A payment claim arrived, and the clock started the day it did

A payment claim served under security of payment legislation is not an invoice with a stern tone. It starts a statutory reply window — 10 business days in New South Wales and Victoria, 15 in Queensland and Western Australia, or less where the contract says so — and the reply is a payment schedule. Miss it and you become liable for the full amount claimed, and in most of these regimes you also lose the right to argue about it.

What the document is, and what it started

Every state and territory has security of payment legislation, and it exists to keep money moving through a construction chain while arguments about the work are settled separately. A payment claim is the document that switches that machinery on. It can look like an ordinary invoice, which is exactly why so many of them sit in a tray for a fortnight.

What it started is a reply window, and the reply has a name: a payment schedule. The deadlines the responsible agencies publish are these.

1. 1
   New South Wales — 10 business days.Building Commission NSW says the payment schedule must reach the claimant within 10 business days after you received the payment claim. It also says the Act's deadlines are maximum time frames that apply where the contract does not set its own, and that a contract can specify shorter ones.
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   Victoria — 10 business days, unless the contract allows less.The Building and Plumbing Commission puts it as 10 business days after being served with the payment claim, or as required by the contract, whichever is earlier.
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   Queensland — 15 business days, or earlier if the contract says so.The QBCC says a payment schedule must be given within 15 business days after you are given the payment claim or invoice, or earlier if the contract states another timeframe.
4. 4
   Western Australia — up to 15 business days, and a contract cannot stretch it.Building and Energy says a respondent has up to 15 business days after being given the payment claim, or any shorter period agreed in the contract, and that a construction contract attempting to extend the period beyond 15 business days is unenforceable. The current Act covers contracts entered into on or after 1 August 2022; earlier contracts are dealt with under the former provisions.

South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory each have their own Act with its own figures, and none of them is stated here because none was checked. Get yours from your own state's agency or from a construction solicitor today, not from a lender's website — including this one.

The pattern across the four that were checked is worth saying out loud, because it is the one thing people get backwards: the contract can shorten the window, never lengthen it. So the subcontract in the drawer is the first document to read, not the last.

You are not the first one this week

Most head contractors in this position ring the bank, and the answer is the same shape every time. A bank reads a construction business with money tied up in work in progress and a disputed claim on the desk, and it declines for reasons that have very little to do with whether the loan would be repaid. The job is usually profitable. The timing is the problem.

That gap is where HomeSec has been since 2004. What we look at is whether there is enough unused equity in real property and whether the purpose is a genuine business one: not financials, not a credit score, and not who is right about the claim. From a clean, complete scenario funds can be available in as little as 24 hours, and interest can be capitalised for up to six months.

Back to the substance, because the most valuable thing on this page costs nothing at all.

What missing the window actually costs

Not just the money. The published guidance in these states is unusually direct about it, and it is worth reading in the agencies' own terms rather than a summary of them.

1. 1
   You become liable for the full amount claimed.Building Commission NSW: you are liable for the full amount claimed. The Victorian commission: if you miss the deadline, you become liable to pay the full amount claimed. Building and Energy in Western Australia: you could become liable to pay the full amount claimed by the due date for payment. Whether the work was defective, late or never ordered stops being the question.
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   You lose the defences, not just the argument.New South Wales is the bluntest: you cannot raise a defence based on the construction contract or a cross-claim. Victoria says a respondent who has not provided a payment schedule may not submit an adjudication response. Western Australia says you would be precluded from substantiating any reasons for withholding payment should the matter proceed to court, and barred from providing an adjudication response. A set-off you were certain of is simply not available.
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   In Queensland there is a penalty on top.The QBCC states that it is an offence not to pay the full amount by the due date where no payment schedule was given, with a penalty of up to 100 penalty units, and its own regulatory guide records the same maximum against section 76(1) of the BIF Act. It also lists losing the right to respond if the claimant pursues certain dispute resolution options, and for a licensee, demerit points and a licence at risk.
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   There is sometimes a second chance, and it is short.In New South Wales, where no schedule was served, a claimant going to adjudication gives notice within 20 business days of the due date for payment, and the respondent then has 5 business days to serve one. Victoria has the same shape: written notice first, then 5 business days. It is a genuine second window and most people never learn it exists until it has closed too.

What a payment schedule has to say

Three things, and they are the same three everywhere the agencies describe them. Identify the payment claim it responds to. State the amount you propose to pay, if any — nil is a valid answer and has to be stated as one. Then state the reasons why that is less than the amount claimed. Building Commission NSW adds that it must be in writing and addressed to the claimant. The QBCC writes the word ALL in capitals in its own guidance, which tells you what it sees go wrong.

