Why a missing signature is not a missing record

A signature does one job: it shows someone on the other side saw the work while it was happening. That is worth having, and it is not the same thing as the record itself.

The record is the date, the instruction that caused the work, the hours each person and each machine stood there, the materials that went in, and the evidence attached to it. Those are the parts anyone assessing it checks months later, and the parts only you can capture on the day. For what belongs on the docket in the first place, see our dayworks docket template, and for which record type applies to the work in front of you, what to record on site.

What your own subcontract decides about sign-off

Before you argue about a signature, find out whether your contract asks for one. Read the copy you signed, including the annexures and the schedule of rates, and check:

  • Whether there is a dayworks or daily-records clause at all, and what it says you must submit. Some subcontracts set out a record and a deadline; some say nothing, in which case the project's own procedure is what you are being held to.
  • Who is authorised to sign. A named role is very different from “the site representative” — if the person who directed the work cannot sign for it, you need to know who can before the shift ends.
  • Whether submission is on a clock. End of shift, 24 hours, 48 hours or with the next progress claim are all common, and a late record is easier to argue with than an unsigned one.
  • Which rates apply to dayworks labour, plant and materials. This is what the money is calculated from, so an unpriced docket is only half a record.

Five things to do the day a docket comes back unsigned

  1. Send it in anyway, by email, the same day. The email timestamps the record and puts your version of the work on the file before anyone's memory of it moves.
  2. Say in the covering line that it is unsigned, and why. An unexplained gap reads as an oversight six months later; a stated one shows the record was offered on the day and not accepted.
  3. Name who directed the work, and when. The instruction is what connects your hours to someone else's decision, and it is the first thing you will be asked for.
  4. Attach the evidence while it still exists. Photos of the work, plant hours, delivery dockets and supplier invoices are what make an unsigned docket checkable against something other than your word.
  5. Keep it in the file you will build the payment claim from. The docket is the working behind a line on a claim, and one nobody can find when the claim goes in is a cost you have absorbed.

How an unsigned docket travels into a payment claim

Queensland is a useful worked example, because its legislation spells out what a payment claim must be. Under section 68(1) of the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (Qld), a payment claim is a written document that identifies the construction work or related goods and services, states the claimed amount, requests payment of it, and includes the other information prescribed by regulation; section 68(3) adds that a document bearing the word ‘invoice’ is taken to satisfy the request limb. A signature from the other side is not one of them.

What the docket is priced at still comes back to your contract. Section 72(1) provides that construction work is valued in accordance with the contract where the contract provides for the matter, and only otherwise on the statutory fallback — so the rates you signed are what value the labour, plant and materials on it. That is also what a payment claim needs to stand up.

If the dayworks then come back short-paid, the reasons have to be written down. Section 69(c) requires a payment schedule proposing to pay less than the claimed amount to state why, including the respondent's reasons for withholding any payment. Section 76(1) requires that schedule within whichever ends first of the period in the contract and 15 business days after the claim is given, and section 77(2) makes a respondent who gives no payment schedule liable to pay the claimed amount on the due date. Section 82(4) then stops an adjudication response adding reasons for withholding that were not in the payment schedule when it was given.

That is why the contemporaneous docket does more work than the signature: the reasons for holding your money get fixed in writing at a set point, and your record is what they are tested against. Every state and territory has its own security-of-payment Act with its own section numbers and timeframes — the sections above are Queensland's, so check the Act that applies where you are working.

What to put in the covering line

Attached is the dayworks docket for [date], covering [work and location]. It is submitted unsigned — [name, role] was asked to sign on site and [declined / was not available]. The labour, plant and materials on it were recorded as the work was carried out, and the supporting photos and delivery dockets are attached. Please let me know in writing by [date] if anything on it is disputed.

Keep it to that. If the work was directed verbally in the first place, that is a separate note worth sending on its own — see confirming a verbal site instruction for what goes in it.

The takeaway

An unsigned docket submitted on the day, with the hours, the instruction and the evidence on it, beats a signed one you are still chasing at the end of the month. Build the record so it does not depend on someone else's pen: our free dayworks docket generator sets out the fields, and whatever you capture it with, the record that counts is the one written while the crew was still standing there.