Late Delivery Penalty Calculator

A hundred and eighty thousand dollar job at eighteen per cent. Twelve hundred a day late, capped at ten per cent of the contract. Twenty-two days late as things stand, and seven hundred dollars to buy a day back.

Doing nothing costs eighteen thousand. Finishing on time costs fifteen thousand four hundred. Stopping halfway costs twenty thousand four hundred, which is worse than both.

The cap is why. Ten per cent of the contract is eighteen thousand, which is fifteen days, and the job is twenty-two days late — so the penalty is already at its ceiling and the first seven days you buy back cost four thousand nine hundred and change the penalty by nothing at all. Below the cap each day saves twelve hundred and costs seven hundred, which is worth doing. Above it, each day saves nothing.

That makes the cost curve rise in the middle and fall at both ends, and it is the reason a recovery plan can leave a job worse off than no recovery plan. The table gives every landing date from on time to where the job is now, marks the ones that cost more than doing nothing, and names the latest date that still beats it. Here that is five days late. Get to six and the money was spent to be worse off.

Either go all the way or do not start. That is not a slogan, it is what the arithmetic says when a penalty is capped, and it is the opposite of how a slipping job is usually managed.

Take the cap off and the shape changes completely: the curve becomes an ordinary slope, every day recovered is worth the same as the last, and no landing date is worse than doing nothing. The page reports which of those two worlds you are in rather than assuming one.

This prices a clause. It is not advice about being late, and a cap on liquidated damages is arithmetic rather than permission. What being late costs you with this client, with the next one, and on the tender after that is not on this page and is frequently larger than the penalty itself.

It says nothing about your obligations either. Whether a clause is enforceable, whether an extension of time is due, and what the contract actually requires are questions for the contract and for somebody qualified to read it. Not legal advice.

Save as many versions as you like and put any two side by side, figure against figure, with the better one on each line marked and the difference in its own column. That screen is the one that decides things, and it is the part a free calculator cannot do at all. Two jobs, or the same job before and after a change to the clause, side by side.

One HTML file. No account, no subscription, no internet needed. Opens on Windows, Mac and Android; the readme explains the extra step on iPhone and iPad, where Apple blocks JavaScript in downloaded files and every tool of this kind is affected.

Everything lives in your browser on your device. Nothing is uploaded, which is why it works offline and why nobody else can see your figures — and it also means clearing your browsing data deletes it. The tool does not pretend otherwise: the header shows how long since your last export at all times, turns amber after three days and red after seven, and export is one click that produces a plain file you keep.