Here is why that third item carries more weight than it looks. In New South Wales the published position is that you cannot raise any defence, set-off, cross-claim or other reason for not paying that you did not include in the payment schedule. Western Australia's fact sheet says the same in its own words: reasons not included in the payment schedule cannot go into an adjudication response. So the schedule is not a holding reply. It is the pleading, and everything that follows is argued inside the boundary it draws.

The Queensland and Victorian pages read on the check date do not state that rule, so it is not claimed here for those two. The practical conclusion is the same in all four: put every reason in, even the ones you are not sure you will run.

The fortnight that is not there

The detail almost nobody has in a diary, and it moves real deadlines. The QBCC states that under the BIF Act a business day is a day that is not a Saturday or Sunday, is not a public holiday, and does not fall between 22 December and 10 January. The amended Victorian Act uses the same 22 December to 10 January exclusion in its own definition of a business day.

The QBCC's published example for the most recent period is that the last business day of 2025 was Friday 19 December and the first of 2026 was Monday 12 January, and that a payment claim given between 20 December 2025 and 11 January 2026 is taken to have been received on 12 January 2026. It cuts both ways and the second way is the dangerous one: a claim served just before Christmas does not quietly expire over the break, it starts its clock in January and arrives on a desk that has stopped thinking about it.

Victoria changed, and the change reached backwards

Worth a paragraph of its own, because it is recent enough that a contract signed in good faith may now be read differently. The Victorian Act was amended by the Building Legislation Amendment (Fairer Payments on Jobsites and Other Matters) Act 2025, and the commission states that the amendments took effect from 15 April 2026 and apply retrospectively to construction contracts entered into before, on or after that date — excepting a payment claim served before it, and an adjudication application made but not determined before it.

Three of the changes matter to somebody holding a claim. A payment term later than 20 business days after a payment claim is served now has no effect. Pay-when-paid provisions are restricted. And notice-based time bars may be found unfair, which is the clause most often relied on to knock out a variation. The commission also lists the removal of excluded amounts among the amendments; which categories those were is not set out on the pages read here, so none is named.

In Queensland, separately, the QBCC states that maximum contract payment terms are 25 business days for subcontracts and construction management trade contracts and 15 business days for commercial building contracts, and that pay-when-paid terms are void. In New South Wales the published due dates are 15 business days from principal to head contractor and 20 business days from head contractor to subcontractor on non-residential work, and a contract may specify earlier dates but not later ones.

What a secured loan does here, and what it does not

Briefly, because the eligibility page covers the mechanics and whether financials are needed covers the paperwork.

Once an amount is scheduled or adjudicated it is payable on a date, and that date does not move because the head contractor above you has not paid yet. That is a timing problem rather than a solvency one, and it is the shape this kind of lending was built for. The security is unused equity in real property, not the contract, the claim or the retention — which is the difference between this and the facilities that read your debtors ledger. The range is $20,000 to $5,000,000, the term is open, and interest can be capitalised for up to six months, so nothing has to come out of the job while it finishes. Funding for builders and developers covers the industry, a certified claim of your own that has not been paid covers the other side of this transaction, and secured against unsecured sets the two kinds of facility side by side.

What a loan cannot do is answer the claim, improve your position in an adjudication, or buy back a deadline that has passed. It pays an amount that has become payable. Those are different things and it is worth being clear-eyed about which one you need.

When borrowing is not the answer

Said first, because it is the most useful sentence here: if the window has not closed yet, the answer is a payment schedule, not a loan. It costs nothing but the hours it takes to write properly, and it is the only thing on this page that can change the amount rather than merely fund it. Ring a construction solicitor the same day. No lender, this one included, should be the first call while that clock is still running.

Where the amount is genuinely owed and the next progress payment will cover it within days, borrowing against a property to bridge that gap is an expensive way to buy a short wait, and an honest conversation with the claimant usually gets further. What a creditor is entitled to do is worth reading before assuming the worst about what happens next.

Where there is no equity in real property, a secured loan is not our answer and we will say so on the first call rather than the third. The useful calls then are to a financial counsellor — the National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007 is free, independent and confidential — and to an accountant or a registered liquidator if more than one creditor is pressing. And where the amount is below $20,000 we do not lend to it at all, because registering a security over a property for a figure that size is the wrong tool for the job.

This page explains what a payment claim served under security of payment legislation starts, how long the reply window is in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, what a payment schedule has to contain, and what is lost by not serving one in time. It is general information, not legal, credit or insolvency advice, and it does not state the position in any other state or territory: what is right in your circumstances is a question for a construction solicitor, a lawyer, a registered liquidator or your own state's building regulator, and these Acts are amended from time to time — Victoria's changed on 15 April 2026. Figures and rules were checked on 21 October 2026 and can change.

Reviewed by Paul Stone, Joint Chief Executive