Know What a Job Is Making While You Can Still Change It
Applications, retention and VAT handled the way UK construction actually works. Bills that read themselves, payment runs that produce a bank file and a remittance, hire charges checked against the hire, and one financial-health status per job.
15-minute walkthrough. No credit card required.
The commercial layer accounting software does not have
Your accounting package knows about invoices and bank transactions. It does not know about applications for payment, retention moieties, pay-less notices, CIS materials splits or an item still on hire in a compound. That gap is where contractors lose money.
Invoices and applications for payment
Raise invoices and applications, with retention tracked cumulatively rather than recalculated each time, and VAT handled properly — including the domestic reverse charge that catches out software built outside the UK.
Bills that read themselves
Drop a subcontractor or supplier bill into the Bills inbox and it fills itself in for you to check. You approve a populated record instead of typing one, and the cost lands against the job it belongs to rather than a month-end pile.
Payment runs, bank files and remittances
An approved payment run produces a bank file to upload and a remittance advice for each subcontractor, generated from the same approved data — so the amount approved, the amount paid and the amount advised cannot drift apart.
Hire bills checked before you pay them
An inbound hire bill shows which hired item each line relates to, and flags any line charging for days after that item went back. Off-hire overcharges are normally found months later on a statement, if at all.
One financial-health status per project and job
Budget against actual against forecast, with a red, amber or green indicator, plus a cost-change trail tying every budget movement back to its cause — a variation, a defect or a back-charge. The information a CVR needs, without a fortnight of chasing.
Xero, self-serve
Link your Xero account from Settings and send invoices across as drafts. No implementation call and no waiting on someone else's integration queue. CIS deductions and the reverse charge are handled before anything reaches the ledger.
Questions contractors usually ask
What buyers ask before signing up — answered straight.
01
Does ScopeKit handle the VAT domestic reverse charge?
Yes. Where the reverse charge applies to a business-to-business construction supply, the invoice is produced with no VAT charged and the required wording, and the accounting shifts to the customer. Getting the reverse charge and CIS right on the same invoice is a two-step check, and both happen at the point the document is raised rather than being corrected later by a bookkeeper.
02
Do we still need our accounting package?
Yes, and that is deliberate. ScopeKit is where job costs, applications, valuations and payment runs live — the construction-specific commercial layer your accounting package has no concept of. Xero connects as a self-serve integration so invoices flow across as drafts, and your accountant keeps working in the tool they know.
03
How does retention work?
Retention is applied at the contractual percentage and tracked cumulatively per project and per subcontractor, so what is held and what has been released is a record rather than a recollection. Roughly half of all retention disputes turn on whether the first moiety was ever released, which is a records problem before it is a commercial one.
04
Can we see whether a job is making money before it finishes?
That is what the financial-health status is for. Because labour lands from timesheets as hours are worked, bills land against the job as they arrive, and hire is tracked against the item and the site, the accrued cost position is a query rather than a chase. The most common reason a job looks profitable and then loses money is unaccrued cost, and unaccrued cost is a data-timing problem.
05
Does it handle CIS deductions in the payment run?
Yes. Subcontractor verification, the correct deduction rate, the materials split and the monthly CIS300 return are native rather than bolted on, and the deduction is calculated inside the payment run rather than alongside it. ScopeKit prepares and validates the return; you file it through the HMRC portal and record the reference against it. See the CIS feature page for the detail.
Costs and invoicing are included from Professional upwards. See pricing to compare tiers.
Find the margin problem in month three, not at final account
See how job costs, applications, payment runs and hire charges reconcile without a fortnight of chasing.
15-minute walkthrough. No credit card required.