For UK builders
Built for builders. CIS-aware invoices in 30 seconds.
Voice-to-invoice for UK sole-trader builders. Deposit, first fix, second fix, completion — each stage its own clean invoice, with retention held and released against the milestones you agreed at the start. Built for jobs that run twelve weeks, not twelve hours.
What you say
“Mike Harris's loft conversion, day three. Eight hours on site — first-fixed the new bathroom, framed the dormer cheeks. £40 for fixings, £180 for the OSB and timber. Stick it on the running invoice.”
What Honest Invoices does in 30 seconds
- · Extracts time, materials and costs from the words you used
- · Builds a compliant UK invoice with sequential numbering, VAT (if registered), and your payment terms
- · Stores the digital record for MTD ITSA quarterly submission
- · Emails the PDF to your client when you tap send
£15/month, locked · 14-day free trial · no card required
The reality
The pain you actually have.
Generic accounting software is built for accountants. This is built for a builder who finishes a job at 5pm covered in dust and just wants to get paid.
01
Big jobs run over weeks, with materials runs every other day, and at the end of the project the invoice is a guess at best. Receipts get lost between van and wallet.
02
CIS deductions get taken at 20% off your commercial sub-work, but the maths at year-end is a shoebox of payment statements and an angry accountant.
03
A loft conversion runs over fourteen weeks, with five trips to the merchant, two to Travis Perkins, and one to the local timber yard. Reconciling the receipts against the right invoice line at the end of the job is where the margin you thought you made quietly evaporates — alongside the client deposit you took six weeks ago and the 5% retention the contract said would release on completion.
Got an HMRC question?
Ask HMRC is a free, grounded-in-gov.uk assistant that knows what matters to builders — CIS, trade registration fees, VAT rules and the rest. Five questions a day, no signup, no card.
Try this one
“Does Domestic Reverse Charge VAT apply to my subbie invoices?”
What it does
Three things. Built for trades.
No bloat, no “multi-entity reporting”.
Voice-to-invoice for jobs that run over weeks
Big jobs need running invoices, not a panic at the end. Speak each day’s time and materials into Honest Invoices and they stack up against the job. When the job’s done, you press send.
No spreadsheet. No reconstructing six weeks of work from memory. No 20% margin lost to forgotten materials.
Stage-payment quotes that survive a 12-week job
A builder quote is a contract — deposit on signing, a first-fix payment when the structure is up, a second-fix payment when the services are in, completion on snag-list sign-off. Honest Invoices builds the quote as a set of named milestones, each with its own due trigger and percentage of the total. When the customer accepts, the milestones become a payment schedule the client can see at any time. Retention — typically 5% held for 6 or 12 months after completion — is tracked as its own line, with a release date the system reminds you about. No spreadsheet, no “did we ever invoice for the deposit?” conversation in November.
CIS labour-and-materials split, automatic
When you’re sub-contracting under CIS, every invoice needs labour and materials shown separately — otherwise the main contractor deducts CIS on the whole lot, including the £3,000 you spent at Travis Perkins.
Builders are usually deep in CIS — most sole-traders sub-contract under a main contractor at some point in the year, and the deducted pot can hit four figures by the end of March. Honest Invoices tags each invoice at creation, splits labour from materials cleanly, and gives you a single year-end reclaim figure that matches what your stack of Payment and Deduction Statements should show.
MTD-ready records, built end-to-end against HMRC
Every job you record — a loft conversion, an extension, a garden wall, a kitchen refit — is a digital record HMRC’s MTD ITSA APIs recognise. Quarterly updates and BSAS are fully tested in HMRC’s sandbox environment (16/16), with production approval in progress — they go live the moment our production credentials come through. Final Declaration support is planned for the following release.
A builder’s quarters are uneven by nature — a deposit lands in Q1, the second-fix payment lands in Q3, retention releases six months after completion. Digital records that track each milestone separately keep the quarterly submissions honest without you spending the first weekend of August reconstructing what got billed when.
From the founder
Built end-to-end against HMRC’s APIs.
Honest Invoices is built and run by Vix Hawley. The MTD ITSA integration was built by hand — OAuth, fraud-prevention headers, the full Self-Employment Business and BSAS APIs. It took months. The full HMRC sandbox journey passes 16 out of 16 steps with proof on file.
Most accounting platforms are built for accountants. This one is built for builderswho don’t want to spend their evenings doing admin. £15/month. Locked. No price hikes, ever.
FAQ
FAQ for builders.
Do you handle progress invoices and stage payments?
Yes. You can add to a job over weeks of work and send a running invoice at any stage — for a deposit, for the half-way mark, for the snag-list. Each line keeps its date so the customer can see what was done when.
What about CIS deductions on sub-contracted work?
Most builders work both sides of CIS — as a main contractor paying CIS to subbies on the bigger jobs, and as a sub-contractor having 20% or 30% taken from them when working under someone else. Honest Invoices handles both directions on the same project, keeping the year-end reclaim figure (what you’re owed back) separate from the deductions-paid figure (what you’ve passed to HMRC on subbies’ behalf).
More on the underlying rules: CIS deductions explained and how to reclaim CIS as a sole trader.
I'm a sole-trader builder earning £70k. Am I in scope for MTD ITSA?
Yes — from 6 April 2026. A sole-trader builder hitting £70k from a couple of extensions and a kitchen refit is in scope from day one. The first quarter covers 6 April to 5 July with a 7 August 2026 submission deadline. Builder quarters are uneven by their nature, so the compounding value of digital records grows over a long job.
Honest Invoices keeps your records in the right shape today and will submit directly through HMRC’s APIs the moment our production credentials land. You have until 7 August.
Will my price go up in two years?
No. £15/month is the price the day you sign up, and the price you’ll be paying in three years. If we launch a higher tier in future, you stay on £15 — locked, in the terms, not just a promise.
Can my accountant still use my data?
Yes. Every invoice and expense exports to CSV, ready for your accountant’s software. We don’t lock you in.
Talk to a person
Not a chatbot.
If you’ve got a question about whether Honest Invoices fits your trade — call, text, or email. You’ll reach the founder, not a queue.
Ready to stop typing invoices?
14 days free. No card required. £15/month after that — locked, forever.