SOPA payment schedules

A payment schedule is the respondent's side of the security-of-payment machine: the formal response that says what you will pay, what you won't, and why. It is one of the few documents in construction where the deadline itself is the entitlement — serve it a business day late, or not at all, and the legislation deems you liable for the whole claim regardless of its merits.

Alloovium's generator treats it that way. When a payment claim comes in, the clock is computed from the statutory rules for the state — in business days, holiday-aware — the claim is assessed line by line against your project record, and the schedule is generated as a formal document with your assessment and reasons on it, ready to serve inside the window.

The consequences are not theoretical; they are the point of the legislation, and the courts apply them mechanically.

• In Manariti Plumbing v Universal Property Group [2025] NSWCA 135, no payment schedule was served — the result was summary judgment for the full $221,901 plus interest and costs. The claim was held valid despite alleged defects, and s 15(4) barred every defence.
• In Sharvain Facades v Roberts Co[2025] NSWCA 161, the head contractor's payment schedule was one business day late — its contract clause deeming after-5pm service to land the next day was void under the Act — and judgment followed for $3,278,043.27 including interest.
• The failure mode is common enough to show up in the regulator's numbers: of 990 NSW adjudication applications lodged in FY24-25, 212 were withdrawn and 44 timed out — “timed out” being pure record-and-deadline failure, before any adjudicator reached the merits.

1. 1

   The claim lands

   The incoming payment claim is captured against the project, and the statutory response clock starts — visible, in business days, with the due date computed for the relevant state.

2. 2

   Line-by-line assessment

   Each claimed line is assessed against the record: what was instructed, what was delivered, what the contract says. Lines that don’t hold up — dayworks never instructed, a variation never approved, quantities that don’t match delivery records — surface for your decision.

3. 3

   Scheduled amounts and reasons

   For every line you certify below the claimed amount, the schedule records the scheduled amount and the reason for withholding — the content the Act requires for the schedule to do its job.

4. 4

   Generate and serve

   The statutory payment schedule is generated as a formal document. You review it, then serve it the way you serve anything — and if you send it through Exchange, the served-on receipts come with it.

The assessment is yours; the generator's job is that nothing required by the statute is missing, nothing is served late because someone was counting days on a wall calendar, and every reason you give is one you can stand behind at adjudication because it points at the record.

Security-of-payment deadlines run in business days, and business days are jurisdiction matters: public holidays shift real due dates in ways a naive calendar count gets wrong. The generator computes the response deadline holiday-aware for the state the project sits in — a deadline that would land on Good Friday does not fall due until the next business day, and the clock you see reflects that.

Certifying a line below the claimed amount is a commercial decision that should leave a trail. When you certify down, the schedule records the claimed amount, the scheduled amount, and the reason — and that assessment lives on the project record, not in a spreadsheet on someone's desktop. If the claimant takes the line to adjudication, your position and its basis are already written down, dated, and consistent with what you served.

• The Commercial Control Loop — where claims and schedules sit in the wider money loop.
• Delay substantiation & evidence packs — proving the time side of the entitlement.
• Exchange — served-on receipts for the schedule you send.
• Variations — the register the line-by-line assessment checks against.