Sopal Projects combines payment-claim and payment-schedule review, guided builders, and due-date and interest calculators — covering QLD, NSW, VIC and SA — so you can issue and respond to claims with confidence.
Australia's security of payment (SOP) legislation is designed to keep money moving through the construction supply chain by imposing strict deadlines and procedural requirements on payment claims, payment schedules, and adjudication. Those deadlines are short. The procedural requirements are technical. And the consequences of getting them wrong — whether you are the claimant or the respondent — can be severe.
A payment claim that fails to satisfy the formal requirements of the relevant Act may be void, unenforceable as an SOP claim, or ineffective to trigger the respondent's obligation to serve a payment schedule. Common pitfalls include failing to identify the construction contract, not including a statement that the claim is made under the Act (where required), claiming for work outside the reference date entitlement, or serving on the wrong person at the wrong address. Once a defective claim is served, you may need to wait until the next reference date to try again — losing weeks or months of cash flow in the process.
Missing the deadline to serve a payment schedule — typically measured in business days from service of the claim, with the precise period varying by state and the circumstances — can have drastic consequences. In most jurisdictions, a respondent who fails to serve a payment schedule on time loses the right to dispute the claimed amount in adjudication. They may also become liable for a statutory debt equal to the full claimed amount, which the claimant can enforce in court without filing for adjudication. That is a significant exposure to carry because a deadline slipped past unnoticed.
The four SOP Acts — in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia — are different from each other in material ways. The deadlines, the threshold requirements, the way reference dates are calculated, the rules about what a payment schedule must contain — these vary by jurisdiction, by contract type, and in some cases by when the contract was entered into (given successive legislative amendments). Most practitioners and project teams are experienced in one jurisdiction. When a project crosses a border, or when a subcontractor works under a head contract subject to unfamiliar legislation, the risk of an error rises sharply. Sopal Projects is built to close that gap.
Upload or paste your draft payment claim or payment schedule and Sopal checks it against the requirements of the relevant SOP Act for your jurisdiction before it goes out the door.
The guided builders walk you through every required element of a payment claim or payment schedule for your jurisdiction, ensuring nothing is missed before you export a finished document.
SOP deadlines and interest entitlements involve date arithmetic that is easy to get wrong under time pressure — particularly when business-day rules, public holidays and the specific provisions of different Acts all interact. Sopal's calculators handle the arithmetic so you can focus on the substance.
Enter the date a payment claim was served and the jurisdiction, and the due-date calculator will work out the key dates you need to track: when a payment schedule must be served, when the scheduled or claimed amount becomes due for payment, and (if applicable) the deadline by which you must apply for adjudication to preserve your rights. The calculator applies the business-day rules and public-holiday calendar for the relevant jurisdiction, so you are not left guessing whether a Saturday extends the period or whether a Queensland public holiday affects a New South Wales deadline on a cross-border project. Always confirm critical deadlines against the current version of the relevant Act and, where appropriate, obtain legal advice — the calculators are a practical tool to assist, not a substitute for professional judgment.
Where a payment is overdue under the SOP legislation, interest typically runs from the due date. The interest calculator takes the principal amount, the due date, and the applicable interest rate or rate basis for the relevant jurisdiction and calculates the interest accrued to a nominated date. This is useful both when you are quantifying a claim and when you are reviewing whether the interest component in someone else's claim is correctly calculated. The calculator also lets you project forward — useful when estimating the total amount in dispute as an adjudication proceeds.
Small date errors have derailed otherwise strong SOP claims and defences. A respondent who serves their payment schedule one business day late may lose the right to contest the amount. A claimant who lets the adjudication application window close may forfeit the ability to enforce the claim through the SOP regime entirely, leaving them to ordinary contract litigation. Getting the dates right from day one is not optional — it is the foundation of every SOP strategy.
Australia does not have a single national security of payment law. Each state has its own Act, and they are genuinely different in ways that matter. Sopal Projects is built from the ground up to handle the differences, not to paper over them.
| Jurisdiction | Act | Short name |
|---|---|---|
| Queensland | Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 | BIF Act |
| New South Wales | Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 | SOPA 1999 |
| Victoria | Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2002 | SOPA 2002 |
| South Australia | Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2009 | SOPA 2009 |
Queensland's Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 introduced significant changes from the earlier regime, including the Project Bank Account (PBA) framework for certain government projects, revised reference date rules, and updated requirements around the content of payment claims and schedules. The BIF Act has been the subject of considerable adjudication activity, and QLD is the jurisdiction for which Sopal's adjudication decision database (7,300+ decisions, available via Sopal Research) provides the deepest coverage.
