A client who will not pay a certificate has not started a commercial disagreement. They have triggered a clause. What to do when a client will not pay a certificate begins with the payment provisions of the contract you already signed, and not with a fourth email.
The distinction matters because the two paths run on different clocks. A commercial conversation has no deadline. A contractual remedy usually has several, and most of them start running on the day the money did not arrive.
The scale of it, and who is actually late
National Treasury's quarterly report on non-compliance with payment of suppliers within 30 days puts R15.5 billion across 90,856 invoices unpaid for more than 30 days at the end of the third quarter of 2025/26. A further 89,499 invoices worth R10.8 billion were paid in that quarter, but paid late.
The part of that report worth a contractor's attention is the split, and it is lopsided enough to change where you look. Provincial departments account for 98 percent of the unpaid invoices and 98 percent of the R15.5 billion. Every national department in the country, added together, accounts for the other 2 percent.
That matters because the commentary around this story tends to point at national departments. Treasury names six national departments as contributing most to late and non-payment in the quarter. They are Home Affairs, Land Reform and Rural Development, Water and Sanitation, Public Works and Infrastructure, Forestry Fisheries and the Environment, and Justice and Constitutional Development. The fourth of those is the department leading the push to turn South Africa into a construction site.
Being the worst of the 2 percent is still worth knowing. It is not the same thing as being where the money is stuck.
If you are owed by a province, you are in the 98 percent, and you should price your expectations accordingly.
Michelle Kerr, a director at MDA, describes the effect plainly. Contractors become the unwitting financier of the project. She told Infrastructure News that delayed payment has become normalised, particularly in the public sector.
Construction is the industry least able to absorb it
The reason is structural rather than unlucky. A contractor pays wages, suppliers, subcontractors, plant and usually materials before recovering any of it through an interim payment. Every day between the work and the certificate is financed by the contractor. Every day between the certificate and the payment is financed again.
A large firm with a working capital facility can carry that for a while. A firm with forty people and one overdraft cannot. Kerr's summary of what follows is short. Subcontractors go unpaid, projects slow down, claims multiply and businesses fail.
Employers do not escape it either. Contractors price payment risk into the next tender, so the department pays for today's delay on tomorrow's project, and the pool of firms willing to bid gets smaller each round.
The machinery you are not using
Kerr's sharpest point is about contractor behaviour rather than client behaviour. Contractors treat non-payment as a purely commercial issue for too long. They keep working, keep sending increasingly frustrated emails, keep attending meetings and keep accepting that payment is being processed.
The GCC, JBCC, NEC and FIDIC forms all set out a process for dealing with non-payment. Depending on the form, non-payment can give rise to interest, to a right to suspend, and in serious enough cases to termination. Each form carries its own procedural requirements and notice provisions, and the entitlement is secured by complying with them rather than by being owed the money.
This piece states no notice period and no interest rate for any of those forms, on purpose. They differ by form and by edition, and a period remembered from a course is how a contractor serves a notice that does not work. Open the clause in the contract you actually signed. JBCC publishes its own documents, and the edition on your job may not be the one you last read.
Running parallel to all of that is the court. An amount certified in a payment certificate can be enforced through court proceedings, and that route does not depend on the employer agreeing the work was worth it. A certificate is the employer's own document, signed by the employer's own agent.
What expires while you wait
Here is the part the legal commentary does not reach, and it is the part that ends firms rather than jobs.
The money is late and the file keeps ageing. A tax compliance status, a letter of good standing, a CSD record and a cidb registration all carry their own dates, and not one of them pauses because a department is slow. Ninety days of waiting can cost a contractor the next panel for a document reason rather than a cash reason, and the two look identical on a rejection letter.
COIDA is the live example this week. Gov.za published a final reminder on 9 September 2026 for outstanding 2025 and prior-year Returns of Earnings, with employers blocked for audit. No return means no letter of good standing, and no letter of good standing means off site. The deadline sits inside the attachment rather than in the notice.
Arabella verifies contractors once and keeps that verification current, so the expiry dates are watched from our side rather than remembered on yours. What the check covers is on the contractor page, and the payment and compliance notices we read each week are collected in insights.
On Monday
Take the oldest certificate you are owed and write two dates beside it. The date it was certified, and the date payment fell due under the contract.
Then find the clause that says what happens after the second date, and read it out loud to whoever signs your letters. If it gives you interest, claim it in writing this week. If it gives you a right to suspend, you now know what staying quiet costs, and it is usually more than the certificate.
