What is a letter before action (and when to send one)
The letter that gets invoices paid without a court date.
Read postDocuments. Systems. CRM.
Get the business out of your head.
You’re great at your trade. We help make sure the business behind it works too.
We help growing trade and service businesses put the right documents, systems and commercial processes in place to support the business they’ve built.
For trades & service SMEs · UK
- 14,000UK businesses close each year because of late payments, 38 a daySource: DBT / Small Business Commissioner, 2025
- +54%rise in employment tribunal claims in a single yearSource: Ministry of Justice tribunal statistics, Q3 2025/26
- £13.6bnlost by UK SMEs every year through unmanaged legal issuesSource: YouGov / CEBR for LawBite
Good documentation doesn’t just organise your business. It helps protect it.
Your business has grown.
Your systems haven’t grown with it.
Most trade business owners are brilliant tradespeople who were never taught systems, processes, delegation, documentation or scaling. So the business ends up in your head or scattered across emails and WhatsApp.
Do any of these sound familiar?
- Limited employment paperwork
- No customer contracts for works
- Inconsistent quotations
- No proper complaints process
- Poor debt-chasing procedures
- Documents copied from somewhere online
- Key information living in WhatsApp
- No clear customer onboarding process
- Employees doing things differently
- No software to manage your business, or software you’re barely using but still paying for
- Everything relying on the owner or one or two key individuals remembering what happens next
What we build
Make yourself easier and safer to work with.
Documents, systems and CRM, every piece tailored to your business and your services. Not off-the-shelf templates half edited from a download. You’re a serious business; your paperwork should reflect it.
Contracts & agreements
- Standard client contracts
- Subcontractor agreements & SLAs
- Subcontractor payment retention
- Terms & conditions
Getting paid
- Quotation templates
- Payment terms
- Letter before action
- Debt-chasing sequence
People & process
- Contracts of employment
- Company handbook
- Staff & customer onboarding
- Complaints process
Compliance & renewals
- Subcontractor compliance register
- Insurance & qualification register
- Renewal calendar
- Record-keeping structure
Systems & software
- CRM selection for your trade
- Setup & data migration
- Staff training & handover
- Process automation
How it works
How can we work together?
Free 30-minute consultation
We’ll talk through your business, what you need and check whether working together is the right option.
Then pick a route
Route A
Traffic light report
A consultation which produces a tailored report on what should be your business’s main priorities, with a quote for sorting each one.
Then
You choose what we go ahead with: the full suite, or we start with the immediate priorities.
Route B
Book consultancy time
You already know what you want.
Then
Book our time and we’ll help you get it completed.
From the blog
All postsGuides that get found.
Plain-English answers to what trade businesses actually search for.
- Getting paid
- Contracts
Subcontractor agreements: what yours must cover
Scope, payment, insurance, CIS: the clauses that stop disputes before they start.
Read post - Scaling
The 12 documents every trade business needs before it scales
A checklist for firms about to take on staff, subcontractors or bigger contracts.
Read post
Questions
Asked every week.
Our Lead Consultant has 15 years’ experience across commercial strategy, operations, people, systems and governance. Having founded and scaled a facilities management business from start-up to 60+ employees, managing £1m+ public-sector contracts and implementing bespoke software and systems to streamline and systemise the business as it grew, she understands first-hand the challenges growing SMEs face. She combines hands-on business experience with legal expertise and doctoral research into AI and technology adoption in SMEs.
No. Templates are where most of the problems on this page started. We audit how your firm works, then draft documents around it: your trade, your terms, your risks.
Yes. You answer questions about how the business runs; we do the drafting, you review, we finalise and hand over.
Most engagements are drafted, reviewed with you and handed over inside 3–4 weeks.
Usually more useful. The audit maps what you have against what the work requires; most firms keep half of what exists and replace the rest.
No. We are a documents-and-systems consultancy, not a law firm. Where a document needs a solicitor’s sign-off, we say so plainly.
More calm, less chaos.
To give the best service, we onboard clients in small batches: leave an email and we’ll be in touch.