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NSW · Updated 25 July 2026
The builder hasn't paid me. What can I actually do?
More than most trades realise — and the strongest thing you have doesn't depend on your contract at all. NSW gives you a statutory right to progress payments under the Security of Payment Act. It runs on its own short clocks, it can turn silence into an undefendable debt, and it lets you down tools without being sued for it. But every one of those powers is fenced by a deadline measured in business days, and missing one costs you the right, not just the argument.
First — did you send a payment claim, or an invoice?
This is the question everything turns on, and it's where most trades lose before they start. An invoice asks to be paid. A payment claim starts a statutory clock. They can be the same piece of paper, but only if it does the required things:
- It says it is made under the Act. A payment claim must identify itself as a claim made under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW). Leave that line off and it is just an invoice.
- It identifies the work it relates to, and states the amount claimed.
- It's served on the right party — personally, by post, by the email address nominated for service, or however your contract says to serve documents.
- It's in time. You can serve from the end of each named month (earlier if the contract allows), one claim per month, and the outer limit is the contract's own period or 12 months after you last carried out the work, whichever is later.
Before anything else: are you licensed and insured for this work?
For residential building work, the statutory right to a progress payment is conditional on holding the licence the work requires and, where it applies, the HBCF insurance. No licence, no entitlement — the Act's machinery simply isn't available to you, however good the debt is.
Check your own licence at verify.licence.nsw.gov.au before you rely on any of this.
The clock, in the order it runs
Every period in the Act is counted in BUSINESS days — not calendar days. That means weekends and public holidays are out, and so is 27 to 31 December. A claim served in mid-December runs much later into January than people expect, and that catches trades out every single year.
| What happens | By when |
|---|---|
| You serve the payment claim | From month end |
| They must give you a payment schedule — saying what they propose to pay and, if it's less, exactly why Or the shorter period in your contract, if there is one — whichever comes first. | 10 business days |
| Payment falls due — subcontractor claiming against a head contractor | 20 business days |
| Payment falls due — head contractor claiming against a principal | 15 business days |
| Payment falls due — owner-occupier contract | Per contract, else 10 days |
| You give notice of intention to suspend, then may stop work | +2 business days |
| An adjudicator determines the claim, on the papers | 10 business days |
| They must pay the adjudicated amount | 5 business days |
Which of the three situations are you in?
Everything you can do next depends on which of these happened. The windows are different, and they are jurisdictional — miss one and the door is shut, however strong your claim is.
1. They gave you no payment schedule at all, and haven't paid
Silence is not a defence — it's an admission. If they don't give a schedule within the time allowed, they become liable for the full amount you claimed, and they lose the right to argue about it. They cannot later raise defects, backcharges or a valuation dispute.
You can recover it as a debt in court, where the contract defences are simply not available to them, or take it to adjudication. Either way you can also give notice and suspend. If you go the adjudication route here, there's an extra step: you must first give them notice within 20 business days of the due date, and they get 5 business days to produce a late schedule — then you have 10 business days to apply.
2. They gave a schedule, but for less than you claimed
Now the fight is about value — but on a narrow field, and that's to your advantage. Whatever reasons they left out of the schedule, they cannot raise later. The adjudicator won't hear them. A vague schedule is a weak schedule.
Your window to apply for adjudication is 10 business days from when you received it. That is the shortest and least forgiving deadline in the whole process.
3. They scheduled an amount and then didn't pay it
They've admitted the amount in writing and not paid. You get the same set of remedies as situation 1 — recover the scheduled amount as a debt, or adjudicate — plus the right to suspend on notice.
Two powers most trades don't know they have
You can stop work — lawfully
Once you've served the right notice, you may suspend work 2 business days later, and you are protected: you are not liable for loss the other side suffers because of a suspension the Act allowed. If they take the remaining work off you while you're suspended, you can recover your loss for that too. When they pay, resume within 3 business days.
Downing tools without that notice is a breach of contract. Downing tools with it is a statutory right. The difference is one letter.
You can freeze money one level up the chain
If you're a subcontractor and you've applied for adjudication, you can serve a payment withholding request on the principal contractor above your builder — the party who owes money to the party who owes you. They must retain enough to cover your claim. A principal contractor who ignores it and pays the money through anyway becomes personally liable to you for that debt.
It's the single most effective thing an unpaid subbie can do, and it is barely used, because almost nobody knows it exists.
What kills a good claim
- Not saying it's under the Act. The most common and most avoidable failure. The claim is then just an invoice, and none of the clocks above ever started.
- Missing the adjudication window. These are hard jurisdictional limits. An application even a day late is void — the adjudicator has no power to hear it, no matter the merits.
- Not being licensed, or the HBCF certificate not being in place where the work required it. That removes the entitlement itself.
- Being more than 12 months past the work (or outside your contract's own period, if that's longer).
- Going into liquidation. A company in liquidation cannot use the Act.
- Waiting. Every remedy here is short-fused. The trade who calls on day 40 usually has fewer options than the one who called on day 12 — not because the debt got weaker, but because the doors closed.
This is general information about how the NSW scheme works, not advice about your matter. The amounts and dates in your situation depend on your contract and on exactly what was served and when. If real money is at stake, get advice early — the windows are short enough that a week of thinking about it can be the whole difference.
The paperwork is the whole game — so stop doing it by hand.
Every power on this page is unlocked by a document served correctly, on time, saying the right thing. Miss the line that says "made under the Act", or count calendar days instead of business days, and the strongest debt in the world goes nowhere. eSiteOffice drafts what the contract and the Act require, serves it, and watches both clocks — on every job at once. It opens in September. Tell us where you fit and we'll send you something worth having in the meantime.