Owner to contractor: 15 days
Under the Georgia Prompt Pay Act, O.C.G.A. 13-11-4(a), once the contractor has performed, the owner must pay within 15 days after the owner or its representative receives a payment request.
Contractor to subcontractor: 10 days
Under 13-11-4(b), after a contractor receives each periodic or final payment, it must pay each subcontractor the full amount received for that subcontractor's work within 10 days.
The core trap is mixing up 15 days (owner to contractor) with 10 days (contractor to subcontractor). Other numbers do not belong:
- 30 days is the 13-10-80 public-works retainage release period.
- 45 days is the 13-10-80 project-duration exclusion.
- 5 days has no basis in the section.
Worked example: the contractor receives the owner's payment on March 4, including 18,000 dollars for the framer's work; no other terms, no dispute. March 4 + 10 days = March 14, and the framer gets the full 18,000 dollars. March 19 wrongly uses the 15-day owner period. April 3 wrongly uses 30 days. Deducting 10% retainage conflicts with paying the full amount received for that work.
Down the payment chain
Subsection (b) applies to each subcontractor paying its own subcontractors as well as to the contractor. A subcontractor paid for work partly done by its sub-subcontractor must pay that sub-subcontractor the full amount received for that work within 10 days.
- The trap: saying the Act covers only general contractors.
- It may not hold the money until final completion; the 10 days runs from each periodic or final payment, and it is not the owner's 15.
Defaults, not absolutes
The 15-day and 10-day periods in 13-11-4 are default periods:
- O.C.G.A. 13-11-7 lets the contract set other terms.
- O.C.G.A. 13-11-5 allows payment to be withheld for cause.
So it is wrong to call the periods unchangeable by contract, and wrong to say payment is due regardless of any dispute over the work. The July 1, 2022 public-works date belongs to the 13-10-80 retainage amendment, not the Prompt Pay Act.