One tenner 
the whole app two weeks free 
no contract 
For plasterers
Quote the room 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 ·
Skims,boardandskim,re-renders.YourPAkeepsthediarystraight,warnsyoubeforeyoupromiseTuesdaytotwopeople,andfilesthesupplierreceiptagainstthejob.Nothingwaitingforyouafterwork.Youcanputyourfeetupknowingthateverythingistakencareofforyou.
What TradePA is, and what it costs
TradePA is an app for UK trades, including plasterers, 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 work 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 work is agreed done before you invoice it.
Say it before you wash the tools off
What you say, and what you get back
You say
“Quote Mr Boateng five hundred and forty to skim the front room at 27 Selby Street. Ceiling in.”
A £648 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 re-render at 4 Ridgeway?”
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. Board, scrim, plaster, 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
“Selby Street is done and he has signed it off. Invoice him the five hundred and forty plus VAT.”
Your PA updates that job and drafts the £648 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. It writes the reminder and you tap send. Nothing goes to your customer that you have not okayed.
The paperwork
Skim, board and skim, or start again
Three different jobs and three different prices, and the customer cannot tell them apart. A skim over sound plaster. Board and skim where the old stuff has blown. A full hack off and re-render where the wall is wet. Put which one you are doing on the quote in writing, so nobody decides afterwards that they were expecting the expensive one for the cheap price.
1 room
A day, near enough, which is why plastering lives or dies on quoting quickly and moving on. Tell your PA the room and the price and the quote is written before you have loaded the mixer, so you are not doing it after work.
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 plasterers ask us
Per metre, drying times, and the money in between.
Paperwork
Nobody certifies a skim. Old ceilings and other people’s damage are another matter.
Is there a plastering certificate?
No, and Trade PA won’t pretend there is. The ones it writes are electrical and gas: EIC, EICR, Minor Works, CP12, plus a Job Completion Sign-off any trade can use. For you it holds the job. The address, the photos, the notes, and every penny in and out of it.
Textured ceiling in a house that’s clearly pre-2000.
Then it wants testing before anybody scrapes, sands or overboards it. Asbestos was still turning up in textured coatings right through to about 2000, years after they stopped putting it in. Get the sample done, and put a dated note and a photo on the job saying what you told the customer and when. That note is worth having.
That wall was already blown when I got there.
Photo it before you mix. Photos sit on the job with the date and the address on them, so two weeks later there’s no debate about what state the place was in when you walked in.
Plasterboard waste. Does it handle that paperwork?
No. Gypsum has to be kept out of the general muck and the transfer note comes from whoever carts it away. That’s between you and the skip firm. What Trade PA does is take a photo of the skip invoice and put the cost on the right job, so the waste stops eating a margin you can’t see.
Anything to show they were happy at the end?
A Job Completion Sign-off. Hand them the phone, they sign the screen, the signature goes in the PDF. Worth having on a job where the next trade in is a decorator with opinions.
Quoting
Two coats isn’t one job. Price the backing coat like the day’s work it is.
I price per square metre. Some of the lads price per room.
It takes either. “Quote Dave’s job, 96 metres skim at £14 a metre.” Or “quote the front bedroom, ceiling £220, walls £380.” Whichever way you work, it’s written on your own template with your logo before you’ve left the drive. The going rates are in how much to charge to plaster a room.
Customer thinks skim and float-and-set are the same price.
So show them they’re not. Two lines: the bonding or hardwall backing coat, then the multi finish over it. When one wall needs the lot and the rest only wants a skim, the quote makes that obvious instead of you defending a lump sum on the phone.
I’ve offered them overboarding or a full hack-off.
Put both on, then take one off when they choose. “Take the overboarding off Dave’s quote.” It saves as a new version and their link always shows the latest, so there aren’t two prices out there with your name on.
Bags of multi, bonding, beads, scrim. Do I price them every time?
No. Put your regular items in your price list once, what they cost you and what you charge, and quotes build off it. Photograph a merchant’s price list and it’ll pull the table in. Quote Helper then shows the cost against the charge with your margin on it, though be clear: it’s a guide. It won’t write the quote for you.
Quote’s out. Nothing back.
The job shows how many times they’ve opened it. Five days quiet and it hands you the chase with the wording done. You choose text, WhatsApp or email and it goes from your phone, not from an app.
Money & the day
Drying time is their problem. Getting paid is yours.
Room’s finished but they can’t decorate for weeks. When do I invoice?
Now. Mark it done and a task appears telling you to invoice it. While you’re there, drop the advice in the notes on the invoice: leave it until the pink’s gone even all over, mist coat first, watered-down non-vinyl. Costs you nothing and saves the phone call when it flakes.
Four rooms over two weeks. I can’t float that.
Invoice in stages. Mark the job part done and bill for what’s done. Their page shows the job total, what’s been invoiced, what’s paid and what’s still to come. And it won’t let you close the job off while there’s value left uninvoiced.
I sub for builders, so CIS.
There’s a CIS switch on the invoice, 20 or 30 percent, and you tick which lines are labour. Only the ticked lines get the deduction. Your bags, boards and beads are treated as materials and left alone.
Three merchant runs a week.
Snap the receipt at the counter. It reads the supplier, the gross, the VAT and the rate and puts it against the job. Travis Perkins, Selco, Screwfix, Toolstation: it’s tuned for the UK counters, and anything it can’t read comes back blank rather than invented.
What’s it cost, and does it run on Android?
£10 a month. One plan, no tiers, no contract, stop whenever. Two weeks free with no card. 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.
