Issue a payment schedule

Generate the statutory Payment Schedule for a claim and send it to the subcontractor, straight from the claim record.

When to use this

Once you've assessed a claim and want to issue the subcontractor's statutory Payment Schedule — either a draft ahead of finalising your assessment, or the issued version once the claim is Approved.

Prerequisites

• Subcontract's Compliance Model is NZ CCA
• Subcontract has a purchase order (generated when the subcontract was signed) — a subcontract with no PO yet can't have a schedule generated against it
• Claim in Under Assessment, Assessed, Approved or Billed status
• The one-time configuration below is in place, or you'll hit a refusal page when you try to generate

The buttons, and when they appear

Both buttons live on the claim record, in view mode:

• Generate Payment Schedule — appears once the claim is Under Assessment, Assessed, Approved or Billed.
• Send to Subcontractor — appears once at least one schedule has been generated.

Drafts and issued versions

Every time you click Generate Payment Schedule, a new version is created — v1, v2, v3 and so on. Nothing is overwritten. All the versions you've generated for a claim are listed on the claim, most recent first; the latest one is the current version and the one Send to Subcontractor will attach.

The document itself changes depending on whether your assessment has been finalised yet:

• Before the claim is Approved — a draft. The PDF is titled "Payment Schedule", stamped NOT YET APPROVED, and carries no GST lines. Generate one at any point while you're still working through the assessment if you want to check how it reads.
• Once the claim is Approved (or Billed) — issued. The NOT YET APPROVED stamp and the draft restriction on GST lines drop away. Pressing Assess & Approve is not enough on its own: that moves the claim to Assessed. Press Approve Claim before you generate the version you'll send.

Buyer-created tax invoices

The vendor record has a Buyer-created tax invoice agreement tick box.

When the tick box is set, the Payment Schedule becomes a tax invoice:

• Title changes to "Payment Schedule - Buyer Created Tax Invoice".
• A Tax Invoice No. is stamped in the form <Subcontract>-C<nnn> — for example SCT001-C001 — and stays the same on every later regeneration of that claim's schedule.
• Both your company's and the subcontractor's GST numbers print on the document.
• GST is added — 15% of the certified payment after retention.
• Payment Due prints inclusive of GST.
• The claim's Tax Invoice Number and Tax Amount fields are filled in from the schedule.

If the tick box isn't set, the schedule is an ordinary Payment Schedule with no GST lines and no tax invoice number.

What's on the document

The Payment Schedule brings together:

• Job identification — job/project, Project Manager, Financial Manager.
• Main contractor detail — your company name, GST number and postal address, from the one-time configuration below.
• Subcontractor detail.
• Claim identification — claim number, claim period, payment due date.
• Whole-of-contract table — every line on the subcontract's purchase order, including lines not claimed this period, showing Contract, % Complete, Paid to Date, Previous, and Current.
• Variations table — approved variations, each prefixed with an "A" reference. Unapproved variations aren't shown on the schedule yet.
• Reasons for variance — your per-line notes from the assessment, plus any claim-level reasons recorded on the claim.
• Contract summary — Original Contract, Contract Variations, Total Claimed, Less Retentions, and Certified Payments broken down by Original / Paid to Date / Previous / Current.
• Payment summary.
• Retention trust statement — from the one-time configuration.
• "Prev Sent" line — once a previous version of this claim's schedule has been sent, the document shows the date, time and user it was last sent by.
• Footer — Job No, Claim No, and Page N of M.

Dates print in dd/mm/yy format throughout.

Sending it

Click Send to Subcontractor once you're happy with the latest version.

1. A confirmation page opens. If the latest version is still a draft, you'll see a NOT YET APPROVED warning on this page too — a reminder you're sending something that isn't the final word yet.
2. To — the subcontractor's vendor record email, or one of the vendor's contacts that has an email address recorded. You can't type in an arbitrary address.
3. CC me — a tick box that CCs your own email address only.
4. Subject and message are pre-filled and editable.
5. The email attaches the latest Payment Schedule PDF, plus the Form 1 file from configuration if one is set. If no Form 1 is configured, the page tells you it will send the schedule alone.
6. Send.

What gets recorded

Once the email goes out:

• The version's Sent Date, Sent By and Sent To are recorded against that schedule version.
• The claim's Response Issued Date is set, if it wasn't already.

If there's already a Vendor Bill

If a Vendor Bill already exists for the claim, generating a tax-invoice schedule updates the bill's Reference No. to the tax invoice number — but only when the Reference No. field is currently blank and the bill's totals match the schedule. If either condition isn't met, you'll see a warning instead, and you'll need to check the bill by hand.

If you click Create Bill after issuing a tax-invoice schedule, the new bill takes the tax invoice number as its Reference No., but only when the bill's GST agrees with the GST on the tax invoice. The bill's GST comes from the tax codes on the subcontract's purchase order lines, so make sure the items on the Schedule of Values carry the correct GST code (for example 15% GST in New Zealand). A bill whose lines have a zero-rated or undefined tax code will have no GST, won't match, and is left with a blank Reference No. for you to check.

Refusals, and how to fix each

Generating (or sending) can be refused. Each refusal opens a plain page explaining what's missing — nothing is created:

One-time configuration

Before the first schedule can be generated for a subsidiary, set up:

On the Project Financials configuration record, for the subsidiary:

• Company GST Number
• Company Postal Address
• Retention Trust Statement (required)
• Form 1 File (optional — attached automatically when sending if present)
• Payment Schedule Logo

On the vendor record:

• Buyer-created tax invoice agreement tick box, if you've agreed this in writing with the subcontractor
• Tax Reg. Number — the subcontractor's GST number

On the project:

• Financial Manager

On variations:

• External Reference (ATS) — printed as the variation's "A" reference on the schedule

What success looks like

• A new schedule version appears on the claim, listed alongside any earlier versions.
• The PDF is titled correctly for its state — "Payment Schedule" (draft, NOT YET APPROVED) or, once Approved, either "Payment Schedule" or "Payment Schedule - Buyer Created Tax Invoice" depending on the vendor's tax-invoice agreement.
• Once sent, the version shows its Sent Date, Sent By and Sent To, and the claim's Response Issued Date is set.

Gotchas

• This is NZ CCA only, today. AU SOP Act and UK HGCRA subcontracts don't have these buttons — see Assess a subcontractor claim.
• Generating never overwrites. Every press adds a new version; if you just want to check wording, generate a draft — it doesn't replace whatever's already there.
• The tax invoice number is sticky. Once a claim has a Tax Invoice Number, it doesn't change on later regenerations, even if you toggle the vendor's tax-invoice agreement off and back on.
• Unapproved variations don't show on the schedule. Only approved variations appear, with an "A" reference.
• You can't type a recipient address. Sending relies on the vendor record's own email, or an email held against one of its contacts — add or fix the address there if sending fails to find one.

Related

• Assess a subcontractor claim
• Create a subcontract
• Subcontract states