Statutory payment dates

Where the dates come from

Everything is counted from the due date, which you set on the certificate. Your contract decides what the due date is, usually by reference to a valuation date or an application.

1. Payment notice: due date plus 5 days.
2. Final date for payment: due date plus 14 days under JCT and NEC, plus 17 under the Scheme.
3. Pay-less notice: counted backwards from the final date for payment, 5 days under JCT and 7 under NEC and the Scheme.

Weekends and bank holidays

QScope excludes Saturdays, Sundays and England and Wales bank holidays from the counts. This is where hand counting normally goes wrong, and it goes wrong predictably around Easter and the August bank holiday.

Scotland and Northern Ireland have different bank holidays. The Act counts them by the calendar of the part of the UK the work is in, so on a job there, check the dates against your own calendar before you rely on them.

When your contract says something different

Amended forms are common and a bespoke payment period overrides the standard one.

1. Open Settings for the project.
2. Enter your own payment period in the payment days field.
3. QScope uses your figure for the final date for payment, and counts the pay-less deadline back from it.

Seeing deadlines across every job

One job you can hold in your head. Nine jobs across three surveyors is where a notice goes missing, and it is never the project you were thinking about that morning.

1. Open the projects list.
2. The deadline panel sorts by what is closest, with overdue shown separately from approaching.
3. Click through to the job that needs a certificate issuing.

What prints on the certificate

The four dates print on the face of the document, together with the statement of the sum considered due and the basis on which it is calculated.

That statement is not decoration. Section 110A of the Construction Act requires a payment notice to give both the sum and the basis, and a certificate carrying only a total is weaker than one carrying the valuation behind it.

FIDIC and international projects

On a FIDIC contract the dates come from the contract rather than the Construction Act, and they are counted in calendar days, not by excluding weekends and bank holidays. There is no payment notice and no pay-less notice.

1. Set the contract form to FIDIC and the jurisdiction on the project.
2. QScope dates the Interim Payment Certificate at the Statement date plus 28 days, and payment at the Statement date plus 56 days, on the 1999 Red Book defaults.
3. Adjust the 28 and 56 day periods where the Particular Conditions set something different.

What QScope does not do

It does not check that the contract form you selected is the one that actually applies to your job, and it does not tell you whether a notice is valid. It calculates dates from what you entered.

The notices you issue remain your professional work and your professional responsibility. Keep your own diary of critical dates as well. A second record costs nothing.