One tenner 
the whole app two weeks free 
no contract 
For driveway and paving contractors
Quote the drive before you leave.
You send the quote or invoice straight to their phone by text or email. It opens as a proper document with your name and colours on it, and they pay however you take it: card, bank transfer or cash. Easy for you to send, easy for them to pay.
Quotes · Invoices · Reminders · Bookings ·
Expenses · Certificates · Payments · Mileage ·
Blockpaving,resin,tarmac.YourPAkeepsthediarystraight,warnsyoubeforeyoupromiseTuesdaytotwopeople,andfilesthesupplierreceiptagainstthejob.Nothingwaitingforyouafterwork.Youcanputyourfeetupknowingthateverythingistakencareofforyou.
What TradePA is, and what it costs
TradePA is an app for UK trades, including driveway and paving contractors, that does your admin while you talk. Say the job and it writes the quote, drafts the invoice, books it in the diary and writes the reminder when someone hasn’t paid. It gets the finished job signed off on your phone too. £10 a month, two weeks free.
The whole app. Every feature, no add-ons, and it does not go up when the work does.
No card, no contract. Put a real job through and see how TradePA can change your business.
A Job Completion Sign-off the customer puts their name to on your phone, so the job is agreed done before you invoice it.
Say it off the tape measure
What you say, and what you get back
You say
“Quote Mr Rasmussen five thousand four hundred for the block paved drive at 3 Mill Lane. Sixty metres.”
A £6,480 itemised quote with VAT and your logo on it. You preview your quote to make sure you are happy, before sending to your customer by text, WhatsApp or your own custom branded email.
You say
“What should I be charging for the resin drive at 26 Fairfax Road?”
Quote Helper shows what the job costs you and what your expected profit would be, allowing you to quote with ease based on your own cost and pricing data. Blocks, sub-base, edgings, muck away, labour, each with your costs versus what you charge your customer. You see the margin before you send it, not after the job is done.
You say
“Mill Lane is finished and he has signed it off. Invoice him the balance, three thousand four hundred plus VAT.”
Your PA updates that job and drafts the £4,080 balance invoice, ready for you to preview and send.
You say
“Who still owes me?”
Your PA already knows. Every invoice you have sent, what has landed and what has gone past its date. Your Trade PA writes the reminder and you tap send. Nothing goes to your customer that you have not okayed.
The paperwork
The bit under the blocks is the bit that costs
Anybody can price the blocks. It is the digging out, the sub-base and getting the muck away that decides whether the job made money, and it is the part a customer comparing three quotes never sees. Put the excavation and the disposal on their own lines so yours is not the cheap quote that turns out not to be.
Per m²
How a drive gets compared, which means the metres have to be right before the price is. Tell your PA the measurements on site and it writes them onto the quote, so the area you priced is the area you actually walked.
The sign-off
You talk to your PA, it writes the job sheet. Ready for them to sign.
01
It fills itself in
Your PA already has half of it
Pick the job and the customer, and the address and the work you logged come straight off it. Your PA asks you for whatever is missing and you answer as you would to a real person. The job sheet fills itself in as you talk.
02
Signed both ways
You sign it, then your customer does
You sign the job sheet where it needs it. Your customer can sign in person on your phone, or you email them a copy to sign on theirs. Once they have signed, the signed copy comes back onto the job for your records.
03
Kept for next time
It all stays on the job
Every quote, every invoice, every photo and the signed sheet all hang off that customer and that address. When they ring next year about the thing you did, it is one search, not a rummage through your camera roll.
The questions driveway firms ask us
Planning, sub-base, deposits, and the money.
Permissions
None of this is TradePA’s paperwork. All of it belongs on your quote.
Front garden. Do they need planning permission?
In England, only if it’s impermeable and the water’s got nowhere to go. Permeable block, gravel or porous asphalt is permitted development at any size, and so is a solid surface that drains to a lawn, border or soakaway on their own land. More than five square metres of solid stuff running straight onto the road and they need permission. Write which one you’re laying on the quote. Cheapest argument you’ll ever avoid.
Who sorts the dropped kerb?
