NEC payment dates
Assessment 04
Assessment
24 Aug
Due
31 Aug
Final date
14 Sep
Assessment date24 Aug 2026
Payment becomes due (+7)31 Aug 2026
Pay less notice by11 Sep 2026
Final date for payment (+14)14 Sep 2026
NEC does not use JCT valuation dates, JCT certificates or JCT retention. It uses assessment dates, a Project Manager and Option X16. QScope follows the NEC mechanism instead of bending it into a JCT shape, because the differences are where the money and the deadlines move.
Under NEC the amount due is assessed at each assessment date, not at a JCT interim valuation date. Every statutory deadline that follows is measured from it, so the assessment date is the pivot the rest of the timetable turns on.
Under Option Y(UK)2, the option that makes an NEC contract comply with the Construction Act, the payment becomes due seven days after the assessment date, and the final date for payment follows from there. QScope derives the notice, the pay less deadline and the final date from the assessment date automatically.
Under NEC the Project Manager certifies the payment. There is no contract administrator issuing an interim certificate, and calling the document by its JCT name misdescribes who did what and under which clause.
QScope names the document for the contract it belongs to. On an NEC job it is a payment certificate issued by the Project Manager, on your letterhead, with the sum and the basis of its assessment stated.
NEC has no retention unless secondary Option X16 was included. Deducting it when X16 is absent holds money you have no right to. Forgetting it when X16 is present overpays. Neither is a rounding error.
Where X16 applies, QScope holds retention on the Price for Work Done to Date above the retention free amount, at the percentage your Contract Data states, and releases it on the NEC triggers rather than the JCT ones.
The way QScope values the works does not change between forms. Percentage or fixed sum per line, previously certified carried forward, retention taken once. What changes on an NEC job is the label on the dates and the certificate, not the arithmetic underneath.
That means a practice running both JCT and NEC jobs works one way, not two, and the certificate a client receives reads the same whichever form the job sits on.
The value of NEC date handling is not one certificate, it is the whole job seen at once. Which assessment is due, which payment is approaching its final date, which pay less window is about to close.
QScope puts the same statutory engine behind every NEC job on the account, so the dates you cannot afford to miss sit on the project list rather than in a spreadsheet somebody has to remember to open.
NEC3 and NEC4 ECC, as a contract form for the payment cycle. Selecting it sets the assessment date as the basis for the timetable, names the certificate as a Project Manager payment certificate, and applies the NEC retention rules under Option X16.
It records each compensation event and its agreed value and carries that into the certificate, the same way it handles a variation. It does not replace the Project Manager's assessment of Defined Cost. The judgement stays with the Project Manager; QScope holds the record, the value and the certificate.
Under Y(UK)2 the payment becomes due seven days after the assessment date and the final date for payment fourteen days after that. QScope uses those periods by default and lets you change them if your Contract Data states different figures.
Only if secondary Option X16 is in the contract. QScope applies retention when you turn it on, at the percentage and retention free amount your Contract Data states, and releases it at Completion and the Defects Certificate rather than at practical completion.
Not your whole portfolio. One live job, one certificate. If it does not save you time the first time you use it, walk away and take your data with you.