Skip to content
Quantsurv
Get in touch

Aim a day early, not for the deadline

An application that lands a day early loses you nothing, but one that misses by an hour can cost you the whole cycle. Servers go down, people go home and portals reject files at 4:59pm.

Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.

Why it matters

An application date is a cliff edge. Land on the right side of it and the cycle runs. Land an hour over and the application falls into the next cycle, a month later, and your cash flow carries the difference. What pushes an application over is never the valuation. It is the portal that rejects a file as too large, or the server that bounces it at ten to five. It is the person with the sign-off who leaves early on a Friday. None of them can be fixed in the last hour. Every one of them can be fixed with a day in hand.

How to do it

  1. Set your own application date a working day before the contract date, and treat yours as the real deadline.
  2. Have the valuation and back-up finished 2 working days out, so the last day is only for checking and sending.
  3. Send by mid morning on your own date, so a bounce or a portal rejection can be fixed the same day.
  4. Send by mid morning on the contract date at the latest if something slips and you miss your own date.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A cladding subcontractor's contract sets the application date as the 25th of each month, with anything later falling into the next cycle. Application four is for £140,000. The subcontractor's QS works to its own deadline of the 24th.

What happens

  1. The QS uploads the application and back-up to the main contractor's portal at 10am on the 24th.
  2. The portal rejects the upload because the back-up file is over the size limit.
  3. The QS splits the back-up into three files and re-uploads by 2pm, and the portal confirms receipt.
  4. The same PDF goes by email to the named recipients that afternoon, with the portal confirmation attached.

The outcome

The application is in a day early with time to spare. If the QS had aimed for the 25th, a rejection at 4:30pm would have pushed £140,000 into the next cycle. Payment would have waited a month.

To have this set up for you, see our Underpayment Prevention service.