One scaffold, three bills: the erect, the weeks it stands, and the extension when the programme slips. Book the erect and the dismantle in the Schedule, take a deposit before the wagon leaves the yard, set the erect and the hire as stages that fall due on their own dates, and invoice a main contractor with the CIS deduction taken off the labour and the hire of your own kit, while scaffold you hire in keeps its full value.
30 days of everything, free. No card needed.
The client accepts a priced quote for the erect, the first hire period, and the weekly rate after it, and it converts to a draft invoice with those lines already in it.
Money in before the wagon is loaded: the deposit is the first stage of the payment plan, with a due date of its own.
Press Start job on the accepted quote and book the erect as a visit. The client is emailed to say which day you’re coming, and again if the programme moves it.
Hand the scaffold over to the site and that stage falls due on its own date. The client settles that stage alone, by card once you connect Stripe or by bank transfer.
The weeks it stands, billed as their own stage, or as a recurring invoice that raises the hire invoice every month while a long job runs.
The extension is a further invoice: duplicate the last hire one, change the weeks, send. A slow payer is chased for you while you are on the next site.
A scaffold costs you money before the client sees a single standard go up: the kit out of the yard, the wagon, and the crew. Ask for a deposit as a percentage or a fixed amount, give it a due date of its own, and Sendinvo chases that first and only moves on to the next stage once it lands. See deposits and payment plans.
Split the draft into stages that add up to the invoice total before you send it: the deposit, erection complete and handed over, the first hire period, then dismantle and off-hire. Every stage prints on the invoice with its own amount and due date, and Sendinvo chases the one that is due rather than the whole job. Once the invoice goes out the stages are fixed.
A scaffold up for a fortnight is one line on the erect invoice. A scaffold up for six months on a direct job is a bill every month, which is what a recurring invoice is for: build the hire invoice once, set Repeat to monthly, and it is raised and sent on the date until you end it. When the programme slips and the scaffold stands for another five weeks nobody priced, duplicate the last hire invoice, change the dates and the number of weeks, and send. If a lift comes off the job instead, a credit note nets it off at the rate it was billed at.
Book the erect and the dismantle as visits on the job, each in the Schedule on its own day beside every other site. When the programme slips, move the visit and the client gets an email saying what it was and what it is now. A clash is warned about, never refused. On a team, each visit is assigned to someone and the client’s email names who’s coming; a Field person sees only their own visits and jobs, and no prices in the Sendinvo app. The Sendinvo app is available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, and there’s no Android app yet. Photos of the scaffold as you handed it over go on the job, sorted before, during, and after; see photos on jobs. Your whole team is included in the one price.
Scaffolding you put up for a main contractor goes out as a CIS invoice. Set your rate once, 20%, 30%, or 0% for gross payment status, then tick the deduction and mark the materials lines. HMRC counts the hire of scaffold you own as part of what the deduction comes off, so leave that line as labour; scaffold you hire in from another firm, and the ties and netting you buy for the job, stay at full value. The contractor sees the gross total and the net they actually pay. If you are both VAT registered, tick the domestic reverse charge alongside it and the wording HMRC expects prints itself. It doesn’t apply to a scaffold for zero-rated work, such as building a new home, where the hire is charged VAT at 20% as normal, or when the client has told you in writing that they’re an end user. Sendinvo deducts from the lines you leave as labour; deciding which parts of a scaffold job are labour is your accountant’s call.
The handover certificate, the design drawing, and the weekly inspection records ride along on the invoice email, next to the invoice PDF, up to 10 MB of files. They travel with the bill instead of printing on it, so the document the accounts team files stays a clean invoice. See email attachments.
A main contractor’s surveyor wants the account, not one invoice at a time. Download a client statement and every issued invoice for that contractor sits on one A4 page in your own branding, with its status, total, and outstanding balance, plus the total still owed across the lot.
The demo below is seeded with a building firm’s work rather than a scaffolder’s, because we haven’t built a scaffolding one yet. It opens on the Schedule, with this week’s visits booked against each job. Behind that are the parts a scaffold job uses too: an invoice split into stages, a deposit taken before anything starts, a credit note against work that came off, and subcontract invoices with the CIS deduction off the labour. Have a click around.
A live demo seeded with a building business, not a scaffolding one. Nothing you do here is saved or sent.
One is a scaffold you invoice direct, paid in stages as the job moves. The other is subcontract work for a main contractor, where the deduction comes off you.
The erect is paid for months before the scaffold comes down, and the client settles the stage that is due rather than the whole invoice. Instant bank payment needs a connected Stripe account and is capped at £10,000, so a stage this size fits inside it.
The other one: a scaffold for a main contractor re-roofing an office block, with the erection and dismantling labour split out from the hire.
The scaffold is your own, so the deduction is 20% of the £5,400.00 of labour and hire together, never of the £5,820.00 total, and the ties and netting keep their full value. Work on an office block is standard-rated and both firms are VAT registered, so the invoice charges no VAT, carries the wording HMRC expects, and states the £1,164.00 the contractor accounts for at their end.
Yes. Put them on their own lines of one invoice, or send the erect now and bill the hire when the period ends. On a direct job with no CIS deduction on it, a scaffold that stands for months can be a recurring invoice instead, so the hire invoice is raised and sent on the same date each month until you end it.
Yes. Press Start job on the accepted quote, then book the erect on its day and the dismantle on its own, each for the morning, the afternoon, all day, or a set time. Sendinvo emails the client to say when you’re coming, and again if you move it, unless you untick the box. On a team, each visit is assigned to someone, and the client’s email names who’s coming.
Only off the lines you leave as labour. Give the erection and the dismantling their own lines. The hire of scaffold you own counts with the labour under HMRC’s rules, so leave it unmarked; mark scaffold you hire in, and the ties and netting you buy, as materials, and they stay at full value. Which parts of a scaffold job count as labour is a question for you and your accountant, not for us.
Raise a further invoice for the extension. Duplicate the last hire invoice and it opens as a draft with the same client, lines, and weekly rate already in it, so you change the dates and the number of weeks and send. The invoice the main contractor is already holding is left exactly as it went out.
Yes. Each stage carries its share of the deduction, in proportion to its size, so the invoice shows what the main contractor pays at each stage, and Sendinvo chases that figure.
Yes, as attachments on the invoice email, alongside the invoice PDF. The handover certificate, the design drawing, and the weekly inspection records are what the site manager files, and they arrive with the bill rather than in a second email you have to remember to send. The budget is 10 MB of files, not counting the invoice PDF.
Reminders keep chasing it on the dates you set, and the tone steps up as it runs on. On an overdue sterling invoice to another business, Sendinvo works the statutory interest out from the Bank of England base rate the law fixes for the debt, adds the fixed compensation the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 allows, and drafts a separate interest invoice in one click for you to read before it goes. This is general information, not legal advice.
30 days of everything, free. No card needed. After that it’s £24.99 a month, with your whole team included.