Progress claims and payment claims

On site, in most standard contract forms and on your head contractor's own claim schedule, the document you send at the end of the month is a progress claim. In the legislation that gives that document its legal effect, the same document is a payment claim.

They are the same thing. Nothing turns on which word you use when you talk about it. What does turn on the words is narrower, and worth knowing: some of them are statutory terms with consequences attached, and one of them has to appear on the face of the document itself.

Is a progress claim the same as a payment claim?

Yes, one document, two vocabularies.

Progress claim is the industry's word, and it is used on both sides of the Tasman. It is what the common Australian and New Zealand contract forms call it, what most head contractors' claim templates are headed, and what accounting systems file it under.

Payment claim is the statutory word. Every Australian Security of Payment act uses it, and so does New Zealand's Construction Contracts Act 2002.

The platform says "payment claim" everywhere, for one reason: the rights and the deadlines attach to the statutory term, not to the site term. A document served a day outside its window may not be a payment claim under the Act at all (see what a payment claim is), and the consequence of your head contractor missing their reply deadline is a statutory consequence, not a contractual one. If you call it a progress claim, you are not doing anything wrong; you are just using the word the Act does not.

Progress payment, progress claim, payment claim

Three phrases, two different things, and mixing them up is the one mistake that actually costs a reader time when they go looking in the Act.

A progress payment is the money, your entitlement to be paid for part of the work before the whole job is finished. It is a statutory term in its own right, and it is defined: New Zealand at s 5 of the Construction Contracts Act 2002, New South Wales at s 4(1) of its act. Both definitions sweep the final payment in as well, which is why a final claim is usually just another progress payment.
A progress claim, or payment claim, is the document by which you claim one. New South Wales deals with it at s 13; New Zealand at s 20.
A payment schedule is the other side's formal reply to it: what they accept, what they reduce, and why. Some contracts and some head contractors call that a payment certificate or a progress certificate, which is a third vocabulary for a document that is not yours. See payment schedules.

In conversation, "progress claim" gets used loosely for the money as well as the document. Nothing goes wrong when it does. But if you are reading the Act with a claim in front of you, those are separate provisions and the difference is the whole reason you cannot find what you are looking for.

What has to be in a progress claim

Three things, in most acts, whatever your contract heads the document: it has to identify the work, state the amount, and say on its face that it is made under the relevant Act. That third one is the requirement people miss, and it is the one that voids claims: a document headed "Progress Claim 07" with no reference to the legislation may still be a good claim under your contract while doing nothing for you under the Act.

Queensland prescribes it differently, and it is the exception worth knowing: a claim there must identify the work, state the amount, and request payment (BIF s 68(1)), and there is no made-under-the-Act endorsement to get wrong, and a request for payment to get right instead. The platform's Queensland claims carry both, so what it generates satisfies the Act whichever way the point is argued.

The detail is in what makes a claim valid. The platform puts the correct statutory wording for your contract's jurisdiction on every claim PDF automatically, and in New Zealand it adds the prescribed information the Act requires to accompany every claim (Construction Contracts Act 2002, s 20(3) and (4)).

When you can serve one

Two bounds. The earliest day is set by your contract's reference date, usually the end of the month, sometimes a nominated day like the 25th. There is also, in every jurisdiction except New Zealand, a last day, in most places measured from when the work was last carried out, and in Victoria from practical completion.

Both are explained in reference dates and claim periods, and the figures for your jurisdiction, each cited to its section, are in the timing summary.

One property of progress claims that surprises people: they are cumulative. Each one states the total value of work completed on each line since the contract began, and what you are paid this period is that total less what has already been certified. That is why a line reduced in one claim can generally be claimed again in the next.

A progress claim is not an invoice

It shows GST and it is still not a tax invoice, and that is in your favour rather than an oversight: why a payment claim is not a tax invoice explains what would otherwise happen to the GST on amounts your head contractor never certifies.

Progress claims in New Zealand

New Zealand is where the two vocabularies sit furthest apart. The Construction Contracts Act 2002 says "payment claim" throughout, while the industry (contracts, claim templates, conversations on site) very largely says "progress claim". The New Zealand act also asks for something no Australian act does: prescribed information must accompany every payment claim, an outline of how the payer responds and what happens if they do not (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.

Two more New Zealand differences worth knowing before you serve: the Act calls the other side the payer rather than the respondent, and it treats the last day you can serve differently from every Australian jurisdiction. Both are covered in the timing summary.