Handyman job management software: a UK guide

Last updated: August 2026

It is six o’clock and the van is back on the drive. Today was a TV bracket, a dripping mixer tap, two fence panels, a sticking bedroom door, and a bath seal that turned into half a day of re-tiling. Five of those prices were agreed standing in somebody’s hallway. Three needed the merchant first. Two customers paid by transfer while you packed up, one will sort it at the weekend, and one wants an invoice.

The receipts are in the door pocket, the addresses are in six WhatsApp threads, and tomorrow’s first line reads “Mrs P, shelves” with no postcode. That evening is the real specification.

Six jobs a day is the whole problem

An electrician or a boiler engineer does one to three jobs a day. A handyman does five to eight, and everything multiplies by that number: six addresses to find, six ETAs to text, six prices to agree, six sets of receipts, six payments to collect, six chances to be asked for an invoice. A two hour job that runs to four pushes the rest of the day, and the customer at four o’clock has to be told.

Work arrives through repeat custom and word of mouth first, then the Google local pack, local Facebook groups and Nextdoor, lead platforms and van signage. What holds it together is usually the phone: the call log and the WhatsApp chat are the job record, because the address and the photo of the broken hinge both arrive as messages. Alongside sit a paper diary, a calendar, and a notes app for the merchant list, none of which talks to the others.

There is no SIC code for “handyman”, so official business counts cannot isolate the trade. It is statistically invisible, which is part of why so little software is designed around it.

This guide is the domestic round. Contract work for a letting agent is a different business: see property maintenance for letting agents. So is facilities management subcontracting.

The doorstep contract, and the offence almost nobody knows about

Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, a contract agreed in the physical presence of trader and consumer, somewhere that is not the trader’s business premises, is an off premises contract. A customer’s kitchen is not your business premises, so quoting on the spot creates one every single time. Regulation 10 then requires you, before the consumer is bound, to give defined information and the model cancellation form on a durable medium: email certainly, a WhatsApp message plausibly, a doorstep conversation never.

That is not a civil technicality. Regulation 19 makes failing to do it a criminal offence, punishable by a fine at level 5: unlimited in England and Wales since 12 March 2015, £5,000 in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The commercial consequence is worse than the fine. Regulation 36 lets you start inside the 14 day cancellation period only where the consumer expressly asked you to, and paragraph (6) says they bear no cost at all where you failed to give the information on the right to cancel. Start the same day, hand over nothing in writing, and a customer who cancels within 14 days owes you nothing: not the materials, not the labour, not the time.

Most of the trade believes the urgent repairs exemption covers this. Regulation 28 does remove the cancellation right where the consumer specifically requested a visit for urgent repairs, but paragraph (2) strips it back to that repair alone, excluding additional services and goods other than replacement parts. The stopcock you were called out for is exempt; the bath seal you spotted while you were there and the shower head you fitted are not.

Two thresholds are worth memorising. Below £42, regulation 7(4) means the regime does not apply at all. Up to £170, regulation 11 relaxes it for a repair the consumer explicitly asked to have done immediately, though the information must still be given in writing. Business Companion is the official plain English version. This is a summary, not advice.

Gas, electrics, and the border that changes the answer

Gas is absolute. Regulation 3 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 bars any self employed person from work in relation to a gas fitting or service pipework unless they belong to an HSE approved class, in practice the Gas Safe Register. Disconnecting a cooker to move it, capping a supply and shifting a pipe for a kitchen unit are all inside that, and there is no de minimis. Northern Ireland has separate gas legislation.

Electrics is where the confusion lives, because two questions get conflated: is the work notifiable, and may an unregistered person do it? There is no bar on the second. There is no electrical licence in the UK, and Part P is a building regulation, not a qualification.

In England, regulation 12(6A) makes three things notifiable: a new circuit, a consumer unit replacement, and any addition or alteration to a circuit in a special location, meaning the zones around a bath or shower and rooms with a pool or sauna heater. Everything else is not, including adding a socket or a fused spur in a kitchen or outdoors, both of which came off the English list in 2013.

