A subcontractor who has not given you their business number, a payment claim you did not answer in time, an annual report to the tax office missing an address: in Australia, each of these situations ends up working against you if nobody caught it in time.
Who the application is for
For construction firms carrying out work in Australia who need to follow both their state or territory's Security of Payment regime and the federal annual Taxable Payments Annual Report (TPAR) for subcontractors — two regimes with no connection to one another.
What the application does
- Holds, for each state or territory, its own Security of Payment regime: the deadline to answer a payment claim with a payment schedule, the payment deadline, and the retention trust account threshold where one exists.
- Refuses a payment to a subcontractor who has not supplied their business number, unless a withholding has been recorded or a supplier exemption statement is on file for them.
- Works out, in business days, the deadline to answer a payment claim with a payment schedule under the relevant state's regime, and states it as an earliest-possible deadline.
- Flags a payment lower than the amount claimed when no payment schedule has been served within the deadline, naming the shortfall.
- Gathers the annual report of payments to subcontractors, one subcontractor per line, and refuses to lodge it while any required data is missing.
- Only includes in that report payments actually made before the end of the financial year, never an invoice still unpaid at that date.
Day to day
- Declare, for each state or territory you work in, its own Security of Payment regime, with the applicable deadlines.
- Enter the business number of each subcontractor; without it, the payment stays blocked until a withholding or an exemption is recorded.
- As soon as a payment claim is served, note its date: the deadline to respond works itself out.
- If you pay less than claimed, serve your payment schedule before the deadline shown, to keep the right to dispute its grounds.
- At the end of the financial year, run the annual report collection: the application gathers the payments made and lists what is missing before it can be lodged.
What the application does not do
- It withholds nothing from a subcontractor who supplies their business number: Australia has no general withholding scheme comparable to those in other countries.
- It does not know public holidays, which vary by state or territory: the deadlines it calculates are at the earliest, and the real deadline may fall later.
- It does not operate any retention trust account: it shows your state's threshold so you know whether you are subject to it, but running the account itself is your responsibility.
- It does not lodge anything itself on an official portal: checking, responding and lodging remain in your hands.
- This application is designed for work carried out in Australia; the Security of Payment regimes and the annual report differ by state or territory and change over time, and it does not replace the advice of a professional or the relevant authority.
Getting started
Before going live, have an Australian adviser confirm the deadlines and thresholds specific to each state or territory you work in: the values supplied are usual starting points, not regulatory citations. Then enter the business number of each of your subcontractors, and check the fields required for the annual report before your first lodgement.
Going further
To find out whether this application suits your business and how to activate it, compare the plans or write to us.