It is not the employer’s money. It is yours, held back.
Retention is a percentage held back from each payment certificate. It exists for one reason: to give the employer something to fix defects with if you walk away or leave the work unfinished. Until that happens, it is money you earned and have not been paid.
Two numbers decide everything about it.
- How much. Under JBCC, retention is up to 10% of the value certified on each payment — a ceiling, not a target. On smaller contracts 5% is common, and the contract in front of you is the only figure that counts.
- When it comes back. In two halves, at two different moments.
The two release moments
At practical completion, half of it comes back. Practical completion is the point where the works can be used for their intended purpose. On the certificate that records it, half the retention held to that date is released.
At the end of the defects liability period, the balance comes back — provided the outstanding work and the notified defects are done. That period is set in the contract. Three months is a common default under JBCC; twelve months is also common, and some contracts go longer. Yours governs.
The trap is the second half. The first release arrives with an event — practical completion is a ceremony, and somebody is watching the certificate. The second release arrives on a date that nobody wrote in a diary, months after the site team moved to the next job, against a defects period that has quietly expired.
Why the second half goes unclaimed
- Nobody holds a register of it. Retention is deducted on every certificate and then lives in a column, not a file.
- It is released on application in most forms, and no application is made.
- The person who ran the job has moved on, and the contract is now somebody else’s problem.
- It is a small percentage of a big number, so it never feels urgent — until you count what all the unclaimed retention across your contracts adds up to.
Late payment of it is not something you have to accept quietly either: JBCC provides for interest on amounts paid late, at a rate set in the agreement.
What to do about it
- Record retention on every certificate as it is deducted, not once at the end of the job. A figure you assemble at the end is a figure nobody can defend.
- Diary both release dates the day the contract is signed — practical completion you will know, the end of the defects period you will not.
- Apply in writing on the day it falls due. Not after the final account is agreed.
- Check the certificate against your own register. The commonest way to lose the second half is to accept a final statement that was never built to include it.
What this looks like in the system
Every claim in Syncware-Build is built from the schedule of values, and retention is held back on the claim itself — the Billing register carries the retention column beside the gross, so the balance accumulates where the work does instead of being reconstructed later.
Add SoV Line adds a priced item to the schedule of values that claims are built from. New Claim builds the progress claim from it, with retention held back.