Cash flow on a Hong Kong job runs on thirty and sixty days

A cash flow forecast is only as good as the payment dates it assumes. On a Hong Kong contract the Construction Industry Security of Payment Ordinance (Cap. 652) hands you those dates. A payment claim starts the cycle, the payment response is due within thirty days, and payment falls due inside sixty days as the statutory backstop. Forecast to those and the projection has a spine.

The cycle to model

Each payment claim is a cash event with a known lag. The money does not arrive when you value the work, it arrives on the far side of a calendar day count that the Ordinance fixes.

• Claim served. The date the payment claim goes out is day zero for that cycle.
• Response at thirty days. The payment response tells you what will actually be paid, so the forecast firms up here.
• Payment inside sixty days. The statutory backstop is the date to model cash landing, not the day you raised the claim.

Days are counted plainly

The Ordinance counts in calendar days, not working days, for the payment cycle. That makes the forecast simpler, because you do not have to strip out weekends and public holidays to find the sixty day date. Note that where a dispute goes to adjudication the adjudicator’s decision runs on a separate count of fifty-five working days, but that is the dispute track, not the ordinary payment forecast.

No tax to model

There is no VAT or GST in Hong Kong, so the forecast carries no tax timing. Cash in equals value certified, gross equals net, with nothing to add or reclaim on a different clock. That removes a whole layer of timing risk that surveyors in VAT regimes have to build in.

The discipline

Anchor the forecast to each payment claim, roll cash in on the sixty day date, and firm the figure when the payment response lands at thirty days. On HKIA and government GCC jobs the underlying works programme drives the value, but the Ordinance drives the timing, and the forecast that respects both is the one the board can trust.