Quotes & invoices
Two connected documents you create around a job: a Quote — a price for work not yet done, sent to a customer for approval — and an Invoice — a bill for work that's done or in progress, with full payment tracking. Both are always free to use, on every plan, never gated behind a subscription.
A quote moves through Draft → Sent → Accepted / Rejected. Once accepted, you can either tap Convert to Job from the quote itself (which keeps the quote's own status in sync), or — the more common path in practice — do the work, then create the invoice later from Finances → Uninvoiced Jobs, any completed job with no invoice yet.
Creating an invoice from Uninvoiced Jobs doesn't update the original quote's own status, so an accepted quote can still show as "accepted" even after it's fully invoiced and paid — worth knowing so it doesn't look like a mistake. And an invoice always ties back to the job it was for rather than a specific certificate directly — there's no one-tap button on a certificate's own screen to invoice it; you create the invoice from the job, whenever you're ready.
An invoice can copy line items straight from its quote — the full quote for a first invoice, or just the remaining balance for a second invoice on the same job. Status moves through Draft → Sent → (Partially Paid) → Paid, or can be manually marked Written Off.
Payments are tracked individually, not as a single paid/unpaid flag. Each time money comes in, log a payment — amount, date, method, notes — against the invoice, and SwiftCert adds them up and works out the status automatically: nothing paid stays Sent, some but not all paid becomes Partially Paid with the remaining balance shown, and the full total paid becomes Paid. Overdue is worked out automatically too — any unpaid invoice past its due date shows as overdue, with a running total on the Finances screen so nothing chasing-worthy gets missed.
The paid total across every invoice — not the invoiced total — is the income figure that feeds into Tax Summary.
Expenses
A simple log of business costs — parts, van costs, tools, insurance, and similar — entered as they happen and sorted straight into the categories a UK tax return actually asks for: Materials & Parts, Van & Vehicle, Tools & Equipment, Insurance, Gas Safe/Licence Fees, Phone & Internet, Training, Advertising, Accountant Fees, and Other.
Each entry is just a date, category, amount, short description, and an optional receipt note — no approval flow, no linking to a specific job required. Every logged expense is totalled by category and rolled into Tax Summary. Vehicle running costs logged here and the mileage allowance are two different ways to claim for the same vehicle — Tax Summary flags this and shows both options so you pick one, not both.
Mileage
Every time you drive for work — to a job, to collect parts, to training — log the date, a reason, and the miles driven. SwiftCert turns that into a pound-and-pence travel allowance using the UK's real mileage rates, including the part that's easy to miss doing this by hand: the rate drops after the first 10,000 miles in a tax year.
A trip entry is just a date, a reason (Customer Job, Parts Collection, Training/Course, Admin/Office, or Other), the miles, and optionally where from/to for your own reference — it doesn't need to be tied to a specific job or certificate.
The full mileage allowance — including the drop to the lower rate past 10,000 miles — is calculated on the Tax Summary screen, once every trip for the tax year is added up. The running total shown while you're adding a trip is a quick estimate at the standard rate only, since it doesn't yet know your year-to-date total — treat the Tax Summary figure as the real one.
The standard rate, reduced rate, and 10,000-mile threshold all ship with the current standard UK rates as defaults and are editable in Settings if those rates ever change.
Tax summary
A one-screen summary of a full UK tax year — income actually received, expenses by category, and mileage allowance — adding up to a Net Profit figure, exportable as a PDF or CSV to send straight to your accountant. At tax return time, this is the difference between digging through a year of invoices and receipts, and opening one screen.
- Shows a real UK tax year (6 April to 5 April), with arrows to move between years.
- Income is counted on a cash basis — only money actually received, not the total value of invoices sent. Invoiced-but-unpaid and written-off amounts are shown separately for reference.
- Expenses are totalled by category, matched to the right box on the UK self-assessment form.
- Mileage allowance is added as its own line, worked out from every trip logged that year.
- Net Profit = income received minus expenses, with an alternative figure shown for claiming mileage allowance instead of actual vehicle costs — a common, legitimate either/or choice, with a clear warning not to claim both.
- If you've marked yourself VAT-registered, a VAT summary (VAT collected, net sales) is shown too.
Everything the app already knows about your business — what's been paid, what's been spent, what's been driven — is already organized into the categories your accountant needs. SwiftCert organizes and totals the figures you've entered; it doesn't give tax advice.
Settings, profile & rates
A handful of things worth setting up once, right at the start, so every certificate, quote, and invoice afterward is correct automatically:
- Business Profile — business name, Gas Safe registration number, address and contact details, a company logo (printed on every certificate/invoice PDF), and a certificate number prefix.
- Certificate Pricing — a default price for each of the 6 certificate types. This genuinely prefills invoice line items automatically, so pricing a routine job takes no typing at all.
- Tax & Mileage Settings — the standard/reduced mileage rates and the 10,000-mile threshold, with a reset-to-default option.
A VAT registration threshold field is also in Tax & Mileage Settings, for your own reference — it's a note you set for yourself, not an active warning the app currently sends as your turnover approaches it. VAT itself is set per line item on each invoice (20% by default, editable per line), not as one global rate.