Cash flow · BIF Act

How to chase a payment claim in QLD without torching the relationship

Anna Marie Saplad · Field notes for QLD builders

Most payment-claim blow-ups don't start with a dispute. They start with a date nobody tracked. In Queensland, the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 — the BIF Act — sets the clock, and the clock is short.

The rule that matters

When a payment claim is served, the other party must respond with a payment schedule within 15 business days (or earlier if the contract says so). Miss that window and you can lose the right to argue the amount at all — the full claimed amount can become payable.

Why good builders get caught

Because the admin arrives while you're flat out on the tools. A claim comes in by email, gets read on a phone at 6am, mentally flagged for "later" — and later becomes day 16. It's not incompetence; it's a missing system.

The fix is a calendar, not a confrontation

• Every contract gets its billing dates mapped on day one — claim dates, schedule due dates, reference dates — straight into a shared calendar with reminders at 10, 5 and 2 business days.
• One inbox rule: anything that looks like a payment claim gets flagged the day it arrives, not the day it's understood.
• A template payment schedule sits ready to go, so responding is a 20-minute job, not an afternoon.

And the relationship?

Here's the part builders don't expect: clients and subs respect fast, documented responses. A same-week, in-writing answer reads as professional, not aggressive. The relationships that sour are the ones where money sits unanswered for three weeks and both sides fill the silence with assumptions.

Chasing money professionally is a cadence problem. Solve the cadence and the confrontation mostly disappears.