Tradies don't get paid for evenings

Your day rate covers the time you spend on the tools.

It doesn't cover the time you spend, after the kids are in bed, working out which jobs need invoicing, which clients still owe you money, which subbies need paying, what materials you need for tomorrow, and whether the VAT this quarter is going to wipe out the float.

That work has to happen. The invoice doesn't write itself. The CIS doesn't sort itself. The material order doesn't go out by magic. But none of it is in your day rate.

A rough sum. Take a typical sole trader charging £300 a day. That's £37.50 an hour. Add up the admin. An hour an evening Monday to Friday, plus a couple of hours every weekend. Call it eight hours a week, low estimate. At £37.50 an hour, that's £300 of work, every single week, you're doing for free.

A year of that is roughly fifteen grand of unpaid labour. Properly costed in, your day rate would need to be about a fifth higher than it is just to break even on the time you're actually putting in.

But nobody does that. The market won't wear it. Customers see one builder quoting £360/day next to another quoting £300/day and they pick the cheaper one, because they don't know about the evenings either. So the rate stays where it is. The admin still has to happen. Which leaves one option: make the admin faster.

That's the entire idea. Not "AI-powered productivity." Not "digital transformation." Just: do the same admin in twenty minutes instead of two hours, so you get your evenings back.

That's what Trade PA does. Voice in, work out. While you're driving home, brushing your teeth, having a cup of tea. The admin gets done before you walk through the front door.

You still don't get paid for it. But at least you get to stop doing it at half-six.

Trade PA