An alternative to paper job sheets, for one pair of hands

The duplicate book works. It has worked for decades, it needs no signal and no battery, and a customer signing the top copy on the doorstep is still the fastest agreement in the trade. This page is about the specific places paper stops working for a business of one, who should stay on it, and what the alternatives cost. We sell one of them, so weigh it accordingly.

How it usually goes

Top copy to the customer, yellow copy in the glovebox. The glovebox copies come indoors on a Sunday, in a bundle, and get worked through at the kitchen table. One of them got wet in February and the total is now a guess. Somewhere in the pile is a job from six weeks ago that you are fairly sure was never invoiced, and the only way to find out is to read all of them.

What the job book cannot do

Not a list of its faults. A list of the three jobs it was never built for, which is a different thing and the only part worth paying to fix.

• 1.You cannot search it. Working out what is unpaid means reading every sheet, so in practice it gets done when something feels wrong rather than weekly.
• 2.There is one copy. A pad left on a roof, in the rain, or in a stolen van takes the record with it, and there is no version of it anywhere else.
• 3.It does not chase. Paper has never sent a reminder, so every follow-up is you, remembering, in the evening.

What the admin actually costs a business of one

Every method on this site, ours included, is trying to buy back the same thing. It is worth knowing what it is worth before you spend anything on it, so here is our own analysis of the public figures, with the working published.

The honest limit on that: it describes businesses affected by late payment, not everyone, and the job book is not what caused it. The narrower claim is the one that matters here. None of the methods on this site chases anybody on its own, so whatever that time is worth, you are paying all of it.

You are also not unusual. Comparing the Department for Business and Trade's business population estimate against the ONS register of VAT and PAYE registered firms puts roughly 500,000 UK construction businesses, 57% of the sector, below both thresholds with no payroll. Almost every one of them is one person running the whole thing off a book, a phone or a spreadsheet.

Full working, primary sources and the limitations → Last checked 31 July 2026. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.

The options, with prices

Including doing nothing, which is a real option and the right one for some of the people reading this.

If you do move, do these first

• 1.Keep six years of pads. That is how long HMRC can ask you to produce records, and "it was in a book" is not an answer. Box them by year before you stop using them, not after.
• 2.Photograph the open ones. Anything not yet invoiced needs to exist in two places while you change over. A photo of each open docket takes ten minutes and covers the fortnight where neither system is complete.
• 3.Do not switch mid-job. Finish and invoice what is open on paper, then start the new week clean. Half a job in each system is exactly how one goes missing.

Questions people ask

What is the best alternative to paper job sheets for a sole trader?

Something that works on the phone already in your pocket, because a system that needs a laptop gets used at the kitchen table on a Sunday, which is the problem you are trying to leave. Look for a real PDF going to the customer, a record of what is unpaid, and no per-user pricing, since there is one of you. SoloDesks does that at £12 a month flat with a free plan under it, and it is not the only option: the ones with prices are listed above.

Do I legally have to keep paper copies of job sheets?

No. HMRC does not require paper specifically, it requires records you can produce, and a digital copy counts. What matters is that they are complete and that you can still get at them six years later. If your only copy is paper, the risk is not legal, it is a house fire or a stolen van.

Is there a free way to replace a duplicate book?

Yes, with limits. Our free plan covers 10 quotes, 10 invoices and 10 emailed PDFs a month, needs no card and does not expire, and there are free tiers elsewhere: Zoho Invoice up to 500 invoices a year, FreeAgent free with certain banks, ServiceM8 up to 30 jobs a month. If you write more than ten dockets a month, which most people on a pad do, you will hit a cap somewhere. Pick on whichever cap you would hit first.

What happens to the customer signature?

You lose the physical one and gain a different kind of proof: a timestamped record that the quote was sent, opened and accepted from a private link. Whether that is a fair trade depends on your work. For a job that ends in a dispute about what was agreed, a dated document beats a signature on a damp docket. For a same-day cash job, the docket was never the weak point.

Coming from something else

• SpreadsheetsMoving off a spreadsheet, for a one-person trade
• WhatsAppRunning your jobs out of WhatsApp
• Notes app and camera rollRunning jobs from the notes app on your phone

Written for your trade

• SoloDesks for Plumbers →
• SoloDesks for Handymen →
• SoloDesks for Roofers →