Payment schedules

A payment schedule is the respondent's formal, written answer to a payment claim. It says, line by line, how much of what you claimed they propose to pay, and where that is less than you claimed, why.

It is not an email saying "we'll look at it". The legislation prescribes what the document must contain, and a reply that does not contain it may not be a payment schedule at all.

Payment schedule is the statutory name in every jurisdiction the platform covers: the seven Australian Security of Payment acts it supports, and New Zealand's Construction Contracts Act 2002 (ss 21 and 22), including the prescribed notice that accompanies every New Zealand claim, which tells the payer in so many words to send one.

Your contract may not use it. Under AS 4000 the Superintendent replies to a Progress Claim with a Progress Certificate; other forms and plenty of head contractors say payment certificate, certificate, or just the assessment. In practice these are the same reply, but the distinction is worth keeping, because a certificate issued under your contract is a payment schedule under the Act only if it contains what the Act requires. That list is next.

What it has to contain

Every act requires broadly the same content:

• Identification of the claim it responds to.
• The scheduled amount: how much the respondent proposes to pay. If that is nothing, it must say so explicitly.
• Reasons, where the scheduled amount is less than the claimed amount. The respondent has to say why. Where the reason is that they are withholding payment, they have to say why they are withholding it.

That last requirement is worth understanding. Reasons given in the schedule are, in most jurisdictions, the only reasons the respondent can later rely on at adjudication. A respondent who reduces a line without explaining it has weakened their own position, not yours.

The deadline

The respondent's clock starts on the date the claim was served, not the date you prepared it and not the date they got around to opening it. For a claim you lodged in their portal, it starts on the date of service recorded on that claim.

How long they have depends on the jurisdiction your contract names, and the acts do not agree with each other. The timing summary carries every jurisdiction's deadline beside the section of the act it comes from, and each jurisdiction also has a page of its own. It is the same data the platform counts to on your contract, which is why this page does not restate it: a figure written out here would go on being published after an amending act moved it.

Two things about counting. Business days are not calendar days: weekends and public holidays do not count, and several acts also carve out a Christmas shutdown period. New Zealand excludes 24 December to 5 January entirely for these sections. The platform counts using each jurisdiction's own definition, on that jurisdiction's own public holiday calendar, so the deadline it shows you is the statutory one and not an approximation.

Under most acts, your contract can shorten this window but not lengthen it. They express the deadline as the earlier of the contract's time and the statutory one. New Zealand's act is the exception: there the time the contract sets applies, and the statutory period applies only where the contract sets none. The platform tracks the statutory default.

When no schedule arrives

This is the part worth knowing before you need it.

If the deadline passes and no payment schedule has been served, the respondent becomes liable to pay the full amount you claimed. Not a reasonable amount. Not the amount they would have scheduled. The amount on your claim.

That liability crystallises on the payment due date, which is its own statutory date, sometimes later than the schedule deadline, sometimes the same day, and in Queensland earlier. From there the acts give you a recovery route: pursue it as a debt in court, or apply for adjudication. Several jurisdictions require you to give a further notice before you can, and some make you choose between the two routes rather than run both. Queensland goes furthest: failing to respond to a payment claim is itself an offence there, carrying up to 100 penalty units.

The exact consequence and recovery path for your jurisdiction, with citations, is in the timing summary.

One caveat specific to South Australia: on a Crown contract worth more than $4 million excluding GST, the no-schedule consequence and adjudication are not available against the Crown party. Your own subcontracts underneath are unaffected. The platform flags this on affected contracts.

Recording a schedule you have received

When a schedule comes back, you record it against the claim it answers. The form mirrors your original claim (each line you claimed, with the accepted value beside it) so you are transcribing rather than rebuilding. That is the same form whether the platform served the claim or you lodged it in your head contractor's own system (claims lodged in a head contractor's portal).

A few things it does for you:

Accepted retention recalculates from the accepted value. Change what a line was accepted at, and the platform recomputes the retention that goes with it, using your contract's retention method. You can override any line to match what the head contractor actually withheld; an overridden line is pinned and flagged so the difference stays visible.

"Matches claim in full" fills every accepted value from the claimed value in one action, which is the common case. The form also opens at the claimed values, but a line you leave untouched is not taken as something the head contractor certified. Change the lines that differ, or press "Matches claim in full" if they certified everything as claimed.

Variance is surfaced, not buried. The difference between what you claimed and what was certified (in total, per line, and separately for retention) is shown as you type. Retention variance especially: a head contractor withholding more retention than your contract provides for is a common and expensive error, and it is only visible if someone compares the two figures.

Once recorded, the certified figures supersede the claimed ones in every running total on the contract. What you claimed is kept (it is what the served document says) but what you are owed is computed from what was certified.

If you disagree with the schedule

Recording a schedule in the platform is bookkeeping, not agreement. It does not waive anything.

The amount a respondent certifies is not the end of the matter: the acts provide adjudication precisely because the parties disagree. Adjudication has short, strict deadlines that run from the schedule, and the platform does not currently manage them. If a schedule materially undercuts a claim, act on it quickly and take advice.

Work that was reduced or rejected in one period can generally be claimed again in a later one, since progress claims are cumulative. The platform surfaces re-claimable amounts when you start the next claim.