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The Construction Payment Clock
When does the owner have to pay my invoice in Ontario, and what happens if no notice of non-payment comes?
In Ontario the owner must pay a proper invoice within 28 days of receiving it (day 0), and a contract cannot extend that. A notice of non-payment must come by day 14; if none arrives, the owner owes the whole invoice except the 10% holdback. The days are calendar days. Late payment carries interest at the higher of the contract rate or Ontario's prejudgment rate.
In Ontario, an owner has 28 days to pay a proper invoice, and a contract cannot push that back. Start the payment clock on this month's invoice and see every date that matters.
In this video
- The Ontario timeline: day 0, day 7 (contracts from 1 January 2026), the day-14 notice of non-payment, and day 28.
- How calendar days, Sundays and holidays move a deadline, and why a Saturday deadline does not.
- What you owe your subtrades: their share within 7 days of being paid, or by day 35 if the owner does not pay.
- Open a Payment Clock under Ontario's Construction Act and read the dates it works out.
- When no notice comes: the overdue badge, the breach register, and interest on late payment.
You will produce
A Payment Clock on this month's invoice showing the day-14 notice deadline and the day-28 payment date
Sources
Transcript
0:00 The rule
In Ontario, an owner has 28 days to pay a proper invoice. That deadline comes from the law, and a contract cannot push it back. In this lesson you start that clock on this month's invoice and see every date that matters. You also see what the law does when the owner stays silent. Here's the plan. First you learn the rule itself and what changed in January 2026. Then you open Payment Clock. Pick the Ontario regime, and start a clock on this month's invoice. You check the dates it works out, and you see what happens when no notice arrives. The clock starts on the day the owner receives your proper invoice. Call it day 0. By day 14, the owner may send you a notice of non-payment that says how much they won't pay and every reason why. Everything else is due by day 28. If no notice comes in time, the owner owes you the whole invoice except the 10% holdback. They can still argue about it later, but they pay first. Since January 2026, there is one more date on the timeline. Your invoice counts as proper unless, within 7 days, the owner tells you in writing what is wrong with it and how to put it right. If no such notice comes that first week, the clock keeps running. A notice of non-payment is a separate step, and its deadline is still day 14. All of these are calendar days, not business days. Seven, fourteen, and twenty-eight are whole weeks. So each deadline falls on the same weekday your invoice arrived. If a deadline lands on a Sunday, or a holiday, it moves to the next day that is not a holiday. A Saturday deadline does not move. Getting paid is a relay. Your project manager sends the proper invoice, and the owner's dates start when it arrives. Once the owner pays you, your subtrades get their share within 7 days. If the owner doesn't pay, you still owe your subtrades by day 35, unless you send them a notice of non-payment in time and commit to taking the owner to adjudication. Payment Clock tracks the owner's dates, so nobody counts days on a wall calendar.
2:04 Start the clock
Payment Clock sits in the sidebar, under Commercial. Every clock belongs to one project, so make sure the right project is open at the top before you start. Click Open a clock, then pick the statutory regime. The list covers construction payment laws from around the world. Four entries are Canadian: the prompt payment laws of Ontario, Alberta and the federal government, and British Columbia's lien act. Choose Ontario, the Construction Act, and the currency fills itself in as Canadian dollars. Now for this month's progress claim. Type a reference, then the date. The form calls it the application date. Enter the day the owner received the invoice, not the day you wrote it, because that is day 0. Then the amount, $184,300, and click Open the clock.
2:52 Read the deadlines
The clock has already worked out the dates. The line called Due date is simply day 0. The payment notice deadline is day 14, the last day for a notice of non-payment, and the final date for payment is day 28. Ontario has no pay-less notice, so that line stays blank. Two things are left to you: day 7 is not on this screen, and the clock does not move a deadline off a holiday. Keep both in your own calendar.
3:20 When no notice comes
This claim went in three weeks ago, and day 14 has passed with no notice of non-payment. The clock now shows the whole amount as payable by the final date, but the owner still keeps the 10% holdback. There is no button here to log a notice, so if one did arrive, go by the notice, not the screen. Every clock on the project sits in this list. When a final date passes without payment, the clock gets a red Payment overdue badge. The breach register below keeps a line for every notice deadline the owner missed and every late payment, so nothing slips past the month-end meeting. And if the money is late, the owner owes interest on it. The rate is your contract rate or Ontario's prejudgment rate, whichever is higher. A contract can push the rate up, but never down. That is the Ontario rule in four dates. Your invoice lands on day 0. The owner has until day 7 to flag a problem with it, and until day 14 to send a notice of non-payment. By day 28, the money is due. OpenConstructionERP is free and open source, and it runs on your own server. There's no subscription and no per-seat licence. Download it and put your next invoice on the clock.
