Plastering and decorating have a particular admin problem: the work itself leaves you in no state to do it. You finish a day skimming ceilings or cutting in around coving, your hands are wrecked, there's dust or emulsion on everything you own, and the last thing you want to touch is a laptop. So the receipts pile up in the van door, the day-rate days blur together, and by the time you invoice you're reconstructing the month from memory. If you've searched for a plasterer admin app, the honest answer is that most of them ask too much: another login, another dashboard, another thing to update at 7pm. What actually fits the trade is something you already use fifty times a day — WhatsApp.
The morning merchant run is where your records start
Most plasterers and decorators start the day at the merchants. Multi-finish, bonding, beads, scrim, caulk, a couple of tubs of trade emulsion — and every one of those visits produces a till receipt that is thermal-printed, easily faded, and destined for a pocket full of dust. Those receipts are real money. A busy plasterer can put hundreds of pounds a week through the merchants, and every receipt you lose is profit you either can't bill to the customer or can't claim against tax.
The fix is to capture the receipt at source, in the thirty seconds between the till and the van. Photograph it before it goes in your pocket. If your system is WhatsApp-based, that's the whole job: photo, send, done. That's the workflow GraftG is built around — it's launching soon from Green & Home Ltd, and it turns one WhatsApp number into your back office. You text it a photo of the merchant receipt and it's logged against the job. No app to download, no dashboard to remember to open. We've written before about why WhatsApp works as a back office for trades — the short version is that the best admin tool is the one already in your hand.
Day rate or priced work — either way, write it down daily
Plastering splits fairly cleanly into day-rate work (often for builders and site work) and priced work (usually domestic — a price for the hallway, a price for the two bedrooms). Both fall apart without daily records.
On day rate, the failure mode is the count. You do eleven days across a month for a builder, invoice for ten because you can only find ten in your head, and you've just given away a full day's labour. The record you need is trivial — date, site, day or half-day — but it has to be made the same day. A one-line message as you leave site does it: 'Full day, Mill Lane site.'
On priced work, the failure mode is scope creep and materials. You price the job, then the customer adds the ceiling, then there's an extra coat because the walls drank the mist coat, and the materials bill quietly grows. If you're logging materials receipts and one-line notes against the job as you go, the final invoice writes itself and you can show the customer exactly where the extras came from. If you're not, you eat the difference.
Quoting room-by-room from the doorstep
Decorating quotes are naturally room-by-room, and the best time to record the survey is standing in the property. Walk the job, and as you go, message yourself the structure:
- Hallway, stairs and landing — prep, one wall needs skimming, two coats throughout
- Front bedroom — strip paper, line, emulsion walls, gloss woodwork
- Kitchen ceiling — stain block, two coats
Photograph anything that affects the price: blown plaster, damp staining, the state of the woodwork. Now the quote is half-built before you've left the street, and if the customer later asks 'why is the hallway that much?', you have the notes and photos from the day you surveyed it. For the mechanics of turning notes into a written quote without going near a printer, see quotes and receipts without the paperwork.
Photos of finished walls are your best paper trail
In a visual trade, photos do three jobs at once. They're your proof of workmanship if a dispute surfaces months later — a flat, well-lit shot of a finished wall settles a lot of arguments about 'it was always like that'. They're your before-and-after portfolio for winning the next job. And they timestamp the work: a photo of the finished box room on the 14th is evidence you were there on the 14th, doing what you said you'd do.
The habit is simple: photograph every room when you finish it, before the furniture goes back. Sent into a message-based job record, those photos sit in sequence with the quote, the receipts and the day notes — one thread that tells the whole story of the job. That thread is exactly the kind of paper trail by text that saves you when memory fails.
What this looks like as a system
Pull it together and the whole admin routine is four message habits, none of which takes longer than a minute:
- Morning: photo of the merchant receipt before you leave the counter.
- On survey: room-by-room notes and photos from the doorstep.
- End of day: one line — day rate day logged, or a progress note on priced work.
- Job done: photos of the finished rooms, then the invoice while it's fresh.
Keep records like that and your tax return stops being archaeology. HMRC expects sole traders to keep records of income and expenses for self-assessment, and dated photos of receipts are a perfectly sensible way to do it — though it's always worth confirming the specifics with your accountant.
GraftG is built for exactly this: mileage, quotes, receipts, invoices and a job tracker, all by texting one WhatsApp number. Your admin sorted. Just WhatsApp it. It's launching soon — join the waitlist at graftg.co.uk and be first in when it opens.