GraftThe subbie invoice that turns up right.
Graft is an app your subcontractors run on their own phone. It keeps their receipts, their mileage and every deduction taken off them, and it builds the invoices they send you: labour and materials split, the deduction shown at the rate applied, their UTR and NI on the face of it, emailed straight over. You sign up for nothing and you pay nothing.
There is no fee, commission or partner payment in either direction. You hand out a card, and that is the extent of your involvement.
Every month, the same three jobs land on somebody in your office.
None of it is anyone being awkward. A bloke finishing at six with a phone full of photographs was never going to produce a clean labour and materials split from the front seat of a van. So your office does it for him.
The invoice that needs rebuilding
No split between labour and materials, no deduction shown, no UTR anywhere on it. Somebody works out what it should have said, then sends it back and waits.
The statement request in January
A subbie who has lost a year of statements, asking for all of them at once, in the month you have the least time to go looking.
The argument about what was deducted
His figure and your figure start from different places, because his was memory and yours was the ledger. Somebody goes back through the payments to prove it.
The work happens on your subcontractor's phone. Nothing changes on yours.
Graft is built around the Construction Industry Scheme rather than adapted to it. Everything below happens in his app, on his own time, whether you ever hear about it or not.
CIS correct invoicing
Labour and materials split, the deduction worked out at the rate applied, UTR and NI on every invoice, and the reverse charge wording where it belongs. It emails to your saved address as a proper document.
Deductions tracked per contractor
Every payment recorded against the contractor who made it, with the rate applied, 20%, 30% or gross. His running total is built from the payments rather than from memory.
Statements checked, at the time
He photographs the statements he receives and Graft reconciles them against the deductions recorded. The gap is flagged in the month it happens, not the following January.
Receipts read at the till
He photographs a receipt and Graft reads the merchant, the total and the VAT and files it against the right category. It works with no signal on site and syncs later.
Mileage that logs itself
Background tracking picks up business journeys at HMRC's approved rates and he swipes each one business or personal. A contemporaneous log, rather than a diary reconstructed in March.
A live view of what is due back
CIS takes 20% off his labour before a single cost of his is counted, so the app shows what is likely coming back as it builds. That is what keeps him logging, and clean paperwork is the side effect you get.
What lands on your desk, and what stops landing.
You are not being asked to run anything. The only thing that changes is the quality of the paperwork arriving from the people who have the app.
- ✓An emailed document, not a photograph of a scrap of paper or a message asking what you reckon he is owed.
- ✓The split is already done, so the figure you deduct against is the labour figure, and it is the same one he thinks it is.
- ✓UTR and NI on the face of the invoice, with VAT number and reverse charge wording where they apply.
- ✓One statement ask, in the month it happened, instead of a year's worth requested at once when nobody has the time.
- ✓Fewer disputes worth having, because both sides are reading off the payments rather than off memory.
What Graft does not do.
Worth being clear about, because contractors are offered a lot of things that turn out to need a login, a contract or a fee.
- ✕It does not verify subcontractors. Verification and the rate applied stay between you and HMRC, exactly as they are now.
- ✕It does not file your monthly return or make your deductions. Your systems are untouched.
- ✕It gives you no access to his records, and gives him none to yours. There is no contractor login of any kind.
- ✕It is not tax advice. It records what happened and does the arithmetic on it.
- ✕It pays you nothing. The moment somebody is paid to hand out an app it stops being a recommendation, so we do not do it.
All of them take five minutes.
- ✓The card. Two per A4 sheet, printed in your own office. Leave a stack in the cabin and let people take one.
- ✓The poster. One page for the noticeboard or the back of the welfare unit door.
- ✓The sixty second version. Say it at the end of a toolbox talk. We will send you the script, along with a WhatsApp message and an email you can forward to your whole list.
Both open ready to print. Use your browser's print dialogue and save as PDF if you would rather send it round.
Free to hand out. Paid for by the subcontractor. Better paperwork for both.
The person who gets the money back is the person who pays for the app. That is the whole model, and it is why nothing is asked of you.
- ✓Nothing to integrate. No connection to your accounts system, your CIS software or your payment runs.
- ✓He can leave whenever he likes, and his records export to Excel and CSV. Nobody is locked into anything.
- ✓Built inside a working UK practice, which is why the invoice carries what it is supposed to carry.
Leave a stack in the cabin and see what next month's invoices look like.
Print the cards, or ask us for the full pack: the card, the poster, the toolbox talk script, a WhatsApp message and an email for your subbie list.