Payment Stage Conversation Preparation Checklist

Find where the payment stages are actually written down, and note whether that is a signed document, a written summary of works, an email or nothing at all.

Stages agreed in conversation and never written down are the origin of most payment disagreements on domestic projects.

Check whether each stage is described by work to be completed or simply by a point in the calendar, and note which of the two you are dealing with.

Stages tied to work can be looked at and discussed; stages tied only to the calendar arrive whether or not anything has happened at the property.

Only your own legal adviser can tell you what a stage definition obliges each party to do; do not settle that reading between yourselves.

List any stage described in words that could reasonably mean several things, and put each of them on your list of questions to ask.

Broad wording reads clearly to both parties until the moment they discover they were reading it differently.

Ask who will send each request, in what form it will arrive and what it will be called, since the same document goes by several names.

Owners sometimes receive a document they do not recognise as a request at all, and respond to it far later than expected.

Ask what the final stage is meant to represent and what has to have happened before it is reached, including any outstanding items.

What the final stage covers and when it falls due are contract questions; confirm the position with your own legal adviser.

Ask what completing a stage means in practice for each stage, and whether outstanding items within that stage prevent it from being reached.

Almost every stage ends with a handful of small things still open, and whether those hold the stage back is the question nobody thinks to settle in advance.

Whether a stage has been reached is a judgement for the appointed professionals under your contract, not something to settle by looking at the work.

Ask who declares that a stage has been reached, and whether anybody other than the party requesting payment is involved in that judgement.

Arrangements where the same party both declares and requests are common on smaller projects and are worth understanding early.

Ask what happens when work is carried out in a different order from the stages, so that parts of two stages are under way at once.

Real sequences rarely follow written stages, and the mismatch is discovered when the first request arrives describing both.

Walk the property yourself before responding to a request, and write down what you can and cannot see of the work being described.

What you can see tells you nothing about whether work is adequate; whether it has been properly carried out is for qualified professionals to establish.

Note anything that has been covered up since you last looked, and ask what record exists of it, since you cannot examine it afterwards.

Concealed work is the part of a stage an owner can never look at again, so the only thing that survives is whatever record was made at the time.

Ask the appointed professionals what inspection or record was made before work was concealed rather than relying on your own observation.

Ask whether any part of a stage is being carried out away from the property, and how you would know what state that work is in.

Work being made elsewhere is invisible to an owner, and its progress can only be established through whoever is arranging it.

Ask what is meant to accompany each request, such as a description of the work covered, photographs or a reference to the stage being claimed.

Where nothing has been agreed, requests arrive with as little supporting material as possible, and asking afterwards feels adversarial.

Ask for every request to say which stage it relates to, using the same wording as the document where the stages are set out.

Requests described in their own language cannot be matched against the agreed stages without an argument about interpretation.

Ask how a request covering part of a stage is meant to be described, and whether such requests are expected at all on your project.

Whether part-stage requests are permitted is a contract question; take it to your own legal adviser before responding to one.

Take your own dated photographs of the work as it progresses, from consistent positions, so you have a record independent of anybody else's account.

Photographs taken from the same spots over time show progress in a way that no written description manages.

Ask what documents exist behind a request, such as delivery records or written confirmations, and whether you may see them.

Owners rarely ask what sits behind a request, and the answer usually tells you a great deal about how the work is being run.

Write down which parts of a request you have no way of checking yourself, and ask who is in a position to look at those parts.

Examining work claimed as complete needs a qualified professional; ask what checking is being carried out on your behalf and what is not.

Ask how items delivered to the property but not yet installed are treated in a request, and whether your paperwork says anything about them at all.

Material stacked in a room is visible progress of a sort, and it is often described in a request without anybody having agreed how it should be.

How delivered materials are dealt with is a contractual matter; take the wording, or its absence, to your own legal adviser.

Ask what happens with items being stored away from the property, and how their existence and condition would be established.

Items you cannot see and have never been shown are the hardest thing on any request to form a view about.

Keep your own dated note and photographs of significant items delivered to the property, including anything that arrives damaged.

Delivery records kept by others may not reach you, and a damaged item is far easier to discuss on the date it arrived.

