A draw package is two documents pretending to be one: a claim for money, and the evidence that the claim is true. The claim is the schedule of values with this period’s progress and the holdback calculation; the evidence is the statutory declaration, the clearance, the insurance certificate and the backup. Packages get rejected on the evidence far more often than on the arithmetic.
Key takeaways
Most draw disputes are not disputes at all. They are a package that arrived without the clearance, or with a schedule of values that no longer matches the approved change orders, sitting in a reviewer’s inbox until somebody notices. The money is not in question; the paperwork is.
Ontario’s prompt payment regime is built on the “proper invoice”. Our sister firm explains that everything starts with a proper invoice, a document meeting the formal requirements set out in the Construction Act or the contract, generally including the contractor’s name and address, the date, information identifying the contract, a description of the services or materials supplied, the amount claimed and anything else the contract requires — and that the payment clock does not start until a valid invoice has been delivered, so an incomplete invoice can restart the timeline.
Everything downstream inherits that. The same article sets out the fixed windows at each tier and the notice of non-payment that a party must deliver if it intends to withhold, along with the adjudication route when nobody does. Check the current day counts before you build them into a process: ODACC, the Authorized Nominating Authority under the Act, states that the adjudication and prompt payment provisions came into force on 1 October 2019 and that further amendments to the Construction Act came into force on 1 January 2026. A deadline table copied from an older summary is exactly the kind of thing that survives quietly in a template for years.
Holdback is the other half. Our sister firm explains that the basic statutory holdback rule requires a percentage of what is owed to be retained until the applicable lien period passes, and that the Act includes a mechanism for releasing holdback on a phased or annual basis on long projects rather than only at the end — with notice steps and timing windows technical enough to be worth working through with counsel rather than from a summary.
The exact list is set by your contract; the shape is consistent. On a stipulated price prime contract the framework itself comes from the standard form — the Canadian Construction Documents Committee describes CCDC 2 as setting out the high-level administrative requirements and procedures for a project, including payment and changes in the work, and notes that it assumes monthly progress payments and makes reference to provincial payment legislation where applicable.
A working checklist
The claim. Schedule of values with this period’s percentage complete; approved change orders incorporated; holdback calculated; the proper invoice itself.
The declarations. Statutory declaration in the form the contract requires, sworn by someone authorised to swear it.
The currency evidence. WSIB or WorkSafeBC clearance, certificate of insurance, bond status where applicable — each with an expiry date somebody is watching.
The backup. Subcontractor invoices and their own declarations, supplier invoices, stored materials documentation, progress photographs, and any measurement or survey the consultant requires.
The clearance is the one that expires while you are not looking. The WSIB states that a clearance shows a business is registered and up to date with premium payments and reporting, that only registered businesses in good standing can obtain one, and that the clearance number is valid for all your contracts and is valid for up to 90 days. It also notes that a clearance requested by email arrives within three to five business days, and that automatic email notification can be switched on each time a certificate is created or renewed. On a monthly draw cycle, a 90-day validity means one in three packages will need a fresh one, and it will always be the one you assembled on a Friday.
Completeness gating. The package should not be submittable until every required item is present and unexpired. This is a rules problem, not an AI problem, and it removes most rejections on its own.
Extraction and expiry tracking. Certificates, clearances and bonds are documents with dates buried in them. Extraction services read the date out — Microsoft documents Azure Document Intelligence for extracting text and structured fields from documents — and once the dates are structured, the reminder is trivial.
Reconciliation. Comparing the schedule of values against approved change orders, and subcontractor claims against their committed values, catches the two errors that cause the most rework: billing a change that was never approved, and over-billing a line that was reduced. Purpose-built platforms model this natively — Procore documents an Invoicing tool covering collection, review and approval of owner and subcontractor invoices, with subcontractor schedules of values and invoice backup.
Assembly and narrative. Producing the cover letter, the progress narrative and the indexed PDF is drafting work, and drafting is what these tools do well. The narrative should be checked by the person who walked the site, because a description of progress is a representation.
A statutory declaration is sworn. It is a personal statement that subcontractors and suppliers have been paid to the extent the declaration says, and it carries consequences for the individual who swears it. No part of that is delegable to software. The same is true of certifying percentage complete: someone is stating that the work claimed exists.
The useful discipline is to keep the two halves visibly separate in your own process. Machine-assembled evidence, human-sworn assertions. When those blur — when the declaration is pre-populated and signed without a check because the system has always been right — you have automated the wrong step.
The following is illustrative — a composite of how the workflow is usually assembled, not a measured result.
A general contractor bills five projects on the 25th of each month. Draws used to take four days, mostly spent chasing subtrade declarations and expired clearances. The change is unremarkable: every subtrade uploads its invoice, declaration and clearance to a portal, extraction reads the expiry dates, and anything expiring before the submission date is chased automatically ten days out.
On the 25th the package assembles itself — schedule of values reconciled to approved changes, holdback calculated, backup indexed, narrative drafted from the daily logs. The project manager spends ninety minutes reviewing rather than three days collecting, corrects the narrative in two places, and the principal swears the declaration having actually read the payment position. The invoice is complete on delivery, which is the only thing the payment clock cares about.
Proposed, yes; certified, no. Progress data from daily logs and photographs is a reasonable starting point for a draft percentage complete, and it makes the conversation with the consultant more concrete. The number that goes on the invoice is a certification by a person.
Establish whether the objection is to the invoice’s validity or to the amount, because the consequences differ: an invalid invoice affects when the clock started, while a dispute about amount runs through the notice of non-payment and, if needed, adjudication. Our sister firm sets out how the notice of non-payment and adjudication route work.
Not on the same timing as the rest of the invoice. That is a specific rule and it is worth getting right — see how HST works on construction contracts, and keep the supporting receipts in order using an automated capture workflow.
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