How do you respond to a payment schedule?

Check three things before you argue about the money: that the reply is a payment schedule at all, that it arrived in time, and what reasons it gives. Those three decide which routes are open to you, and two of them are checks on the document rather than on the numbers.

The order matters. People skip to the argument about the figures and find out weeks later that the document they were arguing with was never a payment schedule, or that a deadline they could have used has passed. This page sits under payment schedules, which describes the document itself.

First, is it a payment schedule?

Not every reply is one. The acts prescribe what the document must contain, and a reply that does not contain it may not be a payment schedule whatever it is headed and whoever signed it.

Three things, in every jurisdiction:

• it identifies the claim it responds to;
• it states the scheduled amount proposed to be paid, saying so explicitly where that amount is nothing;
• where the scheduled amount is less than claimed, it gives reasons.

An email saying "we are reviewing this", a spreadsheet of new numbers with no explanation, or a certificate reducing three lines without saying why may all fail that test. What it has to contain sets it out in full.

This is the first check because of what follows from there being no valid schedule: the respondent becomes liable for the full amount claimed, not a reasonable amount and not the amount they would have certified. When no schedule arrives covers the consequence and the recovery routes, several of which require a further notice first.

Do not decide this one alone if there is real money in it. It is exactly the question adjudicators are asked, and it turns on the wording in front of you.

Second, did it arrive in time?

The clock runs from the date the claim was served, not from the date the reply was drafted or the date on the certificate. Each jurisdiction gives a fixed number of days, counted in that jurisdiction's own business or working days on its own public holiday calendar. The figures, each with the section they come from, are in the timing summary.

A schedule arriving after the deadline is a late schedule. Whether that helps depends on the act and on what is done next, and it is the second thing worth advice on.

Third, read the reasons

The reasons are the most valuable part of the document, and they are valuable to the claimant rather than to the respondent.

In most jurisdictions the reasons given in the schedule are the only reasons the respondent may later rely on at adjudication. They cannot reduce a line for one reason in August and defend it on a different reason in October. A respondent who cut a line without explaining it has narrowed what they can say later, not what you can.

So read them for what they commit to, and record them as given rather than as you would summarise them.

Then reconcile, line by line

Set what was claimed beside what was certified and sort the differences into three piles, because the three have different answers.

Measurement. They agree the work is in scope and disagree about how much is done, or about the rate. This is the ordinary substance of progress claiming, it usually resolves against site records, and it very often resolves in the next claim without anyone escalating anything.

Scope. They say the work is not in the contract, or the variation was never approved. This does not resolve by re-claiming, because claiming it again produces the same answer. It resolves by producing the approval, or by putting the entitlement question somewhere it gets decided.

Set-off. Backcharges, liquidated damages, defect rectification, an amount for another contract. These are not an assessment of the claim at all, and they are the category where a bare figure with no reason is most common and least defensible.

Then check retention separately. Retention withheld at a rate or past a cap the contract does not provide for is a common and expensive error, and it is invisible unless the claimed and certified retention are compared as their own figure rather than read off the bottom line. When the numbers do not match is about that drift.

The four routes, in the order most people should consider them

Re-claim next period. Progress claims are cumulative, so a line reduced in one period can generally be claimed again in the next. For measurement differences this is usually the whole answer and it costs nothing.

Put the reconciliation in writing. Most shortfalls are an assessor working from less information than the claimant has. A line-by-line response attaching the site records and the variation approvals, sent while the assessment is fresh, resolves more of these than any formal step.

Adjudicate. The acts provide adjudication precisely because the parties disagree, and it is fast by design. It also runs on short, strict deadlines counted from the schedule, which is why this page is ordered as it is: where a schedule materially undercuts a claim, that decision is one to make in days rather than after the next claim cycle.

Recover as a debt, where no valid payment schedule was served in time. Several jurisdictions require a further notice first, and some require a choice between debt recovery and adjudication rather than both.

One thing not to do

Do not re-serve the same claim as a fresh claim to force the point. New South Wales, South Australia, the ACT and Tasmania allow only one payment claim per named month on a contract, so a second claim in a month that already carries one may be invalid. That turns a dispute about money into a dispute about whether there is a claim at all. Only one claim per period has the detail.

The route to re-claiming a reduced line is the next period's claim on the cumulative arithmetic, not a second claim in this one.

How the claim was assessed before the schedule reached you is covered in how a progress claim is verified.