For electrical contractors
The certificate is what gets you paid. Treat it that way.
Electrical work is finished twice: once with the tools, once with the paperwork. Worksted holds the invoice until the second one is done — so nothing goes out incomplete, and nothing sits in a drawer for three weeks either.
Worked example
- The business
- A 20-person electrical contractor
- The job
- Main switchboard upgrade and sub-mains, two-week shutdown
- The site
- Secondary college, science and admin wings
A school switchboard upgrade, staged through the term break, that cannot be invoiced until its test results are on the job.
One record, all the way through. The docket keeps up on its own — scroll, and watch it fill in. Marked in the term break, day by day.
Priced off your own book, in your own words
The estimate goes together from your price book — boards, RCBOs, cable by the metre, day rates. Every line copies its price the moment it is added, so the quote you send is the quote it stays.
New quote
DraftingSwitchboard, 24-pole 3-phase
1 ea
$1,865.00
16mm² sub-main, XLPE to Cu
38 m
$1,424.00
Staged across the shutdown you actually have
The board is the two weeks you were given. Book the isolation day, the board change, the testing — each one its own visit on the same stage, each with the crew who will be there.
This week
4 on siteDev
Isolation & make safeMon
Marko
Board changeTue–Thu
Ash
Sub-mains to adminWed–Fri
Tui
Test & resultsFri
The sub-main is undersized. That is a variation, not a favour.
Priced on the spot off the same book, sent by the office, and accepted by the business manager on a link with no login. It is on the job from that moment — and it is on the invoice at the end.
Results filled in on the phone, meter photo attached
Insulation resistance, RCD trip times, polarity — your form, your fields, filled in standing at the board. The photo of the meter is a field on the same form, so the reading and the proof of the reading arrive together.
Main switchroom
SubmittedNo certificate, no invoice — and the button says so
You set the certificate to hold invoicing, so until it is on the job there is nothing to click. Not a warning somebody dismisses: the control is not there, and the reason is in its place.
Switchboard upgrade — stage 3
Blocked- Client
- Waiting on: Certificate of Electrical Safety
- Site
- Everything else is done
Out the door with the compliance pack behind it
Tax Invoice, your ABN, GST on its own line, BSB and account — frozen onto the invoice the moment it is issued, so a later edit to the job can never rewrite a bill the client is already holding.
Tax Invoice
INV-1184
Your electrical business · ABN 51 824 753 166
BSB
063-502
Account
1084 7291
The job, start to finish
JOB-2207
Secondary college · main switchroom
Quoted
Fixed price, off the price book
$18,450.00
Visits booked
One stage, two weeks
7
Variation accepted
Sub-main upsized, signed on site
$2,140.00
Labour
146 h logged at the board
$8,920.00
Materials
Supplier dockets read on site
$6,115.00
Invoiced inc. GST
$22,649.00
Margin
27.0%
$5,555.00
Quote — switchboard upgrade
Boards, protection, cable by the metre and a day rate that reflects what a shutdown actually costs you. Build it on site off your price book, or in the office off the same one.
Your price book, your wording, your rates. Lines copy onto a quote the moment they’re added, so putting your prices up next month never rewrites what you sent last month.
A client on agreed rates gets those rates, baked into the line rather than remembered by whoever built the quote.
JOB-2207
Secondary college · main switchroom
Ex GST unless shown
Switchboard, 24-pole 3-phase
1 ea
$1,865.00
16mm² sub-main, XLPE to Cu
38 m
$1,424.00
RCBO, 20A Type C
18 ea
$972.00
Emergency light, recessed LED
11 ea
$764.50
A-grade electrician, day rate
9 days
$14,189.00
What has to be on file before this job closes.
You decide what each of these is, who owes it, when it is due and what it holds up. After that they raise themselves, and the job says out loud what it is waiting on and who it is waiting on.
- Certificate of Electrical Safety
- Set it to hold invoicing and the bill cannot leave without it — on the convert path and on a manual status change alike, so there is no side door.
- Test results sheet
- Build the form once with the fields you actually record. It is filled in on the phone at the board, and the meter photo is a field on the same form rather than a separate errand.
- A-grade licence and ticket
- Sits on the person, not the job. When someone whose ticket has lapsed is put on the crew, they are left off and named — you find out at the whiteboard, not on site.
- Site induction for this client
- Put it on the client or the site once. Every future job captured for them carries it automatically, including the ones raised on a phone at 7am.
You write these rules yourself, once — what evidence, who it’s for, when it’s due and what it holds up. From then on they raise themselves.
Three ways this work loses money.
Not software problems — electrical contractors problems. Here is what Worksted does about each of them.
The invoice that sat for three weeks
Work finished, certificate never uploaded, nobody noticed until the client rang about something else. Hold invoicing on the evidence and it stops being possible to forget — the job carries its own outstanding list.
The extra work nobody wrote down
A sub-main upsized on the nod because it was easier than a phone call. Raise it as a variation on site, price it off the same book, and the client accepting it is a recorded decision rather than a memory.
The rate you put up in March
Quotes issued before a price rise stay exactly as they were sent. Lines copy your book the moment they are added, so a price change tomorrow never quietly rewrites what a client already signed.
Put a certificate on a live job and try to invoice it.
Fourteen days. Set one requirement to hold invoicing and watch what happens when the paperwork is not there.
Not quite your line of work