Subcontractors: who did what, and who gets paid

Bringing in a subcontractor solves a capacity problem on Tuesday and creates a record keeping problem for the rest of the year.

Their invoice arrives three weeks later covering four days across two jobs, and the person approving it has to reconstruct which day went where.

Agree the scope in writing, even for a day

A subcontractor you use often gets booked by text, and that works until the day the work is not what either of you assumed. Then you are arguing about a rate nobody wrote down.

A short written order fixes it: the job, the site, the dates, the rate, and whether materials are yours or theirs. That last point causes more disputes than the rate does, and it takes six words to settle.

Make their time land against a job, not against a week

The single change that makes subcontractor costs usable is recording their time against the job while it happens, rather than reading it off their invoice later.

Where they work alongside your own people, the simplest version is that they check in at the job the same way your team does. Check in at the job, not the office covers what that record costs the person doing the work, which is close to nothing.

You can then hold their invoice against the days recorded, instead of approving it because it looks about right.

Hold the paperwork before the first day, not after

Every subcontractor comes with documents that expire: licences, insurances, tickets for particular work. The cost of a lapsed one is carried by you, and it is discovered at the worst possible moment.

Keep the expiry dates where they can be filtered, so the ones running out next month surface before somebody is standing on a site. A document that has to be looked for is a document nobody checks.

Approve against the order, and pay on time

Check the invoice against the written order and the recorded days, not against your memory of the job. Where they differ, the conversation happens once and against evidence.

Then pay to the agreed terms. A reliable subcontractor picks who they work for partly on this, and being the contractor who pays predictably is worth more than a slightly better rate when you need somebody at short notice.

Know the real cost of the trade you subcontract most

Total what you paid a given trade over a year and set it against what you billed for that portion of the work. Most businesses find one trade where the margin is thin enough that hiring would be cheaper, and another where subcontracting is obviously right.

That comparison only exists when the costs were tied to jobs as they happened. Reconstructed from invoices at year end it is guesswork wearing a spreadsheet.

Photographs cover the gap in supervision

You are not on site for most of the work you subcontract, which means you accept it on their word and find out later. Before and after photographs against the job close that gap without a supervision visit.

They also protect the subcontractor from a customer complaint about work that was fine, which is worth saying to them when you ask for them.

What to do first

• Send a short written order with the job, dates, rate and who supplies materials
• Record their time against the job on the day, not from their invoice
• Hold licence and insurance expiry dates somewhere you can filter
• Check every invoice against the order and the recorded days
• Pay to terms, because that is what buys you availability
• Compare a year of one trade's cost against what you billed for it