Job Sheet Template (UK)

A job sheet is the paper that goes out with the engineer and comes back signed: site address, description of works, materials used, hours on site, and a client sign-off. This builder fills one clean A4 job sheet in your browser — no signup, no email wall, nothing stored on a server. It is the UK build of the same engine behind the work order template; the American page is the same document under the American name.

Job sheet, job card, work order

“Work order” is not a phrase British trades use. The sheet an electrician, plumber or grounds-maintenance crew fills in on site is a job sheet — some firms say job card, or engineer’s job sheet, and larger contractors talk about a works order when the client raises it rather than the contractor. They are the same document. Search for a job sheet template today and what comes back is mostly field-service software vendors — Tradify, Fergus, Joblogic and the like — handing over a template as the front door to a subscription. This one is a builder rather than a download, and Fieldwynn’s own suite has not launched yet, so there is nothing here to be upsold into.

The builder below is the shared engine rather than a fork, but it prints the UK sheet: the document is headed Job Sheet, and the boxes are site address, description of works, materials, timesheet and client sign-off, with money in £ and dates in DD/MM/YYYY whatever your site-wide setting says. The which box is which table above says what belongs in each one, and carries the American name across for anyone who has used a work-order template.

The UK field set

Five fields carry a UK job sheet, and the sheet is close to useless without any one of them.

Site address. Kept separate from the billing address and finished with a postcode — the property where the works happened, which on a managing-agent or landlord job is nobody’s address on the invoice. Description of works. What was agreed and what was actually carried out; this is the paragraph a client reads before signing, so write it in the words you would use on the phone. Materials. Fittings, plasterboard, aggregate, merchant collections — itemised with quantities so the office can price and reorder from the sheet. If the job is pricing a rubbish removal job rather than fitting one, the load volume and tip weight belong here instead. Timesheet. Hours on site per operative, which is where a day rate or hourly rate is worked out from; if your crew runs several jobs a day, a crew timesheet sits alongside this sheet rather than inside it. Client sign-off. One line confirming the works were carried out to satisfaction on the day.

There is also a site / access notes box, which in practice earns its place faster than any other field: key-safe codes, where the stopcock or consumer unit lives, parking restrictions and permit zones, and whether the dog is friendly.

The VAT line — and the version without one

VAT is the substance that makes a UK template a UK template, and it cuts both ways. The standard rate is 20%. Registration becomes compulsory once taxable turnover for the last 12 months goes over £90,000, which means a very large share of sole-trader operators are legitimately not registered and should show no VAT line at all — not a zero, not a blank percentage, nothing. The VAT-status control above the builder ships both versions: pick Not VAT registered and the whole VAT row collapses; pick VAT registered and the sheet carries a 20% line.

The job sheet itself is a field record, not a tax document. The VAT number and the separately-shown VAT belong on the VAT invoice that follows it, along with a unique identification number, your name and address and the customer’s, the supply date and the invoice date. Carry the materials and timesheet rows onto an invoice and add those details there. One more UK habit worth keeping: prices quoted to a consumer are quoted VAT-inclusive, so a quotation that says £600 means £600 to pay, not £600 plus VAT.

CIS subcontractors: the reverse charge

If you are a VAT-registered subcontractor invoicing a VAT-registered contractor for construction services reported under the Construction Industry Scheme, the domestic reverse charge has applied since 1 March 2021 and you do not add VAT to the amount charged. The customer accounts for it instead. HMRC accepts forms of words such as “Customer to pay the VAT to HMRC” on the invoice, and expects the VAT due — or failing that the rate — to be stated without being included in the total. Choosing CIS reverse charge above drops the VAT row for exactly this reason. This is a description of the scheme, not tax advice; whether it catches a particular job is a question for your accountant.

Getting the sheet paid

A signed job sheet is the evidence behind the invoice, which is why the signature is worth chasing before you leave. On business-to-business work the payment date you agree must usually be within 60 days (30 days where the customer is a public authority), and where a commercial debt runs late the statutory rate is 8% plus the Bank of England base rate. Both are worth knowing before you write your terms rather than after. Keep the signed sheets: as a self-employed operator you must keep your business records for at least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline they relate to, and a shoebox of signed job sheets is the cheapest audit trail there is.

What the sheet is not

Client sign-off confirms a visit. It is not a contract, and it is not a certificate. Gas work, notifiable electrical work and F-Gas work are certified through their own schemes — Gas Safe Register, Part P via a competent-person scheme, F-Gas — on their own paperwork, and no job sheet substitutes for any of them. Nor does it substitute for insurance: the cover the law requires is employers’ liability, at least £5 million once you have staff, with fines of £2,500 for each day uninsured and £1,000 for failing to display the certificate. Public liability is not the legally required one, but it is the cover commercial clients and local authorities ask to see before they let you on site.

Everything here is general information for UK operators, not legal, tax or compliance advice. Verify your own position with a qualified professional. If you need the American version of this document, the work order template is it, and the templates and forms library holds the quotes, invoices and agreements that sit either side of the job. On the UK side specifically, that means the UK quotation template before the sheet and, for recurring or higher-value work, the UK service agreement instead of a one-off job sheet.