For handymen
Handyman software that handles the boring bits
Quote on your phone, send clean invoices, and keep receipts for HMRC. Made for lots of small jobs.
Small jobs, done properly on paper
- A clean PDF quote in under two minutes, however small the job.
- Put another trade's work on your quote, at your own markup.
- Photograph receipts, and materials and fuel add up for the tax year.
What each part does
- Quote in under two minutes: describe the job, accept the suggested line items, and hit send. A two-hour job gets a clean PDF the same way a two-day job does. That is the whole point when the work is small and constant.
- Someone else's work, on your quote. Add a subcontractor line with what you pay and what you charge, and the markup carries into the customer's price. What you pay out becomes a draft expense. So the money you handed to the sparky is not quietly missing from your year end.
- Receipts off the dashboard: photograph receipts as you buy, and materials and fuel land in your tax-year totals with no spreadsheet. That matters more in this trade than most. The material spend is small, constant and easy to lose.
- Year-end summary for HMRC: revenue, allowable expenses and estimated taxable profit, set against the SA103F boxes on your Self Assessment.
Gas work is about registration, not skill
A handyman does a bit of everything. But two hard legal lines in a home run right through that work, and gas is the first.
Read what regulation 3 says
The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 do two separate things. The second is the one that catches people.
- Regulation 3 says no person shall carry out any work in relation to a gas fitting or gas storage vessel unless competent to do so.
- Separately, employers of people doing that work must be members of a class of persons approved by the Health and Safety Executive. So must self-employed people doing it.
The approved class is the Gas Safe Register. Competence is necessary. Registration is what makes the work lawful.
Only three kinds of electrical work need notifying
Electrics are the other way round from gas. Most of the work is not notifiable at all. The list has been shorter since 2013 than most advice online suggests.
All of it still has to meet BS 7671. Notifying is a separate question from doing it properly.
See the three kinds, and who notifies
| Notifiable? | Detail | |
|---|---|---|
| A new circuit | Notifiable | Anywhere in the dwelling, including running one out to a garage or shed. |
| Replacing a consumer unit | Notifiable | The whole board, wherever it is. |
| Adding to a circuit in a special location | Notifiable | A room with a bath or shower, a swimming pool or a sauna. Kitchens and outdoors stopped being special locations on 6 April 2013. |
| Everything else | Not notifiable | Repairs, maintenance and alterations to an existing circuit outside a special location. It still has to meet BS 7671, but it does not have to be notified. |
If a job is notifiable, there are two ways to deal with it, and they are not equal.
| What you do | |
|---|---|
| Registered on a competent person scheme | Self-certify. You notify your scheme, and the scheme notifies building control for you. |
| Not registered | You notify local authority building control before the work starts, or use a third-party certification body. Either way it is a cost and a lead time on the job. It is not something to find out after you have quoted. |
Where every rule on this page comes from
- Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, regulation 3No person shall carry out work on a gas fitting unless competent. And the requirement that employers and self-employed persons be members of a class of persons approved by the HSE.
- Gas Safe Register, Health and Safety ExecutiveThe HSE-approved register, and the statement that gas work by anyone else is illegal.
- Part P, England and Wales, IETWhich electrical work in a dwelling is notifiable, what counts as a special location, and the competent person scheme and building control routes.
- Approved Document P, Electrical safety in dwellingsThe Approved Document itself, including the 2013 narrowing of the notifiable list.
This page describes what the regulations say. It is not legal advice, and not a statement about any particular job. Whether work is notifiable, and what you are required to hold before doing it, turns on facts a web page cannot see. Sources last read 25 August 2026.
What it does not decide or check
- It does not tell you if a job is notifiable. That turns on the work and the room.
- It does not notify building control of a job. It is not a competent person scheme either.
- It does not check anyone's registration. Whether your gas sub is on the register is for the register to say.
What it works out once the jobs are in it
The one to watch in this trade is typical job value against revenue per available working day. A diary full of forty-pound jobs and one that pays the mortgage look the same from the inside. Only the second figure tells them apart.