The NSW Act, now over two decades old, has been amended a number of times and remains one of the most litigated SOP regimes in the country. The NSW Act has particular rules around what constitutes a valid payment claim, how reference dates are determined under different contract types, and what a payment schedule must contain. NSW case law is extensive and Sopal's AI research tool covers it.
Victoria's Act shares a similar structure to the NSW legislation but has its own specific provisions, including around the treatment of variations and the timing of adjudication applications. Victorian SOP disputes regularly raise issues around the scope of work covered by the regime and the interaction between the Act and complex subcontract arrangements.
South Australia's Act is among the most recently enacted of the four covered by Sopal Projects. It follows the broad template of the eastern-states legislation but has a number of jurisdiction-specific features, including provisions around the minimum content of payment schedules and the rights of claimants where a respondent fails to schedule.
All four Acts are updated from time to time by amendment and regulation. Sopal keeps pace with the current law in each jurisdiction, but for critical matters you should always confirm the current version of the relevant Act applies to your contract and situation, and obtain qualified legal advice where appropriate. If you also need access to Queensland adjudication decisions and AI case law research across NSW, QLD and VIC, consider Sopal Plus, which combines Sopal Projects and Sopal Research at a combined price.
Create a project in Sopal, select your jurisdiction and contract type. Sopal loads the right Act, the right deadlines, and the right checklist for your situation from the outset.
Use the guided payment claim builder to create a compliant claim from scratch, or paste in a draft for the review tool to check. Either way, Sopal flags any issues before the document leaves your hands.
Once a claim is lodged, the due-date calculator pins your critical dates — schedule deadline, payment due date, adjudication window — to a clear timeline. No more counting business days by hand.
When you receive a payment claim, run it through the review tool to check whether it meets the formal requirements of the Act. If you need to issue a payment schedule, the builder ensures your response addresses every dollar withheld.
If a payment dispute is escalating, use the interest calculator to quantify accrued interest and model the total amount at stake. Export a clean summary to share with your lawyer or to support your adjudication application.
Export your payment claim or schedule as a professional PDF or Word document, ready to serve. Sopal keeps a record of what you built and when, supporting your project documentation if a dispute proceeds to adjudication or litigation.
Manage payment schedules at scale across multiple active subcontracts and jurisdictions. Catch claims that do not meet the Act's requirements before they trigger statutory debt exposure. Issue responses that properly reduce your liability without inadvertently waiving defences.
Issue payment claims that are formally compliant so your entitlement to adjudication is preserved from the moment you serve. Track when your money is due and when you need to act if it does not arrive. Do not let a procedural defect hand your principal a free argument to knock out an otherwise valid claim.
Understand your payment obligations under the SOP regime and manage incoming claims from head contractors. Review claims for formal validity before committing to pay or scheduling. Keep your project's cash-flow disputes out of adjudication where possible — and well-prepared if they get there anyway.
Support payment claim and schedule preparation with tools built around the legislation, not just the commercial quantum. Identify when a client's draft claim or schedule has a procedural weakness as well as a valuation issue, and add real value beyond the numbers.
Administer payment processes across a portfolio of contracts with confidence. Stay across the different deadlines, requirements and Act-specific rules that apply to each project. Reduce the risk of a procedural failure creating a dispute that a well-administered process would have avoided.
A payment claim is a formal document served by a contractor or subcontractor on the person they have contracted with (the respondent), claiming payment for construction work carried out or related goods and services supplied under a construction contract. Under each of the four Acts covered by Sopal Projects, a payment claim must satisfy certain formal requirements — including in most jurisdictions a statement that the claim is made under the Act — to trigger the respondent's obligation to serve a payment schedule and to engage the adjudication regime. The specific requirements vary by jurisdiction, so it is important to check the Act that applies to your contract. Sopal's review and builder tools are designed to ensure your claim meets the relevant requirements for the jurisdiction you select.
The consequences vary by jurisdiction but are serious in all of them. In general terms, a respondent who fails to serve a payment schedule within the required period after receiving a payment claim loses the right to dispute the claimed amount in adjudication — they are limited to whatever grounds were raised in any schedule they did serve. In many cases, the full claimed amount also becomes a statutory debt, which the claimant can recover in court without needing to go to adjudication at all. This is one of the most significant traps in SOP law: a respondent may have perfectly legitimate grounds to dispute a claim but lose the ability to raise them because the schedule deadline was missed. The exact period and consequences differ under each Act and have been the subject of amendment over time — always check the current Act for your jurisdiction and seek legal advice if you are close to a deadline.
