Help centre
How to get from an empty account to a served payment claim, step by step. Every article below is also in the product, behind the help button at the bottom right of the screen.
Set up once, then claim every month
Everything in Paystruct hangs off a contract: the parties, the jurisdiction, the schedule of works, and every claim you serve against it.
How to set up a contract
The wizard takes the project and site details, the State the works are performed in (which decides the regime and the rest of the form), the two party roles, the parties themselves, the form of security and the claim timing. Upload the contract as a PDF and the terms are read out of it for you to check field by field. The last step is optional and builds your template and claim history from claims you have already served.
How to build your claim template
The template holds the structure every claim starts from. Add the schedule of works and the variations by hand, or extract them from a bill of quantities, a schedule of rates, a priced contract or a payment claim you have already served. The cover letter and supporting statement are edited beside a live preview, and any section can be switched off so it does not print.
How to bring in a job that is already running
A contract months into its claim cycle should not start from zero. Upload the claims you have served, the schedules you have received and a priced schedule if you have one, and Paystruct builds the template and writes each past claim into the history with its figures. Claim numbering carries on from the references you already use, so the next claim is the number the respondent expects.
From draft to served
How to make and serve a payment claim
A new claim takes its structure from the template and its earlier figures from the claims before it. Enter a quantity and the dollars price themselves from the rate; enter dollars and the quantity fills back in. Then answer the compliance questions, read the review, export the final version, serve it the way the contract permits, and record the service.
What the compliance questions and review check
The questions cover six facts only you know: the reference date, whether all the work claimed predates it, whether any of it was performed in the last six months, when you last served on this respondent, whether a subcontractor's charge has been lodged over the same work, and whether this is the final claim. The review then runs the checks that can be answered from the record and puts the matters of judgement to a reading of the claim as a respondent would read it. Nothing blocks you serving; the point is that you see it first.
How retention and bank guarantees work
The contract's form of security drives everything here, and it is set in contract settings. Under cash retention, each claim shows what is withheld this period, the running total against the cap and the release trigger. Where the security is bank guarantees or bonds, nothing is withheld from the claim and the instruments are tracked against the contract with their expiry dates.
Prove what was served, and when
Serving happens outside the app. What Paystruct keeps is the record of it, which is what the overdue warnings and the next claim's figures run on.
How to record service, schedules and payments
Claim History is the ledger. Each claim row expands into its events: served, with the date, the method and any proof; scheduled, with the amount the payment schedule proposes, the date it arrived and the document itself; and paid, with amounts, dates and references. Anything you attach also lands in the document library against the contract, so there is one set of records rather than two.
How to work out valid ways to serve
Attach the contract in settings and extract the notice provisions. The analysis quotes the operative clauses, then weighs each possible method: what the contract itself permits prevails, the Acts Interpretation Act supplies the default methods, and email on its own needs consent. Adopt the sound methods and they lead the list everywhere service is recorded.
The same articles, one click away
Every article on this page is inside Paystruct, behind the help button at the bottom right of the screen. It follows you from page to page, so you can read the step you are on without leaving the claim you are building. If the answer is not there, support is in the app navigation and a person answers it.
Where to find help
- The help button, bottom right of every page in the app.
- Support, from the app navigation, answered by a person.
- The knowledge base in the app, for the Act and the cases behind the checks.
- Early access accounts can have their first contract set up over a call.
For the law rather than the product, read the guides. None of it is legal advice.