For UK carpenters
Built for carpenters. Compliant invoices in 30 seconds.
Voice-to-invoice for UK sole-trader carpenters and joiners. Per-item pricing (hinges, brackets, ironmongery — all captured), second-fix breakdown by room, and CIS labour/materials split automatic on subcontract to builders. Built around the reality that a carpentry invoice is a materials list, not an hourly line.
What you say
“Kitchen fit at Ashford Road — hung the base units this morning, three cabinets and the sink base. Fitted the worktop this afternoon, two joints. Hinges, cams, silicone, a tube of grip fix. Six hours on site. £340 all in.”
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 carpenter who finishes a job at 5pm covered in dust and just wants to get paid.
01
A carpentry job is a materials list, not a timesheet. Hinges, brackets, ironmongery, adhesives, timber — half a dozen small items per fit — and if the invoice reads 'labour and materials, £480' you can’t defend it when the customer queries a line.
02
Second-fix jobs run across rooms and days: skirting on Monday, architrave on Tuesday, doors on Wednesday. By Friday you can’t remember which client got the £60 of ironmongery and whether you already charged for the Tuesday hour.
03
When you’re subbing to a builder — kitchen fits, staircase installs, wardrobe carcasses — CIS deducts 20% from the labour figure. Materials should be exempt, but only if they’re shown as a separate line. Most invoicing apps don’t force the split, so contractors deduct on the lot.
Got an HMRC question?
Ask HMRC is a free, grounded-in-gov.uk assistant that knows what matters to carpenters — CIS, trade registration fees, VAT rules and the rest. Five questions a day, no signup, no card.
Try this one
“I'm a self-employed carpenter doing kitchen fits for a builder — how does CIS work for materials I supply?”
What it does
Three things. Built for trades.
No bloat, no “multi-entity reporting”.
Voice-to-invoice for the way you actually itemise
Describe the fit, the fixings, the ironmongery, the time. In the words you use at the merchant’s counter. Honest Invoices extracts each item, groups labour and materials separately, and builds a UK-compliant invoice with the per-item breakdown showing.
Hinges, cams, brackets, silicone, tubes of grip fix — every small item captured on the line it belongs on. Not lost in a lump-sum “materials” entry.
CIS labour/materials split for subcontract work
When you invoice a builder or a main contractor, CIS deducts 20% (or 30%) from the labour. Materials should be exempt — but only if the invoice splits them cleanly. That’s the £180 of oak worktop offcuts and £60 of ironmongery, kept out of the CIS deduction.
Every job-based invoice auto-splits labour and materials, applies the deduction at your contractor’s CIS status, and keeps a year-to-date deductions total ready for Self Assessment. See the free CIS calculator to work a specific job.
MTD ITSA quarterly records built as you go
Sole-trader carpenters typically hit the £50k MTD ITSA threshold on kitchen fits + staircases combined — the wave’s in scope right now. The £30k threshold lands April 2027 and £20k in April 2028, catching almost every full-time carpenter.
Every voice invoice is captured as a digital record in the MTD-required format from day one. When production HMRC credentials clear (we’re sandbox-tested at 12/12 pass and in review with HMRC’s SDS team), quarterly submissions go live inside the app. Until then, your records are already correct.
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 carpenterswho don’t want to spend their evenings doing admin. £15/month. Locked. No price hikes, ever.
FAQ
FAQ for carpenters.
Can I capture per-item materials properly, not just as a lump sum?
Yes. Speak the items as you record — “six pairs of hinges, one tube of grip fix, three brackets” — and each appears as a line on the invoice. Great for defending the invoice if the customer queries a specific item.
What about materials I bought on Friday for Monday's job?
Add materials to the job whenever you spend on them — not just at invoice time. When you invoice, they roll in automatically. The receipt-vault feature (in active build) will read the merchant’s email confirmation and add them automatically.
I do a mix of direct-to-homeowner and subcontract-to-builder. How does CIS know when to apply?
You mark each client as commercial (subcontract) or consumer (direct homeowner) in the client detail page. Commercial clients trigger the CIS labour/materials split automatically. Consumer clients don’t — because CIS only applies to construction subcontract work for a contractor business.
Can I handle bespoke work with deposit + balance-on-completion?
Yes. Quote the total, split into milestones (deposit on order, first-fix on delivery, balance on install), and each milestone becomes its own invoice when triggered. Retention lines are supported too for jobs that hold 5% back on completion.
Do you handle VAT?
Yes. Toggle VAT registration in settings, and Honest Invoices applies 20% VAT on labour and materials with the required VAT invoice fields.
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.