Is my invoice a payment application?

Every month you send an invoice. Nobody has ever called it a payment application. Does the difference matter?

It matters once, and then completely: if the payer goes quiet, a document that counts as a payment application made under the contract can become the notified sum, the figure they must pay in full (sections 110A and 111 of the Construction Act). A document that does not count is just a piece of paper waiting for someone to answer it.

What makes a document count

Substance, not the heading. The practical tests, and note these come from how contracts are written and how disputes have gone, not from a list in the Act:

• It states the sum you consider due at the due date.
• It states the basis on which that sum is calculated: the build-up, not just a total.
• It is made under the contract: the right addressee, the right window, the mechanism your contract actually describes.
• It is recognisable for what it is. A document that has to be decoded is a document that gets argued about. This one is pure practice: make it say what it is.

An invoice that does all of that can be an application in substance. An invoice that is one line and a VAT number probably is not.

How long do you have, and why early is as bad as late

There is no statutory deadline for making an application. The window comes from your contract: typically tied to a valuation date or a fixed day in the month. Two traps, both from the same clock:

• Too late, and you may have missed the cycle: the machinery runs from the next one, and your cash arrives a month behind the work.
• Too early, or on the wrong day, and the payer can argue it was not made under the contract at all, which knocks out the very thing that makes it powerful. An application that misses its window does not become invalid noise, but it does become arguable, and arguable is expensive.

On a job for someone living in the house

The Act does not apply to a contract with a residential occupier (section 106), so there is no notified sum for your application to become. The discipline still pays: a dated document with a sum and a build-up is what gets you paid without argument, and what you rely on if there is one. The difference is that its force comes from your contract and your records, not from statute.

What to do this week

1. Find your application window in the contract and put it in the calendar as a repeating date.

2. Make the document self-evident. Call it an application for payment, state the sum, attach the build-up, address it as the contract says.

3. Keep proof of sending. The day it was made is half of every argument above.