Send the written payment request that puts 20% a year on their lateness

A Florida draw goes quiet in a particular way. Nobody rejects it, nobody says the work was wrong, nobody calls. It sits in an approval queue while you carry the payroll that produced it, and every week it sits costs you money and costs them nothing. Florida fixed that asymmetry in 1992. The statute just does not switch itself on.

Put a number on the switch. An $84,000 draw on a private Broward County job: pay application delivered April 6, 2026, net 30, so payment falls due May 6. Section 715.12(5)(a) starts interest on the 14th day after that, May 20, at the s.55.03 judgment rate plus an additional 12 percent per annum. The judgment rate for the quarter beginning July 1, 2026 is 8.06 percent, so the number running on your money is 20.06 percent a year. The check lands September 18. That is 121 days of accrual on $84,000, which is $5,586 that is legally yours and that almost nobody bills for. Four slow draws a year on a business doing $1.2m is a five figure line you have been donating to whoever pays you last.

By the end of this page you will have a payment request that satisfies all three conditions in s.715.12(4) rather than two, the interest start date written on the job the day it goes out, a contract rate chosen to beat the statutory one, the stamped-received date captured on every public pay application, the notice that converts a stalling local government's objection into a waived one, and the two pay-down clocks that run against you at 10 and 7 days. None of the sections below changed between the 2025 and 2026 editions of the Florida Statutes.

Build the request that satisfies all three conditions, because two out of three starts nothing

Section 715.12(4) is not a deadline. It is a list of events, and the obligation to pay arises when all of them have occurred:

Three things fall out of that list.

The due date is your contract's, not the statute's. The most repeated error about this section is that Florida gives an owner 14 days to pay. It gives an owner no number of days to pay. Subsection (4)(a) points at the contract for the due date, and the 14 days in (5)(a) is when interest begins on a payment already overdue. Net 30 means net 30, and the meter starts on day 44.

Subsection (4)(c) is the one you control and the one that gets skipped. A pay application that arrives without the partial release the owner needs under s.713.06 has not completed the list, so no clock is running behind it. That is why the release travels with the draw rather than following it a week later, and it is the same discipline that keeps you from signing a release s.713.20 did not write: both halves are in invoicing and getting paid in Florida.

"Except an owner" in (4)(b) is load-bearing. It is a statutory pay-when-paid available to a general contractor, a subcontractor and a sub-subcontractor, and not to the owner. So a sub's interest clock against the GC does not start until the GC has been paid for that work, while an owner has no version of that sentence to stand on. When the money is stuck above your payer rather than at your payer, the lien chain is the lever, which is the Florida Notice to Owner.

Scope comes from s.715.12(2): written contracts to improve real property entered into after December 31, 1992 and for which a construction lien is authorized under part I of chapter 713. Interest travels with your lien rights, on the same jobs. Public property cannot be liened, which is why public work runs on a different Act.

Count 14 days from the due date, and notice what the same 14 days does to them

The period in s.715.12(5)(a) is doing two jobs, and the second is the one worth knowing cold.

Subsection (5)(b) says that if the request for payment is incomplete or contains an error, the obligor has 14 days to return it to you for completion or correction, and must specify in writing the reasons for the return. If they do not return it with those reasons inside that period, they must pay interest. If they do return it in time, the clock resets and begins on the 14th day after the request is completed or corrected and payment is otherwise due.

Read what that leaves them. A Florida payer facing a proper pay application has two lawful responses: pay it, or send it back in writing with the reasons inside 14 days. "It is still with accounting" is neither, and silence is neither. A payer who says nothing for two weeks and then pays in September has not raised a defense, they have been late at 20.06 percent, and when you write the letter that distinction is the letter.

One more sentence stops the oldest stalling tactic in Florida construction. Under s.715.12(6)(e), unless the contract specifically provides otherwise, a dispute does not permit the obligor to withhold payment from you for labor, services or materials not subject to or affected by that dispute. A $4,000 argument about a tile transition does not park an $84,000 draw. The disputed $4,000 can sit. The other $80,000 is due, and it accrues.

Retainage has its own clock. Subsection (5)(a) excludes amounts withheld under subsection (7), and (7)(a) requires the whole held-back balance within 14 days of substantial completion, a certificate of occupancy, or possession, each coupled with the punchlist being substantially completed. Where the contract sets no time for a written punchlist, the statute supplies 15 days. How much they may hold at all is Florida retainage.

Write a rate into your own contract that beats the statute, because they cannot draft it back out

Two subsections turn the rate from a fact into a decision you make at signing.

Section 715.12(6)(a) sets the rate during accrual at the s.55.03 rate plus an additional 12 percent per annum or the rate specified in the contract, whichever is greater, and adds that nobody receives both. The statutory number is a floor rather than a ceiling. Write 2 percent per month into your Florida contracts and you have contracted for 24 percent, beating the current 20.06 percent, and it is the exact rate Florida already imposes on late public construction payments.

Section 715.12(6)(d) is why they cannot answer that in their own paperwork. An obligee may not waive the right to receive interest before a payment is due under a contract subject to this section, and waiver is available only on or after the date payment became due. A "no interest on late payments" clause signed at execution asks you to waive something not yet due, and the Legislature already answered it.

The floor itself moves quarterly, because s.55.03(1) has the Chief Financial Officer reset the judgment rate four times a year off a 12 month average of the New York Fed discount rate plus 400 basis points. It was 8.44 percent for the quarter beginning January 1, 2026, giving 20.44 percent under s.715.12, then 8.25 and 20.25 from April 1, then 8.06 and 20.06 from July 1.