The SOP Acts themselves do not apply to every construction contract — each Act has its own scope provisions that exclude certain types of work, certain contract parties, and in some cases certain contract values or residential owner-occupier situations. Sopal Projects is designed to assist with claims and schedules that fall within the relevant Act, and the review tools will flag potential scope issues based on the information you provide. However, questions about whether a particular contract or work is covered by the Act in your jurisdiction are legal questions that ultimately require advice from a qualified lawyer who can review your specific contract and circumstances. Sopal is a tool to assist practitioners — it does not replace legal advice on threshold questions of this kind.
A reference date is the date (or dates) on which a claimant becomes entitled to make a payment claim under the SOP legislation. You can only serve one payment claim per reference date, and you can only serve a payment claim on or after a reference date. Reference dates are determined by the terms of the contract — typically a date each month, or the date of practical completion, or other milestones specified in the contract. Where a contract does not specify reference dates, the Act provides a default. Reference date rules have been a source of significant litigation in some jurisdictions, particularly around questions of whether a claim served before the reference date is void, and whether a new reference date has arisen after a previous claim. The rules and case law differ between QLD, NSW and VIC. Sopal's due-date calculator takes reference date issues into account when it works out your key deadlines.
A payment schedule is the respondent's formal response to a payment claim. At a minimum, it must identify the payment claim it responds to, state the amount the respondent proposes to pay (the scheduled amount), and — if the scheduled amount is less than the claimed amount — state why. The level of detail required in explaining a withholding varies by jurisdiction and has been the subject of considerable case law. A poorly drafted payment schedule that fails to adequately explain a withholding may be treated as if no schedule had been served at all (at least in relation to the unexplained portion), or may limit the respondent's grounds in adjudication. Sopal's payment schedule builder prompts you to address each of these elements and ensures you provide reasons for every dollar withheld.
Adjudication is a fast-track dispute-resolution process specific to SOP disputes. Where a claimant has served a valid payment claim and the respondent has either not served a payment schedule or has served a schedule for less than the claimed amount, the claimant can apply to a nominating authority to appoint an adjudicator. The adjudicator — typically an experienced construction industry professional or lawyer — reviews written submissions from both sides and makes a determination, usually within a matter of weeks. An adjudication determination is not a final determination of the parties' legal rights but creates an immediately enforceable obligation to pay. The respondent can pay under protest and pursue their rights in litigation or arbitration later. Adjudication is deliberately designed to be quick and rough — it is about cash flow, not final resolution. The timeline, fees, and procedural rules vary between the four Acts. Sopal Research (available separately or as part of Sopal Plus) provides access to 7,300+ Queensland adjudication decisions to assist with adjudication strategy and precedent research.
Yes. Sopal Projects is designed for contractors, subcontractors, developers, quantity surveyors and contract administrators — not just legal professionals. The review and builder tools are built to be used by anyone who regularly deals with payment claims and schedules, and the plain-English notes that accompany each flag are written for a commercial, not legal, audience. That said, Sopal Projects is a practical tool to help you work within the SOP framework — it is not a substitute for legal advice on complex or high-stakes disputes. Where a payment claim or schedule is for a significant amount, where there is genuine uncertainty about the legal position, or where a dispute is likely to proceed to adjudication or litigation, we strongly recommend getting advice from a construction lawyer. If you need access to legal research tools as well, consider Sopal Research or Sopal Plus.
The 14-day free trial gives you full access to all Sopal Projects features — payment claim review, payment schedule review, the claim and schedule builders, the due-date calculator and the interest calculator — across all four covered jurisdictions (QLD, NSW, VIC and SA). No features are locked or limited during the trial period. You can start a trial with a credit card or by requesting an invoice. There is no obligation to continue after the trial ends. See the pricing page for current plan prices and to compare Sopal Projects with Sopal Research and Sopal Plus.
General information only. The content on this page is general information about Australian security of payment law and how Sopal Projects works. It is not legal advice. SOP legislation differs between states and has been amended over time — always check the current Act for your jurisdiction and, for high-stakes or complex matters, obtain advice from a qualified construction lawyer.
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