Payment claims (sometimes called application for payment or AFPs) are how scaffolding contractors get paid on stage-payment contracts. They're also one of the biggest sources of cash-flow pain in the trade — disputed claims, missing variations, late payment notices that turn a 30-day cycle into a 90-day cycle.

This is the plain-English guide to running them properly.

What is a payment claim?

A payment claim is a periodic submission to your customer (usually monthly) saying “here's the percentage of the contract we've completed this period, here's the cumulative figure to date, here's what you owe us this month.”

The standard table looks like this for each stage of the contract:

  • Contract value: what you quoted for that stage.
  • Previous %: the cumulative percentage at the end of last month.
  • This period %: what you're claiming for this month.
  • Cumulative %: previous + this period.
  • Cumulative value: contract value × cumulative %.
  • This period value: contract value × this period %.

Sum the “this period value” column across every stage, deduct retention (usually 5%), apply any agreed discounts, add VAT — that's your gross claim for the month.

Stages, not just a lump sum

The single biggest mistake we see is quoting a job as one lump and then trying to break it down for payment claims later. Stage from the start. Typical stages on a refurb scaffold contract:

  • Erect (40-60% of contract)
  • Hire (10-20%, usually weekly or monthly)
  • Inspections (5-10%)
  • Adapt / alter (variable, often empty until something happens)
  • Strike (15-25%)

With stages defined, a payment claim becomes a one-screen exercise: tick off the percentage complete on each stage, hit submit. Without stages, every claim turns into a row with the QS about what “50% of the job” actually means when half the scaffold is up but none of it's inspected.

Inspections deserve their own treatment

Inspections are recurring (weekly or fortnightly), not finite. A percentage-of-contract treatment doesn't fit — you don't know in March how many inspections you'll be doing in October.

Better: a quantity × per-unit rate line. “4 inspections this month at £85 each = £340.” Cumulative is just last month plus this. No percentage cap.

Most scaffolding software handles this with a separate “quantity-based” flag on the stage. If yours doesn't, you end up either over-claiming or having to rebase the cap mid-job — which the QS will spot.

Variations: get them on the next claim, not the last one

Variations are the other big leak. The lads do extra work on site, the variation order doesn't make it to the office for a fortnight, the next payment claim has gone out without it, and now you're chasing it on a separate invoice with twice the friction.

Two rules that almost always work:

  1. Variation order signed before the gang leaves site.Photo, description, customer signature on a phone screen. If the customer won't sign on the day, the work doesn't happen until they do.
  2. Day-rate variations get logged hourly.Hours + rate, no estimating after the fact. The next payment claim picks them up automatically as “Variations — <date> — <task> — N hrs @ £X”.

The 7-day late payment notice

Under the UK Construction Act, your customer has to issue a payment notice or pay-less notice within set windows after your claim. If they don't, they owe you the “notified sum” — the figure on your claim — by the final date for payment.

Translation: keep your claims clean and on time. If the customer doesn't respond in their window, the law's on your side. We've seen scaffolding firms recover six figures over a year just by issuing claims to the calendar instead of when they remember.

Putting it together

A clean payment-claim workflow looks like this:

  • Stages defined on the project the day you win it.
  • Inspections set up as quantity × rate, not percentage.
  • Variations captured on the day, signed on a phone, in the next claim automatically.
  • Monthly cycle — claim out on day 1 of the month, every month, regardless of where you are with the work.
  • Cumulative figures rolled forward by the system, not retyped from a spreadsheet.

That's exactly what The Scaffold Software automates. Stages carry forward between claims, variations land on the next one automatically, day-rate work is logged hourly and shows up on the invoice without anyone retyping it.

Cash flow gets sorted when payment claims become a 10-minute monthly job, not a two-day forensic exercise. The maths hasn't changed — only the mechanics need to.