LANDFAST / TEN CANADIAN JURISDICTIONS TRACKED / SEE THE TABLE FOR WHAT IS IN FORCE, WHAT IS PARTIAL AND WHAT IS ONLY PASSED / VERIFIED 5 SEPTEMBER 2026
If a general contractor is sixty days past due, or an invoice you certified is being disputed, the first question is the same on both sides of it: what date does the Act actually give us. Landfast computes that date from the governing statute rather than inferring it, prints the section it counted from, drafts the notice the jurisdiction requires, and keeps the record while the work is still happening. Landfast is a software tool, not a law firm.
Landfast, construction payment compliance and record-keeping for Canada
| IN | Proper invoice given | 2026-09-03 | Seated |
| NP | Notice of non-payment window | 2026-09-17 | Open |
| PA | Owner pay-by, Ontario | 2026-10-01 | Open |
| HB | Annual holdback release | 2026-11-14 | Seated |
A bearing is two things at once and the brand needs both. It is the surface a member is seated on, which takes the load and does not move, and it is a fixed reference direction that everything else is located from. The motif is not a shape you place, it is a behaviour you observe: on every page there is one line that stays exactly where it is while the reader scrolls the content past it, and beside it there is a column of two-character codes that identifies every entry by label rather than by colour. Together those two things are the register. The sticky line demonstrates the tagline instead of asserting it, several seconds before anyone has time to parse the second syllable of the name, and the code column is the point at which taxonomy stops being a second idea inherited from Cascade and becomes an expression of the first one, because a register labels things and a decorated chart colours them.
Ten jurisdictions tracked, in three different states of law. Landfast computes from the statute that governs your job today, not the one that governed it last year.
Every deadline is arithmetic: calendar days in the project's own timezone, across the statutory holidays of the governing jurisdiction, from a date you can check yourself. Each answer prints the Act, the section it was counted from, and the date that rule was verified. Every rule change is published in a dated changelog. Where a regime has passed and is not proclaimed, prompt-payment dates are shown as a working model and labelled as one on the face of the number. Manitoba's owner-to-contractor clock is 28 days, the same as Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and federal, verified 5 September 2026.
The obligation to pay is engaged by a proper invoice. If the invoice is not proper, the clock a subcontractor is counting on may never have started.
Validation runs before the invoice leaves the office, against the statutory elements of the governing jurisdiction and against the contract's schedule. If an invoice misses either, the obligation to pay under the Act may never have been engaged, and the deadline being counted may never have started. Landfast flags. It does not conclude, because whether an invoice is proper is a question a decision-maker answers and not a question software should. When the invoice goes out, the PDF carries a SHA-256 reference and a verification link, so the version you sent is the version anyone can check later.
Adjudication is decided in weeks, on documents, by one person reading a file. Landfast writes that file as the work happens, for whichever side is keeping it.
Each side of a contract keeps its own record, and either side can be the one keeping it. A hash chain makes a change impossible to hide, which is the thing that is actually worth anything a year later, when the question is not whether a file could have been altered but whether anyone can show it was not. Adjudication turns on what a decision-maker can satisfy themselves about from documents, in weeks, without a trial.
For a general contractor the exposure runs the other way and it costs more. Miss the contractor-to-subcontractor chain and you lose the right to withhold.
Nothing on this page is aimed at your subcontractors and nothing on their pages is aimed at you. The record is the same object read from either end, which is why an adviser can put it in front of both. Procore stays connected, along with QuickBooks Online and Xero. There is a one-page PDF built for a board pack, carrying the jurisdiction table, the data residency position and the security posture, and you can send it without reading it first.
QuickBooks Online and Xero have no native holdback, so every construction office in the country rebuilds it by hand. If month-end gets longer, Landfast has failed.
On a $100,000 progress billing with 10 percent holdback in Ontario: Dr A/R 101,700, Dr Retainage Receivable 11,300, Cr Revenue 100,000, Cr HST payable 11,700, Cr HST on holdback deferred 1,300. The account carries the American word because that is what your chart of accounts already says. Holdback is ours and we use it everywhere else. Invoices and payments cost back to the job. Any time you want it, a full archive: every document, the audit log and a verification script you can run without us. Plans run $59 to $599 CAD a month, every module on every plan.
