Records that are built backwards in January
A year of work reassembled from bank lines, faded receipts and memory is slow for you and expensive for them. When the record is created at the job, there's nothing to reconstruct.
For bookkeepers and accountants with trade clients
Trade clients, without the shoebox of receipts.
Your trade clients aren't disorganised — they're up a ladder. TradePlanr captures the invoice, the expense and the payment at the moment they happen, then pushes them into Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent or Sage, so you're reconciling instead of reconstructing.
Free to start · No card · No download needed — works in your browser
The bit that makes trade clients hard work
It's rarely the accounting. It's the state the source data arrives in.
Expenses with nothing to attach them to
A merchant card payment tells you an amount and a date, not which job it belongs to. Expenses logged against a job arrive already coded to the work that generated them.
Invoices that only exist as PDFs in an email
Numbering gaps, VAT typed by hand, and a template that changed three times last year. Invoices raised in TradePlanr are numbered consistently, calculate VAT themselves, and sync as sales invoices with their line items intact.
MTD deadlines you can't control
You can't file on time when the paperwork lands the week it's due. Data flowing continuously through the quarter means the deadline stops being a scramble at your end.
What actually reaches your ledger
Everything below is captured by the client on site, in the ordinary course of doing the job — not chased out of them afterwards.
A direct feed into the books
Full OAuth connections to Xero, QuickBooks Online, FreeAgent and Sage. Customers become contacts, invoices become sales invoices, expenses become bills, and payments mark invoices paid. Connecting is a Pro feature and one provider is connected at a time.
Expenses coded at the point of spend
The client photographs the receipt at the merchant's counter and it's stored against the job. You get the image, the amount and the job it belongs to, rather than a bank line and a guess.
VAT handled on the invoice, not afterwards
Invoices calculate VAT as they're built, so the figures you receive are the figures that were charged — no reverse-engineering a gross number at quarter-end.
Payments reconciled to the invoice
Customers pay by card from a link on the invoice, so the payment is already tied to the document it settles instead of appearing as an unattributed credit.
A complete audit trail per job
Quote, variations, invoice, expenses, photos and the customer's signed sign-off all live on one job record. When a figure gets queried a year later, the evidence is in one place.
Clients who can keep it up
The reason good systems fail with trade clients is that they demand desk time nobody has. This one asks for a photo and a couple of taps, offline if need be, which is why the habit survives past February.
Want the full tour? See everything the TradePlanr app does or check what it costs.
Common questions
Which accounting packages does it connect to?
Xero, QuickBooks Online, FreeAgent and Sage, each with a full OAuth connection set up inside the app under Profile → Payments & Accounting. TradePlanr never sees the client's password for the accounting provider.
What actually syncs across?
Customers and contacts, invoices as sales invoices with their line items, VAT and due dates, expenses as bills, and payments marking the relevant invoice paid.
Can a client connect more than one provider?
No — one provider is connected at a time. In practice that's what you want, since it keeps a single source of truth for the ledger.
Does this replace the accounting software?
No, and it isn't trying to. TradePlanr is where the work is run and the records are created; the accounting package stays the book of record. It exists to make sure what reaches you is complete, coded and on time.
What does it cost the client?
Free to start with no card, so a client can be set up and invoicing before they decide. The accounting connection and card payments are part of Pro, at £9.99 a month or £99.99 a year with a 7-day free trial — normally less than the extra time a disorganised year costs them in your fees.
“The difference is that the expenses arrive already attached to a job. I stopped sending 'what was this £312 at Screwfix?' emails, which is most of what my January used to be.”
Rachel Doyle
Bookkeeper, Bristol
Worth ten minutes when you’ve got them
Set a client up in an afternoon
Have a client start free in the browser and connect their books on the 7-day Pro trial — then see what a full quarter of clean source data does to your workload.