Wales did not follow. The paragraph excluding work in a kitchen or a special location was omitted in England and reinserted for Wales, visible in the amendment notes to Schedule 4. Adding a socket in a kitchen is notifiable in Wales and not in England, and most pages ranking for this question still describe the pre 2013 rules. Scotland uses building warrants under a separate system.

Non notifiable is not unregulated: the work must still comply and be tested. Notifiable work is self certified through a scheme on the GOV.UK list of authorised schemes, certified by a third party, or notified to building control first. And any home built before 2000 may contain asbestos, so regulation 10 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 requires training at regular intervals for anyone who may be exposed. HSE’s Asbestos essentials is written for this trade.

Taking the old one away makes you a waste carrier

“Can you take the old one away?” is the friendliest question a customer asks, and it is a registration question. Section 1(1) of the Control of Pollution (Amendment) Act 1989 makes it an offence for anyone who is not a registered carrier to transport controlled waste in the course of business, with a fine at level 5: unlimited in England and Wales, £5,000 in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The misconception repeated everywhere is that your own waste does not count. Lower tier registration is free if you only move waste you produced, but construction and demolition waste is carved out and forces upper tier registration either way. Natural Resources Wales puts it plainly: a gardener taking their own green waste is lower tier, but a fencing contractor removing fences is upper tier regardless of who produced it. A handyman ripping out an old fence, kitchen or bathroom is that fencing contractor.

Upper tier is paid and renewed every three years in England, and the fees move, so work from the current fees and tiers rather than a blog. Wales runs the same two tiers; Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own. On top sits the waste duty of care: store waste safely, check anyone you hand it to is registered, and complete a transfer note for each load.

Enforcement works backwards from the waste. If the householder’s old bathroom suite turns up in a lay by, the trail leads to the householder, who names you.

Pricing, materials and getting paid before you leave the drive

Three pricing models coexist and most rounds use all three: hourly with a minimum charge, half and full day rates when the customer has a list, and a fixed price per job from a published menu. The directories publish guide prices around £30 an hour and roughly £188 a day nationally, with London several times that; that is directory marketing, not survey data. A menu turns a doorstep conversation into a transaction, at the cost of a ceiling.

Put the price in writing whichever you use. Under section 51 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, where no price was fixed the customer owes a reasonable price and no more, decided afterwards by somebody who was not there. Where a job justifies one, quoting with a deposit covers the mechanics.

Materials bought en route are the admin problem this trade owns. A lost till receipt is an unbillable part, a card statement six weeks later cannot be matched to a customer, and parts bought for one job and used on another quietly move margin between customers. At six jobs a day that is a dozen receipts at peak, so the test for any system is whether a receipt attaches to the right customer before you drive away, which is what Dispatch’s money records, switched on in Settings, are for. Money taken before you leave the drive is collected; anything else joins the near half of small business invoices that are paid late.

Two tax dates matter. VAT bites at £90,000 of taxable turnover on a rolling twelve month test, so a good autumn can trigger it without warning, and on householder work it is a 20 per cent price rise to a customer who cannot reclaim it. Working direct for householders you are outside the domestic reverse charge, because a householder is the end user. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax reaches qualifying income over £50,000 from 6 April 2026, over £30,000 from 6 April 2027 and over £20,000 from 6 April 2028.

How Dispatch helps

Dispatch is built for six jobs a day, on a phone, with no office to go back to.

One job record holds the customer, the address, the priority, the booked visit, the photographs, the write up and the invoice. Book onto a week calendar, drag it when the morning overruns, and tick a box to email the customer when a visit is booked, moved or cancelled, which removes most of the “are you still coming” texts on its own.

Quote on the doorstep with a deposit percentage, and the customer accepts by typing their name on a link with no login. A completion report captures the write up and photographs before a job closes, so the before and after of every job is on the record rather than in your camera roll. Then invoice from the phone and take card payment into your own Stripe account before you drive to the next one.

Money records, switched on in Settings, let you photograph a receipt on site so the merchant run is captured where you stand. Recurring visits and automatic chasing of overdue invoices at 3, 10 and 21 days are there when you want them.

Every feature is on every plan, the caps are on seats and templates only, everything runs in the UK, and there is a free plan. Put tomorrow’s six jobs through it.