Clauses · FAR · Payment and financing
FAR 52.232-23 Assignment of Claims
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
No mandate exists — nothing in 52.232-23 or 32.806 requires insertion in a subcontract, and the statute it implements reaches only claims against the United States. Primes carry it because it sits in the Part 32 payment block of the matrix they recycle. Flowing it down is close to inert: a subcontract receivable is not a 'claim against the United States', so a sub that assigns it is operating under state UCC Article 9 and the prime's own anti-assignment paragraph, not under 31 U.S.C. 3727. Read the prime's assignment clause; that is the one that governs you, and most prime templates forbid assignment without written consent.
A clause can reach your subcontract without a mandate. Once it is in your document, it is a contract term all the same. The missing mandate is a fact about the regulation. It is not a ruling on your order.
Checked against acquisition.gov on 2026-08-05 · edition MAY 2014 (Basic; Alt I APR 1984) · base v0.9.3 Read the text ↗
What it makes you produce
One item for your checklist.
Nothing to send, ever
There is no paperwork here. It is a rule you follow while you perform the work.
Nothing to send — no classified document, including the contract itself, and no information related to the work goes to an assignee until the contracting officer authorizes it in writing
FAR 52.232-23(c)
When it is used
FAR 32.806(a)(1): the contracting officer shall insert it in solicitations and contracts expected to exceed the micro-purchase threshold ($15,000 since 2025-10-01), unless the contract will prohibit assignment of claims (32.803(b), in which case 52.232-24 goes in instead). Not required in purchase orders, though it may be used in a PO above the micro-purchase threshold that the contractor accepts in writing, if agency policy allows. 32.806(a)(2): Alternate I when a no-setoff commitment has been authorized under 32.803(d). The statutory basis — 31 U.S.C. 3727 and 41 U.S.C. 6305 — runs between the Government and its prime contractor.
Read closely
Paragraphs (a) and (b) are permissive and ask for nothing: they let amounts due be assigned to a bank, trust company, other financing institution or Federal lending agency, in one assignment covering all unpaid amounts. That machinery runs on claims against the United States, and a subcontract receivable is not one — a supplier pledging one is operating under state law and under the purchase order's own assignment paragraph, which in most prime templates forbids assignment without written consent. That is the paragraph a lender's document should be read against.
Alternates
Alt I · APR 1984
FAR 32.806(a)(2) — a no-setoff commitment has been authorized under 32.803(d) (see also 32.801).
Alt I adds the no-setoff sentence at the end of paragraph (a) — payments to an assignee are not subject to reduction or setoff to the extent the Act specifies. It is the commitment a lender actually finances against, so it changes what the assignment is worth rather than anything a supplier produces.
Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.232-23, FAR 32.806(a) and FAR 52.212-4(b) (verified 2026-08-05)
This is research, not legal advice. It states what the regulation says about this clause and cites the paragraph behind it. It does not rule on your order, and it does not rule on whether a prime's markings are correct.