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Progress claims & the SOP Act

Your formal payment request under Singapore's Security of Payment Act. The 21-day response window is fixed by law.

A progress claim is a formal payment request under Singapore's Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment (SOP) Act. It's the mechanism that gets you paid through the life of a job — and it comes with a legal deadline you must never get wrong.

The 21-day rule​

Once you submit a claim, the client has exactly 21 days to respond. This window is set by law. It cannot be changed, shortened or extended — not by you, not by the client, not by an Admin.

Hard rule

response_due_date = claim_date + 21 days. It's enforced in the database and can never be overridden. A nightly job automatically flips any SUBMITTED claim to OVERDUE if the 21-day window passes with no response.

Raising a claim​

  1. From the project, open Contract → New Claim.
  2. The claim number is auto-assigned (Claim #01, #02, …).
  3. Enter the amount being claimed this period.
  4. Retention is calculated automatically from the project's retention rate — see retention & payment.
  5. GST is applied at 9% automatically.
  6. Describe the works covered and link the payment milestone.
  7. Submit — the status becomes SUBMITTED and the response due date locks at submission + 21 days.

Lifecycle​

SUBMITTED → RESPONSE_ISSUED → (or OVERDUE if no response in 21 days)

When the client issues a payment response, Finance processes it in CommandCenter.

The PM discipline​

Don't submit until the works are genuinely complete for the period. Once that 21-day clock starts it can't be paused, and an over-claim that gets certified down is harder to recover from than a clean claim made a few days later.