The shortest path from an empty account to a served claim runs through five things, in order. Each one exists because the next depends on it.
What to have to hand
- Your ABN or NZBN. The platform looks the rest up from it.
- A trading address. It appears on the claim as the claimant's address.
- One contract you are about to claim against, with its schedule of items and rates.
- The head contractor's details: their ABN or NZBN, and the person or inbox that receives claims.
The order things happen in
- An organization. The billing boundary, and where members live. It can hold more than one trading entity.
- A company. The trading entity that holds the contract and serves the claim. Most accounts have exactly one.
- A counterparty. Whoever owes you under the contract, usually your head contractor. The registry lookup fills in the rest from the business number.
- The contract. Its items, its retention terms, how often you may claim, and its jurisdiction. The jurisdiction is what every statutory deadline the platform counts is counted against, so it is the field to get right. See timing by jurisdiction.
- The claim. The platform drafts it from the contract; you confirm what was completed in the period, and serve it.
Two things worth knowing before you start
A reference date is a cut-off, not a due date. The contract asks for a day of the month, and that day decides both what a claim is allowed to cover and the earliest day you may serve it. It is the field people most often set to the wrong thing. reference dates and claim periods explains what it does. If your contract has you submit before the period ends ("claim period 1 to 31 August, submit by the 25th"), keep the reference date at the end of the period and set When claims can be served to the earlier day instead. Unlike the reference date, that setting can be changed after claims have been made.
You do not have to have served your claims here to track them here. A contract can be set up with the claims you have already served against it, so the retention held and the contract's history are right from the first period you run on the platform.