An invoice arrived and you are not sure the stage is done
Judge a stage invoice by the contract clause that triggers payment, not by how busy the site looks, before you pay it.
A stage invoice is not measured by how busy the site looks or by how much of the building exists in general. It is measured against the clause in your contract that triggers that particular payment, requirement by requirement, with dated evidence of what is physically in place against each. That comparison is worth making while the instalment is still unpaid.
This is the moment your contract is worth something
Before a payment is made, a stage that has demonstrably not been reached does not trigger the instalment, and the developer has an incentive to resolve the question quickly because they want the money.
After the payment is made, the same facts produce a complaint. Nothing about the building has changed; what has changed is that you no longer hold anything the developer wants.
Which is why checking a stage invoice matters most between roughly 30% and 60% paid. Earlier there is not enough built to measure. Later, most of the leverage is already spent.
What the report contains at this point
The report is the same product at every stage of a purchase, and it costs the same. What changes is what it is filled with, and when a stage invoice has arrived the report leads with the list below.
- Photographs carrying the day they were taken
- A written note on what they show, in your language
- What the contract says should be there by now, set against what was found
- A completion range, where the building allows one to be given
Before the payment deadline
Useful whether or not you order anything from us. If the developer answers all of it in writing, you have what you needed and we are not required.
- Find the clause the invoice refers to. If the invoice does not name one, ask for it in writing. That request alone changes the conversation.
- Write down each thing the clause requires as its own line. “Structure complete including roof slab and external blockwork” is three requirements, and a building can satisfy two of them convincingly.
- Ask the developer for dated photographs of each requirement. Note what comes back and what does not.
- Order a visit if the answer is thin. The report lands within five working days of it.
- Keep paying whatever is genuinely due. Withholding an instalment that was properly triggered puts you in default and hands them the stronger position.
Money already transferred is leverage already spent. Naming the clause, splitting it into its separate requirements and establishing what stands against each of them is work that belongs before the payment deadline — and where the stage genuinely was reached, so does paying the invoice.
Last checked
Questions on this
- Can I refuse to pay?
- That depends on your contract and it is a question for a lawyer, not for us. What we can say is that the conversation goes differently when you can point to a clause and a dated record than when you can only say the photographs looked thin.
- The developer sent a certificate signed by their own engineer.
- It is evidence, and it is evidence produced by the party being paid. Whether that is enough depends on how much money is attached to the stage and on whether the certificate addresses each requirement of the clause or simply asserts that the stage is complete.
- Does checking an invoice cost extra?
- No. It is part of the report, not an add-on. Charging separately for it would mean admitting the ordinary report does not do the main thing, and it would be a surcharge asked at the worst possible moment, when you have an invoice in your hand.