Job management software
Job management software built for UK tradesmen
Quote, take a deposit, schedule it, invoice it and chase what is late, all against the same job. Because a job that is done and unpaid is not a finished job, and the difference between the two is usually admin nobody had time for.
- 8%
- Above base rate: the statutory interest available on a late invoice to a business customer
- £40 to £100
- The fixed sum due on top, by size of debt, once that interest starts running
- 30 days
- The payment period the law supplies when nobody agreed one
Who you can use this against, and who you cannot
There is one rule in this whole area that runs entirely in a tradesperson's favour, and hardly any of them use it. Before the good part, the boundary, because getting this backwards is worse than not knowing it at all.
| Which kind of contract | Does the Act apply? | |
|---|---|---|
| A landlord, letting agent or property company | Commercial contract | The Act applies |
| A main contractor who subbed the work to you | Commercial contract | The Act applies |
| A shop, pub, office or other business | Commercial contract | The Act applies |
| A householder having work done on their own home | Consumer contract | The Act does not apply. None of the entitlements below are available |
On a domestic job the Consumer Rights Act is what governs instead, and it is about the standard of the work rather than the speed of the payment. Different law, different problem.
What a late commercial invoice entitles you to
Three things, and the second is the one nobody has heard of.
- Statutory interest on the qualifying debt, at 8 per cent over the Bank of England base rate.
- A fixed sum on top, which becomes due as soon as the interest starts running.
- If your reasonable costs of recovering the debt exceed that fixed sum, the difference as well.
| Fixed sum | |
|---|---|
| Debt under £1,000 | £40 |
| Debt of £1,000 to under £10,000 | £70 |
| Debt of £10,000 or more | £100 |
When nobody agreed payment terms
Plenty of trade work is agreed on a phone call with no terms discussed at all. The Act does not treat that as an open-ended arrangement.
No payment period was agreed
The Act supplies one rather than leaving it open. The period is 30 days.
The 30 days run from the LATER of two things
The day you performed the service, or the day the purchaser has notice of the amount of the debt. In practice that second one usually means the day your invoice reached them.
After that, the debt is late
Statutory interest begins to run, and the fixed sum becomes due once it does.
Where My Job Goblin fits
Knowing the entitlement is not the hard part. Knowing which invoices are late, how late, and which customer has form for it is the hard part, and that is a record-keeping problem rather than a legal one.
A deposit before the van is loaded
Ask for a deposit on the quote and take it through the customer approval portal. The single most effective thing a sole trader can do about late payment is to not be funding somebody else's materials in the first place.
It knows what is overdue, so you do not have to
Every invoice carries its status and its age. The app surfaces what has gone past its date and drafts the chase; you read it and press send. Nothing goes out on its own.
Time to get paid, weighted by value
One £5,000 invoice sitting unpaid matters more than ten small ones, so the figure is weighted by value rather than counted. It is the number that tells you whether your terms are working.
The whole job in one thread
Quote, approval, deposit, schedule, job, invoice, payment and the receipts against it. When a customer disputes what was agreed, the record is the record.
Just as usefully, what it does not do:
- It does not calculate statutory interest or add it to an invoice.
- It does not decide whether a customer is a business or a consumer, and that distinction decides whether any of this is available at all.
- It does not send anything on its own. A person presses send on every message that leaves.
What it works out once the jobs are in it
The figure that matters on this page is time to get paid, and the reason it is worth having is that almost every trader guesses it wrong in the optimistic direction.
| 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 |
It is weighted by invoice value on purpose. One £5,000 invoice sitting unpaid is a cash-flow problem in a way that ten £50 ones are not, and a simple average of days hides exactly that.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of these. They are dated because they change.
- Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998The statutory right to interest on a qualifying debt under a commercial contract, and the exclusion of consumer contracts.
- The same Act, section 5AThe fixed sum of £40, £70 or £100 by debt size, and the right to reasonable recovery costs above that sum.
- The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Rate of Interest) (No. 3) Order 2002Statutory interest at 8 per cent over the official dealing rate, which is the Bank of England base rate.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, statutory rights under a services contractWhat applies instead on a domestic job: reasonable care and skill, a reasonable price where none was agreed, and a reasonable time.
This page describes what the legislation says. It is not legal advice, and it is not a statement about any particular invoice: whether a contract is commercial or consumer, and what a specific contract provides about late payment, turns on facts a web page cannot see. Check the sources above and take advice where it matters. Last reviewed 25 August 2026.
A job is not finished until it is paid
Free to start, no card needed, and the free tier runs whole jobs end to end rather than showing you a locked screen.
Frequently asked questions
Can I charge interest on a late invoice?
On a commercial contract, yes. The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 gives a supplier a statutory right to interest on a qualifying debt, at 8 per cent over the Bank of England base rate. It applies to contracts between businesses and does not apply to consumer contracts, so it is available against a landlord, a letting agent or a main contractor, and not against a householder having work done on their own home.
Is there anything besides the interest?
Yes, and it is the part most people have never heard of. Once statutory interest starts running, a fixed sum also becomes due: £40 for a debt under £1,000, £70 for £1,000 up to £10,000, and £100 for £10,000 or more. If your reasonable costs of recovering the debt come to more than the fixed sum, you can claim the difference on top.
What if we never agreed payment terms?
The Act supplies a period rather than leaving it open. Where none was agreed it is 30 days, running from the later of the day you performed the service and the day the purchaser had notice of the amount of the debt, which in practice usually means the day your invoice arrived.
Can a customer just write the right out of the contract?
Not freely. The entitlement takes effect as an implied term, and an attempt to exclude or vary the remedy is subject to controls: contract terms are void to the extent they oust the right unless the contract provides a substantial remedy for late payment instead. That is a question for a solicitor on any specific contract, not for a web page.
Does My Job Goblin work the interest out for me?
No. It tracks what is owed, how old it is, and how long your customers really take to pay, and it drafts the chase for you to send. It does not calculate statutory interest, add it to an invoice, or decide whether a given customer is a business or a consumer, and that last distinction is what decides whether any of this is available.
Does it chase automatically?
It shows you what has gone past its due date and drafts the message. A person presses send on everything that leaves. That is a deliberate design rule rather than a missing feature.
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.
How much does it cost?
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. 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.
Why is the free tier so small?
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.