Strong rights, unforgiving paperwork
Queensland has one of the strongest security of payment regimes in the country. The rights it gives a subcontractor are real, and they are lost far more often on form than on merit. Paystruct exists to close that gap.
A payment claim is a statutory document, not an invoice
The Act gives you a right to be paid and a fast way to enforce it, but the right only bites if the document that goes out is the one the Act contemplates. Get the form wrong and the money you are owed stops being the question.
- It goes out a day early, before the reference date has accrued.
- Two claims end up served against the same reference date.
- The work is described in percentages a respondent cannot properly answer.
- Approved variations never make it across, or unapproved ones do.
- Retention is taken at the wrong rate, or past the limit of retention.
- It is served on a related company rather than the party to the contract.
- A supporting statement is required and is not attached.
- Months later, nobody can prove when it was served, or how.
Most claims are built in a spreadsheet
That is not a criticism. It is what has been available. A spreadsheet will add up perfectly and still let every one of those failures through, because none of them are arithmetic.
It does not know the date
It has no memory
It cannot check itself
It proves nothing
Encode the requirements, once
The contract carries the structure: the parties, the reference date mechanism, the retention terms and the schedule of works. A claim is then a period and a set of figures, measured against the Act before it goes anywhere.
- Reference dates worked out from the contract's own mechanism, and stated before you serve.
- Business days counted with Queensland public holidays and the December shutdown.
- Quantities against units and rates on every line, not percentages alone.
- Variations, adjustments, retention and securities carried through to the claim.
- A supporting statement produced and served where one is required.
- Service by a method the contract permits, with the date, method and proof kept.
- Every claim, schedule, payment and document filed against the contract.
Early, small, and built with its first users
Paystruct is in early access. It is being built with its first users, against real contracts and real claim cycles, rather than for an imagined version of them. It is small, and this page will say so for as long as that is true.
That is also why it is free for now. You get the whole product, and we get to watch it meet real contracts. When paid plans arrive they will be announced well before early access ends, and published on the pricing page.
Paystruct is built in Brisbane and written to the Queensland Act first. You can run contracts elsewhere in Australia and the claim documents are built the same way, but the statutory checks and the section references are Queensland's. Other jurisdictions are on the roadmap, and we will say so when they arrive rather than before.
What we will not do
- Tell you a claim is valid. Validity turns on your contract, your facts and the Act, and no software can promise it.
- Invent certainty. Where the answer depends on something only you know, you get asked. Where the position is arguable, you get told.
- Replace a lawyer. A contested claim, a final claim, a terminated contract or an adjudication is worth advice, and Paystruct will say so.
- Hold your record. Your contracts, claims and documents are yours, and they can be exported.