The argument is almost never about the total. It is about a line the customer cannot follow — what is that £615 for? — on a document that lists twenty things in one flat column with no explanation and no shape.
Asset Giant lets you build the invoice the way the job ran: labour in one section, materials in another, plant and site costs at the bottom, and a subtotal under each one.
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A document with sections, not a shopping list
Most billing tools give you a flat list of products. A trades invoice is not that. Every document in Asset Giant is a list of lines you arrange yourself, and four of the line types carry no money at all — they are there purely to make the paperwork readable:
- Section headings — Labour, Materials, Plant and site costs. A heading also starts a new running total, which is what makes the next subtotal mean that section rather than everything above it.
- Description lines — a sentence with no charge attached. "Variation VO-04 agreed with M. Doyle on 14 August — additional insulation to plot 12." This is the line that saves the phone call.
- Subtotals wherever you want a figure — worked out for you, never typed, so a subtotal cannot go stale when you change a line above it.
- Discount lines, if you have knocked something off and want to say so on the face of the document rather than quietly shaving a rate.
Every line can be moved. Reorder with the up and down arrows on any screen size, or drag them about on a desktop. And none of it costs you anything: the invoice is the metered unit, and nothing inside it is. Add fifty lines if the job had fifty lines. See Quotes and Invoices.
Your day rates, saved once and dropped in
Labour is the half most asset systems cannot bill at all. Rate items are your catalogue of the things you charge for that are not stock: a carpenter's day rate, a labourer's day rate, a call-out, delivery, skip hire, plant transport, a disposal charge.
Save each one with its price, its unit and its VAT treatment, then drop it onto any document in two taps. Adding it takes a copy — putting your carpenter's day rate up from £245 to £260 in March changes what you quote from March, and does not restate a single invoice you have already issued.
Typed a line by hand and realised you will use it every month? "Save as rate item" promotes it into the catalogue and deliberately leaves your line alone. Rate items are not assets, so they never count against your plan limit.
Materials off the register, plant off the calendar
The kit is already in Asset Giant, so it does not get typed twice. Pick materials from your own inventory as sale items and the stock comes off the record when the invoice is issued. Pick plant as a hire item and it is priced from that item's own rates across the dates of the job — rate bands, the days you actually bill for, minimum charges and grace on a late return, all covered in Hire Pricing and Charges. Hire and sale sit on the same invoice, which most systems will not do.
Open the Details panel on any line and it tells you in plain words how the figure was reached — three days at £120, less ten per cent — and lets you overrule it. A price is a negotiation; the system should show its working and then get out of the way.
The reverse charge, done properly
If you are a subcontractor invoicing another VAT-registered contractor, the construction domestic reverse charge is not an optional setting. Pick it on a line and Asset Giant charges nothing, shows the rate that would have applied, and prints the Section 55A wording — the wording is emitted by the same rule that sets the line, so an invoice physically cannot carry one without the other. Zero-rated, exempt and outside-the-scope are kept genuinely separate, because in law they are three different things.
If you are not VAT registered, nothing you send will ever call itself a VAT invoice. That is a gate in the code, not a display preference.
Won on Tuesday, billed on Friday
Everything above works the same on a quote, and a won quote becomes an invoice in one press, carrying every heading, line and tax treatment with it. Quotes are unlimited on every plan. The same monthly bill for the same customer? Save it as a template with the lines and terms already right.
Every issued invoice travels as a private link the customer opens on their phone, and if you connect your own Stripe account it gains a Pay now button — the money lands in your balance, and Asset Giant takes no cut. Behind the Reports button: aged owing, client balances and a tax report by rate.
And if you hire kit out to other trades on site, a booking that has ended and not been billed lands in an uninvoiced list — see Easy Scheduling and Booking.
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