Ask your projects data anything. Get answers in seconds. Plexa MCP Connector is live. See it in action

FREE TOOL

Security of payment date calculator

Work out the payment schedule deadline, the payment due date and the adjudication windows under the security of payment legislation, on the correct business-day basis for the jurisdiction.

General information, not legal advice. Security of payment deadlines are strict and the consequences of missing one are severe. Verify every date against your contract and the Act, and take advice before acting or declining to act on this timeline.

1. Jurisdiction

Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW)

Business days exclude 27–31 December, as well as weekends and public holidays.

South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory are not covered. Their regimes differ materially and are not included rather than approximated.

2. Your position

You are the

You served the claim and are chasing payment.

Contract level

Payment terms differ between the two in most jurisdictions.

Date the payment claim was served

Or the date it is taken to have been served.

Shorter schedule period in the contract (optional)

Where the contract requires a schedule sooner than the Act, the shorter period governs. A longer contractual period does not extend the statutory deadline.

Your deadlines: New South Wales

Payment claim served

Mon 31 Aug 2026

The date you entered. Every other date runs from here.

Payment schedule due

Mon 14 Sep 2026

10 business days after service, per the Act

Payment due

Mon 28 Sep 2026

20 business days after service (head contractor to subcontractor)

Adjudication application closesYour deadline

Mon 28 Sep 2026

10 business days after a payment schedule is served.

If no schedule is served. Where no schedule was served, the claimant must give the respondent notice within 20 business days of the due date of its intention to apply for adjudication. The respondent then has 5 business days to provide a schedule before the claimant may apply.

The four regimes side by side

The periods differ enough that a builder working across borders cannot reuse one state's habits in another.

	Payment schedule	Payment due (head / sub)	Adjudication	Holiday exclusions
NSW	10 business days	15 / 20 business days	10 business days	27–31 Dec
VIC	10 business days	20 / 20 business days	10 business days	Not verified
QLD	15 business days	15 / 25 business days	Varies. See note	22–24 Dec, 27–31 Dec, 2–10 Jan
WA	15 business days	20 / 25 business days	20 business days	Not verified

Periods verified as at 27 August 2026

General information only and not legal advice. Security of payment legislation is amended frequently and periods differ between jurisdictions, contract types and the circumstances of service. Deemed service rules, contractual variations and the specific facts of your claim can all change these dates. Confirm against the Act and your contract, and obtain legal advice before acting or declining to act on any deadline shown here.

Why these dates are unforgiving

Security of payment legislation works by imposing short, strict deadlines with severe consequences for missing them. A respondent who fails to serve a payment schedule within the statutory period generally becomes liable for the full claimed amount, and loses the right to raise reasons for withholding.

There is very little judicial sympathy available for a missed deadline. The whole design of the legislation depends on the timeframes being hard, and courts have consistently treated them that way.

This is the one area of construction administration where a calendar error is routinely fatal rather than inconvenient.

The Christmas trap

The Acts do not use ordinary business days. Several exclude a specific block of days over Christmas and New Year from the count entirely, and those exclusions are the most commonly missed feature of the legislation.

In New South Wales, 27 to 31 December are excluded. In Queensland the exclusion is wider: 22 to 24 December, 27 to 31 December, and 2 to 10 January.

The effect is substantial. For a payment claim served in mid-December in Queensland, the correct schedule deadline can fall more than a fortnight later than a naive business-day count would suggest. Both directions of that error are dangerous: a respondent who relies on the naive date may schedule too late, and a claimant who relies on it may commence adjudication before the right has arisen.

The jurisdictions are genuinely different Acts

Security of payment is state legislation and the schemes are not harmonised. Timeframes differ, the definition of a reference date differs, what makes a valid payment claim differs, and the adjudication process differs.

Victoria’s regime was substantially reformed on 15 April 2026, with the previous retention provisions repealed and a new performance security framework inserted. Anything written about Victorian security of payment before that date should be treated as out of date until checked.

Use the calculator for the jurisdiction that actually governs the contract, which is not always where your office is.

This is a date calculator, not legal advice

The tool computes statutory timeframes on the correct day-counting basis and shows which days it excluded and why. That is a genuinely useful thing and it is all it does.

It does not tell you whether your payment claim is valid, whether a reference date has arisen, whether the contract is a construction contract for the purposes of the Act, or whether your circumstances fit any of the exceptions. Those questions decide cases and they need a construction lawyer.

If a deadline you are relying on is close, get advice rather than relying on any calculator. The cost of advice is trivial against the cost of a deadline that turns out to have passed.

The AI Construction Operating System

One platform, one data model, every project. Built in Australia, for the world.

YOUR DATA, PROTECTED

Hosted on AWS Sydney with Australian data residency.

GET THE MOBILE APP