Ask who is responsible for items stored at the property before they are installed, and what that means for your own arrangements.

Responsibility and insurance for stored items vary; confirm the position with your own insurer and your own legal adviser.

Ask how items you have supplied yourself are treated when a stage is described, so your own purchases are not counted as somebody else's work.

Owner-supplied items sit awkwardly in stage descriptions and are a common source of confusion in requests.

Ask how an agreed change is expected to appear in a request, and whether it is shown separately from the stage it happened during.

Changes folded into stage wording become impossible to trace back to the moment they were agreed.

Match anything appearing in a request against your own record of agreed changes, and note anything you cannot find a record for.

Your change record is the only independent check you have on what a request describes.

Ask what happens where a change was carried out before it was formally agreed, and how that is meant to be recorded.

Work carried out ahead of an agreement raises contractual questions; take the specific circumstances to your own legal adviser.

Ask how work removed from the scope is expected to be reflected, since removals are recorded less carefully than additions.

Omitted work is agreed quickly, remembered vaguely and rarely appears anywhere in the paperwork afterwards.

Keep your change record and your record of requests where they can be read together, rather than in separate places.

The two only make sense side by side, because a request describes a period during which changes were also happening.

Ask whether anybody has been appointed to examine requests on your behalf, and if so what their examination actually covers.

On smaller projects the answer is frequently that nobody has, and owners tend to discover this at the moment the first request lands.

Whether a professional is examining requests for you depends on their appointment; confirm what they are engaged to do in writing.

Ask what an examination of a request does not cover, since it may not extend to the quality of the work or to concealed elements.

The limits of any examination are set by that professional's appointment; ask them to state those limits rather than assuming full coverage.

Ask what you are expected to do when a request arrives and by what point, and get that written down rather than discovering it later.

Response arrangements and their consequences are contractual; confirm what applies with your own legal adviser.

Ask what the process is where you do not agree with something in a request, and who you are meant to raise it with.

How a disagreement about a request should be handled is a legal question; take it to your own legal adviser before responding.

Avoid settling anything about a request in a conversation on site, and say instead that you will respond in writing after looking at it.

Requests raised in person invite an immediate reaction, which then becomes the thing everybody remembers you agreeing to.

Take the payment wording in your paperwork to your own legal adviser and ask them to explain what it requires of each party.

Owners usually read this wording for the first time when something has already gone awry, which is the worst moment to be understanding it.

Payment terms carry consequences that vary with the arrangement in place; only your own legal adviser can advise you on yours.

Ask your own legal adviser whether anything is held back under your arrangement, on what basis, and what causes it to be released.

Arrangements of this kind vary considerably and are a legal matter; do not rely on what is customary or on what somebody tells you on site.

Ask your own legal adviser what your position is if work stops partway through a stage, before that situation ever arises.

This is a legal question with significant consequences; raise it with your own legal adviser rather than seeking an answer on site.

Ask your own legal adviser which records you should be keeping about payment stages and for how long you should keep them.

Advisers will tell you what they would want to see if a question arose, which is the most practical guide to what to keep.

Sort your questions into those about what the paperwork means and those about whether work has been done, and send each to the right person.

Legal questions asked of a builder and technical questions asked of an adviser both produce answers that nobody can rely on.

Log every request as it arrives with the date, the stage it refers to and what accompanied it, before doing anything else about it.

Requests are dealt with quickly and filed carelessly, and the sequence in which they arrived becomes impossible to reconstruct.

Record what you did in response to each request and when, including where you asked a question rather than responding fully.

A record of requests without a record of responses tells only half the story and is the half you already remember.

Keep each request in the form it arrived, rather than only your note of it, since the wording used matters more than your summary.

Summaries drop the qualifications, and those are usually the words that turn out to be significant.

Keep your progress photographs organised by date and location so they can be matched against the stage a request describes.

Photographs are only useful as a record if you can establish when and where each of them was taken.

Write down any conversation about payment that happened in person or by telephone, including what was said and who was present.

Verbal discussions about payment can have consequences; confirm anything of substance in writing and take the position to your own legal adviser.