The council’s highways side, and it’s the homeowner’s application, not yours. Some authorities only let an approved contractor cut the footway. Get that agreed before you price the drive, because a lovely block drive with no way onto it becomes your problem the minute they start shouting.
I sub for a builder and they take CIS off. Does it invoice right?
Turn CIS on for that invoice, pick 20% or 30%, then tick which lines are labour. Only the ticked lines get the deduction, so your Type 1 and your blocks aren’t touched. The deduction shows as its own row on the invoice the contractor receives. The blog has a full guide to invoicing under CIS.
Does it hold the planning side, or my waste notes?
No. There’s no planning form in it, no kerb application, no waste transfer note. Where a trade has its own paperwork, TradePA keeps the job around it rather than pretending to issue it: the address, the photos, the notes, the quotes, the invoices, all on one record.
Can I get it signed off on handover day?
Yes. There’s a Job Completion Sign-off. You sign, they sign on your phone, and it comes out as a PDF with both signatures on it. Two minutes well spent on a job where they’ve paid a deposit and the balance is due.
Quoting
The quote undercutting you is cheap because of the 100mm they’re not digging out.
How do I get the sub-base onto the quote?
As its own line, in your words. Excavate to depth, 150mm of compacted MOT Type 1 laid in layers, 50mm sharp sand, edge restraints haunched. The firm two grand cheaper isn’t writing that down, and a customer can’t compare what nobody’s written. The going rates are in how much to charge to lay a patio or driveway.
Per square metre or a lump sum?
Either. A line takes a description, a price and a quantity, so a rate per square metre with 60 in the quantity box works fine. Both are editable in place, so when she adds the path round the side you change one number, not the whole document.
She’s changed her mind three times. Am I rewriting it every time?
No. Change the lines and it saves as a new version. The link she already has always shows the latest, so you’re not sending four PDFs and hoping she’s reading the right one.
Can I price it from the van?
“Hey Cara, quote 42 Beech Road four thousand eight hundred for block paving, sixty square metres.” It writes it on your own template with your logo while you’re still sat outside. You read it first and you tap send, because it doesn’t send anything for you. That’s deliberate. It comes from you, not from an app.
Materials shift every quarter. Do I re-price everything?
Keep them in one price list, named exactly how you buy them, with the size in the name. Bulk bag MOT Type 1. Drivesett block per square metre. What it costs you and what you charge, both. Change it once and the next quote is built off what you actually pay now.
Money & the day
You’ve paid for the blocks before you’ve turned a sod. Get that bit right.
I need a deposit for materials. How does that work?
Raise the deposit invoice on the job, then invoice the balance as the next stage once it’s down. The job doesn’t count as paid until both are settled, and where you’ve quoted the job their invoice page shows what’s still to come. A paid deposit never looks like a finished bill.
How do they actually pay it?
Bank transfer or card, whichever you switch on. Card runs through your own Stripe account and lands in your bank. It’s 1.5% plus 20p on a standard personal credit or debit card; business cards and non-UK cards cost more. Bank transfer shows your account details with the invoice number as the reference, so you can match what comes in.
Rained off all week and the diary’s a mess.
Tell your PA to move it. Push the Beech Road start to Monday. It checks the clash before it books and tells you exactly what you’d be sitting on top of. Then the event card has an Update customer button that opens a message to them, already written. Beats four phone calls in a lay-by.
Merchant tickets, quarry tickets, tip tickets. Still a shoebox?
Snap them. It reads the supplier, the gross and the VAT and files it against the job, so the muckaway and the grab lorry come off that job’s profit instead of the general pot. It’s tuned on the big merchants, so a quarry ticket might want a tweak. It shows you what it read before you save it.
Go on then. What’s it cost?
£10 a month. One plan, no tiers, no contract, two weeks free and no card asked for. It’s on iPhone and Android, live on the App Store and Google Play.
One plan. The whole app.
TradePA
£10/mo
- Two weeks free, no card needed
- Every feature switched on, day one
- A tenner a month. That’s the whole price list.
- Cancel any time. No phone call needed.
