says indexing is never guaranteed and new content takes time.

That's not proof your builder did anything wrong. It's the reason you check instead of assume.

If the search test comes back empty, that's a fair question for the builder, not an accusation. In Google Search Console, the URL Inspection tool lets you Request Indexing for a page, which asks Google to crawl it, and submitting a sitemap helps Google discover your important pages. Neither guarantees indexing or a set timeline — Google says a crawl can take a few days to a few weeks and asking again does not speed it up. So the check is simple: ask the builder to show you the pages coming up as indexed in Search Console, and to request it if they aren't.

Ask for one proof, not a good feeling

"Does it look professional" is the wrong question, because two very different builders both pass it — the one who built you something real and the one who dropped your name in a template. A good feeling isn't evidence.

So ask for one checkable thing per piece of the work, not a general impression. One concrete yes-or-no beats a page of reassurance every time.

One roofing owner didn't take a lead vendor's word for it either. He set up a throwaway email, requested a quote through an ad running on his own company's name, and found the lead was being sold to competing contractors — he was paying to route his own callers to rivals. Testing beat trusting. It usually does.

You don't have to invent the tests. There's a short set of plain checks you can run on the finished site yourself, live. Run it right now, with the builder still on the hook and reachable — not three months from now, alone, after the money's gone.

If any one of them comes back a no, that's not a maybe. It's the one concrete thing you asked to see, and it isn't there.

Hold the bill against the paper you signed

The proposal you signed named real things: pages, features, a price tied to named work in a named month. Now that the thing exists, lay it next to that same paper and read down it, line by line. The method for reading that paper is its own page.

One contractor realized only fourteen months in that a vendor had double- and triple-charged the monthly bill — the kind of thing you only catch by reading every line. A short invoice hides a wrong line the same way. Read every line. Don't take the total on faith.

You're checking one plain thing: does every dollar on this invoice point to something the proposal actually named. A line for work the paper never named is a question you ask now, out loud, before you pay it — not a charge you swallow because the number at the bottom looked about right.

What earns a hold on the last payment

A sub doesn't get the full check until the punch list clears. Same rule here, for the same reason you already believe in it: the fix happens while the money is still on the table, or it doesn't happen.

Three things earn a real hold. Not a delay to be difficult — a specific, named thing that has to be right first:

• You don't have your own logins yet, in your own name.
• A basic check came back a no — the phone doesn't dial you, the form doesn't reach you, or the site doesn't come up in Google.
• The invoice bills for something the proposal never named.

Put it in one line, in writing, with a date. "The final payment goes out once [the missing thing] is fixed and confirmed." That's not a threat. It's the same accountability you'd expect from anyone working under you.

Be fair about it, too. A wrong shade of blue, a photo you'd swap, a headline you'd word differently — that's a revision, not a hold. A hold is for the three things above: not yours, doesn't work, or wasn't on the paper. Keep the hold clean and specific and a straight builder can clear it fast.

The whole gate, in one sitting

None of this takes more than an evening, and most of it takes minutes. You already know how to accept or reject finished work — you do it on every job you run. Point the same habit at the one somebody else built for you, and do it before the money moves, not after.

The final walkthroughmark before the last payment clears

I hold the login to the domain, the hosting, and the site — all in my own name. YES / NO The phone number on the site dials straight to me, and I tested it. YES / NO The contact form reaches my inbox, and I tested it. YES / NO I searched my business name plus a sentence off the site, and the page came up in Google. YES / NO Every dollar on the invoice maps to something the signed proposal actually named. YES / NO Anything marked NO is written down, with a date, and the final payment waits on it. YES / NO

Every NO up there is a reason to hold the last payment, in writing, until it's a YES. Every YES is one more part of the job you can sign off on with your own eyes.

That's the whole gate. Run it once, in one sitting, while you still hold the last dollar. The self-inspection walks the live-site checks in full, free, no sign-up. And when a real fix is worth paying for, the prices are posted.