Section 715.12(6)(b) creates no separate cause of action other than for the collection of interest due under subsection (5). Interest is not a lawsuit, it is a line riding on the balance you are already owed, with the section printed next to it. Payers who ignore a demand letter tend to read a line item.

On local government work the clock starts at their stamp and is counted in business days

Public jobs run on a different Act, and the arithmetic is the part people get wrong. Sections 218.70 through 218.79 are part VII of chapter 218, and s.218.70 names them the Local Government Prompt Payment Act. Under s.218.72(5) that reaches a county or municipal government, a school board, a school district, an authority, a special taxing district or any other political subdivision. State agency work runs on the parallel sections at ss.255.072 to 255.078, where s.255.073(4) carries the same 2 percent per month.

Day zero is not the day you emailed it. Section 218.74(1) requires the entity to mark every payment request as received on the date it is delivered to an agent, employee, facility or office of the entity. That stamp anchors everything, so the date to capture is the stamped-received date, and the question at the pre-construction meeting is who stamps it and how you get proof.

Those are business days, roughly five working weeks on the 25 day version. The last row is in the table because it is the most common miscitation made against a construction payment: the 45 days, the grace period, the halved rate and the requirement to invoice for your own interest all belong to s.218.74, which governs purchases other than construction services.

What governs your pay application is s.218.735(9): payments not made within its time periods bear interest at 2 percent per month, or the contract rate, whichever is greater. That is 24 percent a year, it runs from the due date with no grace period, and nothing conditions it on you invoicing for it. On a $210,000 county pay application, every month it sits is $4,200.

Section 218.735(1)(a) hands you one more lever on the 25 day version. Once that window has passed you may send the local government an overdue notice, and if the request is not rejected within 4 business days after delivery of that notice, it is deemed accepted, except for any portion that is fraudulent or misleading. One page, converting their inertia into an acceptance. Getting onto that job, and settling whether it is bonded before you price it, is your first Florida public job.

Give the four business day notice that turns their silence into a waived objection

When a public payer stops paying and starts talking, s.218.76 puts a stopwatch on the talking.

An improper invoice gets a fast answer. Under s.218.76(1) the entity must notify you in writing within 10 days that the request is improper, and say what corrective action would make it proper.

A real dispute gets a timetable. Section 218.76(2)(a) requires the entity's dispute resolution procedure to commence within 30 days of the date the payment request or proper invoice was received, and to conclude by final decision within 45 days of that same date. The outcome sets the interest: resolved for the entity, interest accrues 15 days after their final decision; resolved for you, interest accrues from the original due date, so a four month argument you win is a four month argument they pay for.

Then comes the lever, the strongest sentence in part VII. Under s.218.76(2)(b), if the entity does not commence its dispute resolution procedure in time, you may give it written notice of that failure. If it still fails to commence within 4 business days after your notice, two things happen at once: any amounts resolved in your favor bear mandatory interest under s.218.735(9) from the date you submitted the request containing them, and the objection to your payment request is deemed waived. One page, four business days, and their reason for not paying stops existing.

Where the contract or a local ordinance prescribes its own procedure, s.218.735(4) routes you there first, so the procedure to read is the one in the contract you are about to sign. And s.218.76(3) changes what a Florida public receivable is worth arguing about: in an action to recover amounts due under this part, the court shall award court costs and reasonable attorney's fees, including fees incurred through appeal, to the prevailing party.

Remit to your own subs in 10 days, because the second clock runs against you

Everything above has a mirror, and on public work it is short.

Section 218.735(6): a contractor who receives payment from a local governmental entity for labor, services or materials furnished by subcontractors and suppliers must remit payment due to them within 10 days of receiving it. A subcontractor who receives payment for work furnished by its own subs and suppliers must remit within 7 days. Those are calendar days, in contrast with the business days upstream, and they run from your receipt rather than from any invoice date. The identical rule for state agency work is s.255.073(3).

You can dispute down the chain, and the subsection says exactly how: notify the party whose payment is disputed, in writing, of the amount in dispute and the actions required to cure it, then pay every undisputed amount inside the time limits anyway. An unwritten dispute is a late payment with a story attached, and it accrues against you at the same 2 percent a month.

On private work the mirror is s.715.12(4)(b) read from the other side. Once the person above you has paid you, that condition is satisfied for your sub, and their contract due date plus 14 days is when interest starts running on your money.

What it costs

There is no monthly subscription. The platform fee is 2.5% of each invoice processed through AEC Stack, collected on payment due dates.

Nothing here carries a government fee. What it carries is the price Florida put on other people's delay, and the last two rows face the other way:

Every row of that table turns on dates that exist for about a week before they become somebody's recollection. AEC Stack stamps each invoice with its own history: created, sent, and viewed at the moment somebody opened the link, each with the date and time, so the delivery date of a payment request is a stored fact rather than an argument. The Florida job clocks hang off the dates on the job record and print the statute on each row, naming a missing input rather than guessing at a date. And when a payment problem stops being one, the Florida payment bond claim calculator counts the public window behind it.

Take the oldest unpaid Florida draw on your board and write two dates on it: the day the payment request was delivered, and the day payment fell due under the contract. Add 14. If that date is behind you, the balance has been earning 20.06 percent a year in your favor ever since, and the next document you send is a statement with an interest line rather than another polite email. Start at your business profile.

<!-- CAPTURE LATER: the Florida job clocks panel on a US-FL job with the payment request delivery date and the contract due date entered, showing the interest-start row at day 14 with Fla. Stat. s.715.12(5)(a) under it, next to the public row carrying s.218.735(1)(a). Blocked in this wave: the demo tenant is Ontario. -->