Dates the Act counts, not the ones a diary counts

Reference dates come from the contract. The windows come from the Act. Business days in Queensland are not weekdays. Paystruct works each date out from your contract's own mechanism, counts in the Act's business days, and tells you what is due before it is late.

Create an account How a claim is built

The reference date is the trigger

A claim is made on and from a reference date, one claim for each, and a claim made before its date has accrued is exposed for a reason that has nothing to do with the work.

The contract goes first

Where the contract states or works out the date a claim may be made from, that mechanism governs. The 25th, the last business day, the Friday before the last Monday: set it up once and every future date follows from it.

Silence has a default

Where the contract does not provide for the matter, the reference date is the last day of the month in which work was first carried out, and the last day of each later month.

One claim per reference date

Only one payment claim may be given for each reference date. Paystruct keeps the list of dates already used on the contract and stops a second claim landing on one of them by accident.

Repeating an amount is allowed

A payment claim may include an amount that was in a previous claim. Carrying an unpaid item forward is not the same as claiming twice for the same reference date, and the distinction is worth being clear about in the claim itself.

Termination has its own date

Where a contract is terminated and does not provide for a reference date after termination, the date of termination is a reference date. Terminated contracts are also the point at which you should be taking advice rather than reading a website.

The date is stated, not implied

A claim period is a convenience. A reference date is the statutory trigger, and only you know which one you are claiming against, so Paystruct asks rather than assumes.

A business day is not a weekday

Under the BIF Act a business day excludes weekends and public holidays, and it also excludes every day from 22 December to 10 January. A count that treats the shutdown as an ordinary fortnight understates every January deadline by about a week.

The error is almost invisible at any other time of year, and expensive once. A count that skips weekends alone will tell you a payment schedule was due before Christmas when it was not due until the middle of January, and the response you build on that date is built on nothing.

Paystruct counts weekends, statewide Queensland public holidays and the December shutdown. It does not count local show holidays, because they vary by district and including them would make a deadline wrong for most users in order to make it right for some. Where a show holiday matters on your job, check it yourself.

Payment claim served: Monday 1 December 2025
Counting weekdays only: Monday 22 December 2025
Excluded from the count: Weekends, Queensland public holidays, 22 December to 10 January
Payment schedule actually due: Monday 12 January 2026

Three weeks of difference, on a claim served in the first week of December, on the 15 business day period for a payment schedule.

Every period runs from the moment you served

Which is why service is recorded as a date, a time and a time zone rather than a tick. Record it the day it happens and the rest of the calendar builds itself.

Service and evidence

Payment schedule: 15 business days

The respondent must give a payment schedule by the date required under the contract, or within 15 business days after the claim is given, whichever period ends first. A contract period of 10 business days is the period that applies.

Due date for payment

Payment falls due on the day it becomes payable under the contract. Where the contract makes no provision, or the provision is void, it falls due 10 business days after the payment claim is given.

No schedule, no payment

A respondent who gives no payment schedule and does not pay is exposed on the claimed amount. The routes from there are recovery of the unpaid amount as a debt, or adjudication, and they have different consequences.

Adjudication

An adjudication application runs on a period of business days counted from a start point that depends on what the respondent did or failed to do. Paystruct shows the dates it can see. Do not run an adjudication off a website: this is the point to instruct a lawyer.

Six months, from the right day

A payment claim may be given only within six months after the construction work to which the claim relates was last carried out, or the related goods and services were last supplied. Where the contract sets its own period, the longer of the two applies.

The trap is in the words to which the claim relates. The six months runs from when the work in that claim was last carried out, not from the last day anyone from your business was on site doing something else. A claim picking up an item last touched in February does not get a fresh start because a different crew was there in August.

Record the date work was last carried out on the contract and Paystruct counts the period, warns while there is still time to act, and says plainly when the date has passed. It cannot know that date on its own, and it will not guess it.

A payment claim for a final payment may be given within the longest of these periods.

The period, if any, worked out under the construction contract
28 days after the end of the last defects liability period for the contract
Six months after the completion of all construction work under the contract
Six months after the complete supply of the related goods and services

A final claim is also the claim most likely to be fought. Have a lawyer look at it before it goes, not after the schedule comes back.

What the calendar knows, and what it does not

Every date Paystruct shows is an estimate produced from what you have entered. It is there to stop the obvious mistakes, not to replace your own diary or your lawyer's advice.

Holidays move

Public holidays are gazetted and occasionally shifted. The statewide set is built in. Local show holidays are not, and a one off proclamation will not be either until it is.

Service after hours

A claim served late in the day may be taken to have been served the following business day, which moves everything after it. Paystruct records the time and the time zone so the question can at least be answered.

Contract periods can be shorter

Where your contract requires a payment schedule sooner than the Act does, the earlier date governs. Enter the contract period and Paystruct uses it.

Reference dates can be unusual

Some contracts define a claim date by an event rather than a calendar rule. Set the basis to the contract's own wording and enter the dates yourself instead of forcing a pattern that does not fit.

Facts only you hold

When work was last carried out, when practical completion happened, whether a document was actually received. Paystruct asks for these and shows what depends on them.

It never acts on its own

No date is enforced, nothing is served automatically and no finding is applied to a claim. Every check is shown with the provision behind it, for you to weigh.

Common questions

Where does Paystruct get my reference date from?

From the mechanism you set up on the contract: the last day of the month, a nominated day, the first or last business day, or another basis stated in the contract. It then works out every future date from that rule, shows which dates have already been claimed against, and asks you to confirm the one this claim is made from.

Does it count the Ekka and other show holidays?

No, and that is deliberate. Show holidays are declared by district, so counting them would move deadlines for users on jobs where they do not apply. If a show holiday falls inside a period that matters on your job, allow for it yourself.

The respondent has not given a payment schedule. What happens now?

A respondent who gives no schedule and does not pay by the due date is exposed on the full claimed amount, and the Act gives you routes to pursue it. Which route, and by when, depends on facts about your claim and your contract. Paystruct shows you the dates it can see and tells you to get advice, because that advice is worth having before you choose.

Can I rely on these dates?

Treat them as a second pair of eyes, not as the record. The counts follow the Act's definition of a business day and your contract's own periods, and they are only ever as good as what has been entered. Keep your own diary and confirm anything that decides whether a claim goes out.

Paystruct is software, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. For a contested claim, a final claim, a terminated contract or an adjudication, instruct a construction lawyer, and do it while there is still time on the clock. See also service and evidence, where all of these periods begin.

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