A payment claim is a formal document you serve on the party who owes you money, saying what work you did in a period and what you say you are owed for it. Every Australian state and territory the platform supports, and New Zealand, has legislation that gives that document legal effect: Security of Payment legislation, or in New Zealand the Construction Contracts Act 2002.
Most people on site call it a progress claim. It is the same document under a different name: payment claim is the word the legislation uses, progress claim is the word the industry uses, and your contract may well use both. Progress claims and payment claims puts the two vocabularies side by side, including the related term the acts use for the money itself, a progress payment.
The legal effect is the point. Once you have served a valid payment claim, the other side is on a clock. They must reply, in writing, within a fixed number of days. If they do not, they become liable to pay the whole amount you claimed. Not the amount they think is right: the amount you claimed. See payment schedules.
Who the parties are
The legislation is written in general terms because it applies right down the contracting chain.
- The claimant is whoever carried out the work and wants paying. On this platform, that is you.
- The respondent (New Zealand calls them the payer) is whoever owes you under that contract. Usually your head contractor. On a contract direct with a developer or an owner, it is them.
The platform calls the other side your counterparty, because the same organisation can be a head contractor on one contract and a principal on another.
What makes a claim valid
The details vary between jurisdictions, but every act asks for the same three things.
It has to identify the work. Enough detail that the respondent can tell what they are being asked to pay for. In practice this means claiming line by line against the scope of your contract, which is what the platform's claim editor produces.
It has to state the amount. The amount you say is due for that period.
It has to say it is made under the Act. This is the requirement people miss, and it is the one that voids claims. Most acts require the document to state, on its face, that it is a payment claim made under the relevant legislation. The platform puts the correct wording for your contract's jurisdiction on every claim PDF automatically, so you do not have to remember which act to name.
New Zealand asks for one more thing: prescribed information must accompany every payment claim: an outline of how the payer responds and what happens if they do not (Construction Contracts Act 2002, s 20(3) and (4), in the form prescribed by the Construction Contracts Regulations 2003). The platform includes it on every New Zealand claim as its own section of the PDF.
When you can serve it
You cannot serve a claim for a period before that period has ended. The earliest day is set by your contract's reference date, usually the last day of the month, sometimes a nominated day like the 25th. There is also, in every jurisdiction except New Zealand, a last day: a longstop measured from when the work was carried out (from practical completion, in Victoria) after which the claim can no longer be served under the Act at all.
Both bounds are explained in reference dates and claim periods, and the actual figures for your jurisdiction are in the timing summary.
The platform checks your intended service date against that window and warns you when it falls outside. It warns rather than refuses, because a contract can extend the window in ways the platform may not have on file, but a warning here is worth stopping for.
Serving it is a separate act from writing it
A claim exists once you have prepared it. It has legal effect once it has been served, meaning actually delivered to the respondent, in a manner the Act or your contract permits.
The date it was served is the date every subsequent deadline counts from, which is why the platform records it explicitly rather than inferring it from when you clicked something. Where your head contractor requires the claim to be lodged in their own system instead, that lodgment is how the claim is served, and claims lodged in a head contractor's portal covers what the platform does with one. Serving by email is straightforward in most jurisdictions. In South Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand the act only recognises email service where there is a basis for it: a clause in your contract, or the recipient's recorded consent. Where the platform does not have that basis on file for a contract, it routes you to serve manually and asks you to tell it the date you did.
Why a payment claim is not a tax invoice
The claim PDF shows GST, and it is still not a tax invoice. It says so on its face, and it says when the tax invoice will follow.
What is behind this is the attribution rule: unless you account for GST on a cash basis, you account for it when you are paid or when you issue the invoice, whichever comes first. If the payment claim were itself the tax invoice, you would owe the ATO or IRD GST on the full amount you claimed, in the period you claimed it, including any portion your head contractor never certifies. Raising the tax invoice once the amount is settled means you account for GST on what was actually agreed.
That is what the platform does by default where you have connected Xero: the tax invoice is raised from the certified figures after the payment schedule comes back.
It is not the only defensible choice, and for some subcontractors it is the wrong one. If you serve near the end of the month and are rarely certified before you serve the next claim, waiting for certification can push the invoice, and the payment conversation that goes with it, a month past the work. You can instead have the tax invoice raised when the claim is served, at your claimed values, and corrected if the schedule certifies less. That brings the GST forward into the period you served in, on amounts that are not yet agreed.
Which of the two is right for you is an accounting decision, not a legal one: both are ordinary practice, and it is a question for your accountant rather than for us.
Either way, expect two documents with different totals: the claim you served, and the tax invoice. That gap is the payment schedule, and it is normal.
What happens next
- You serve the claim. The clock starts on the date of service.
- The respondent has a fixed window to return a payment schedule saying what they accept and what they reject. That window is between 10 and 20 days depending on where your contract is. See the timing summary.
- If a schedule arrives, you record it against the claim and the platform recomputes what you are owed.
- If no schedule arrives by the deadline, the respondent is liable for the full claimed amount. What that means, and what you can do about it.
- Separately, the payment itself falls due on a statutory date measured from service, which in most jurisdictions is later than the schedule deadline.