The seated record. A dovetail is the one joint in the trades whose entire purpose is that it cannot be withdrawn under load: the tail is wider at its back than at its neck, so once it is seated, pulling on it only tightens it. That is the product drawn as a single mechanical fact, in vocabulary this buyer owns, and it is a figure rather than a picture: it is not an illustration of ice, a shoreline, a padlock, a ledger or a list. It also answers the name at the geometry level, which the previous mark did not. Landfast means made fast TO something, and the earlier proposal mandated a permanent gap between the spine and the bars, so nothing was ever attached, and left-registration was offered as attachment when registration only reads as tidiness. Here the land is the vertical member and the record is the horizontal one, and they are seated in each other. There is one more reading built in on purpose: the record is cut off square at the right edge of the frame rather than terminated, because the register continues past the mark. The one thing the mark cannot depict is withdrawal, which is the whole point.
| Say | Never |
|---|---|
| The record does not move. | Get paid faster. |
| Every deadline is computed from the Act, and the section it was computed from is printed beside it. | AI-powered compliance that understands your contracts. |
| The deadline engine is arithmetic, not a language model. Workspace Intelligence is a separate module, it is generative, it reads only your own workspace, it cites the record behind every claim, and it never sets a date. | There is no AI anywhere in this product. |
| Ontario, under the Construction Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.30, as amended on 1 January 2026. | Compliant across Canada. |
| British Columbia's Construction Prompt Payment Act passed on 27 November 2025 and has not been proclaimed in force. Your live dates in British Columbia today run under the Builders Lien Act, and that is what Landfast computes there. Prompt-payment dates for BC are shown as a working model and labelled as one on the face of the number. | Now live in British Columbia. |
| The same arithmetic runs on your payables and your receivables, and you can see on one screen that it is the same. | The party with the better contemporaneous record usually wins. |
| Any alteration to the record is detectable, and the record-keeping system is built to the integrity test the Canada Evidence Act applies to electronic records at sections 31.1 to 31.8, in the terms CAN/CGSB-72.34 uses. | It is the same document a year later that it was the day it was made. |
| If the invoice does not meet the statutory requirements of its jurisdiction and the requirements its own contract adds, the obligation to pay under the Act may never have been engaged. Landfast names the element that is missing and shows you both lists. | Landfast refuses to start the clock until your invoice is proper. |
Landfast computes each deadline from the Act that governs your job, prints the section, and keeps dated proof you sent it.
Days counted against the statute, in that jurisdiction's own holidays.
The deadline engine is arithmetic, not a language model. The Act, the section and the date that rule was verified print beside every answer.
The record is built while the work happens, not afterwards.
A hash chain does not make a file immutable, and Landfast does not say it does. It makes a change impossible to hide.
Identical arithmetic on payables. Each side keeps its own record.
Missing the chain costs a general contractor the right to withhold. The payables view is his own exposure, in his own numbers.
| Specialty trade subcontractor | Check a deadline before any signup, including the answer that the window has closed. |
|---|---|
| Construction bookkeeper | Holdback in Retainage Receivable, a merge queue instead of duplicates, read-only for fourteen days. |
| General contractor's controller | Days sales outstanding, unbilled holdback aged, and the right to withhold kept on file. |
| Construction lawyer | A dated jurisdiction table with citations, and software that flags rather than concludes. |
| CPA in construction practice | Alberta dates right, ASPE year-end export, T5018 totals, and an archive you verify yourself. |
The longer argument
The schedule moves. The scope moves. The money is late. By the time anyone argues, both sides have quietly rewritten what happened. One thing has to be fixed, and it is the record. A register is kept rather than designed: entries go in in order, each one labelled, none removed, and the book is the same book a year later. Fast here is the trade's own sense, made fast and held fast. It is a vocabulary rule, not a promise. Nothing in this system says anyone will be paid sooner. On every page one rule stays exactly where it is while the content scrolls past it.
Ontario changed on 1 January 2026, and Form 6 is now the notice of annual release. Alberta has run since 29 August 2022, amended 1 April 2025. Saskatchewan since 1 March 2022, Manitoba since 1 April 2025, the federal Act since 9 December 2023. The regimes in force do not run the same way, Manitoba included, and every subcontract tier runs later than the one above it. Two are partial and counted as partial: Quebec is public construction contracts only, and the Northwest Territories has no adjudication. British Columbia's Act passed on 27 November 2025 and is not proclaimed, so Surrey jobs run today under the Builders Lien Act.
Every invoice, payment, notice, holdback and computed deadline is written into a hash-chained log as it happens, for whichever side of the contract is keeping it. On request it assembles into one sealed bundle with a numbered exhibit pack. The claim is tamper evidence and it is stated as tamper evidence. A hash chain does not make a file immutable. It makes a change impossible to hide. The proper invoice checker names the missing element and shows the statutory list beside the contract's own. It flags. It does not conclude, because whether an invoice is proper is a question a decision maker answers.
At any time, a full archive: every document, the audit log, and a verification script that runs without us. That answers the question every adviser asks: what happens if the vendor is not here in three years. Alongside it, the mechanics: holdback posts to Retainage Receivable, two-way with QuickBooks Online and Xero on independent connections, a merge queue instead of a duplicate, and read-only for the first fourteen days by default. T5018 totals and the year-end export come out of the same ledger in ASPE terms. Plans run from $59 to $599 CAD a month, every module on every plan.