| What it tells you | Shown once you have | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue per available working day | Money received in a period divided by the working days that period actually held, taken from the working pattern the trader sets. The trades equivalent of a hotel's revenue per available room, and it decomposes the same way: effective day rate multiplied by utilisation. | 5 available working days and at least one booked day in the window |
| Why revenue moved | The change in invoiced revenue against the previous 30 days, split into ranked contributing factors: how many jobs were invoiced against what the typical job was worth, with quotes sent as upstream context. | 2 invoices in each period and a change of at least 15 per cent |
| Quote speed against win rate | Whether quotes the trader sends within 24 hours convert better than the ones they send later, measured on their own decided quotes rather than on a general rule of thumb. | 3 decided quotes in each bucket and a gap of at least 10 percentage points |
| Margin per job over time | One point per won job, priced against its materials and subcontractor cost, plotted by job date and split weekday against weekend so an out-of-hours premium can be checked rather than assumed. | 5 won jobs with a recorded cost, and 3 in each of the weekday and weekend buckets before the split is drawn; jobs with no recorded cost are excluded, not counted as zero |
| Quote win rate | The share of decided quotes that were accepted, shown with a Wilson score interval and the sample size, so the figure carries the range it could really be. | 10 decided quotes |
| Utilisation | Days booked against days available. Deliberately uncapped, so a weekend worked reads as over 100 per cent rather than being flattened to a full week. | a working pattern set, and 5 available working days in the window |
| Time to get paid | A value-weighted days-sales-outstanding figure, so one large invoice paid late moves it more than several small ones do. | 3 paid invoices |
| Typical job value | The median value of a won job, not the mean, so a single unusually large job does not redefine what typical means. | 3 won jobs with a recorded price |
| Time from quote to job | The median gap between sending a quote and the work starting, which is the lead time a trader is really working to when they fill a diary. | 3 won quotes with both dates recorded |
What it costs
Pro is £29 a month or £290 a year, with no per-seat fees and no contract. Every new account starts on a 14 day free trial of Pro with no card needed, and drops to the free tier rather than switching off.
Frequently asked questions
I am competent at gas work. Can I do it?
Competence is required, but it is not enough. Self-employed people doing gas work, and employers of people doing it, must be members of a class the HSE approves: the Gas Safe Register. The HSE says gas work in a home by anyone else is illegal, however good they are.
Which electrical jobs do I have to notify?
In a dwelling, three kinds: a new circuit, replacing a consumer unit, and adding to or altering a circuit in a special location. That means a room with a bath or shower, a swimming pool or a sauna. Kitchens and outdoors stopped being special locations on 6 April 2013.
What if I am not on a competent person scheme?
Then notifiable work has to be notified to local authority building control before it starts, or certified by a third-party certification body. Both cost money and take time. Both are far easier to plan for before you have given the customer a price than after.
Is this overkill for small jobs?
No, a quote can be one line. A two-hour job gets the same clean PDF and the same numbered invoice as a two-day job. The admin goes away whatever the size of the job, which matters most in a trade built on lots of small jobs.
Can I quote for the part of a job I sub to another trade?
Yes. Add it as a subcontractor line, with what you pay and what you charge, and the markup carries into the customer's total. What you pay out is logged as a draft expense too, so money that left your account is recorded, not remembered.
Will it help me look more professional?
A branded PDF quote, a numbered invoice and a tidy follow-up do more for trust than most marketing. That is most of what you get on day one.
Does My Job Goblin tell me whether I am actually making money?
Yes, and that is the half most job software leaves out. It records the quote and the invoice like anything else, then does the arithmetic on top: revenue per available working day, margin per job against materials and subcontractor cost, quote win rate with the range it could really be, and how long customers take to pay weighted by the size of the invoice. Turnover on its own hides all four. No figure is shown on a sample too small to support it. Where there is too little history the card renders nothing, rather than a number with a caveat underneath it.
What is revenue per available working day?
It is what a day of your available time earned, rather than what you charged for a day you worked. Take the money received in a period and divide it by the working days that period held, from the working pattern you set. Hotels have measured this for decades as revenue per available room, because a room nobody booked is revenue that can never be recovered. A Tuesday you did not fill is exactly the same thing. My Job Goblin decomposes it the way a hotel does, into your effective day rate multiplied by your utilisation, so you can see which of the two moved.
Does it compare my prices against other tradespeople?
No, and that is deliberate. There is no benchmarking against other businesses. Trades publish no prices, day rates or availability in any machine-readable form, so a peer comparison in this market is either a very small sample or an invented one. Every figure compares a trader against their own history. A benchmark against a handful of unrepresentative businesses, or against a number nobody can source, is worse than no benchmark at all.
What does the free tier include?
The free tier runs 3 quotes and 3 invoices a month, end to end: build the quote, send the PDF, let the customer approve it in the portal, and invoice it. The AI pricing and description tools, expense tracking, certificate filing and reports are Pro. The HMRC year-end tools are Pro + Tax. The cap is small on purpose. A free tier big enough to run a trade on has to be paid for by the traders who do pay, and they are one-person businesses on a flat £29 a month with no per-seat fee. What the free tier proves is the whole loop rather than the volume: build the quote, send it, let the customer approve it, invoice it.