Our Construction Business Is Stuck On Subbie Admin And Applications For Payment — Hire An Office Manager Or Outsource?

Construction is the sector where back-office discipline matters most and gets ignored most. The work is brutal, the margins are tight, the cash cycle is long, and the admin — CIS verification, subbie onboarding, RAMS, certificates, applications for payment, retentions, stage invoicing — is its own full-time job. Most firms between £500k and £3m revenue hit the same wall: the owner is running the office out of the van, applications go out late, retentions slip and cash flow chokes growth.

When the wall hits, the instinct is to hire an office manager. Sometimes that's right. Often it isn't. Here's the honest comparison.

Option one: hire an in-house office manager. A competent construction office manager in the UK costs £32,000–£42,000 salary, which is roughly £45,000–£58,000 fully loaded once you add NI, pension, holiday cover, sickness, equipment, software (CIS tools, document control, accounting integrations) and recruitment. You also need to manage them, train them on your jobs, and hope they stay past 18 months. When they leave, you start again. For firms doing under about £2m, that's a heavy fixed cost for a role that has peaks and troughs.

Option two: outsource to a specialist construction office. Trade365 from VA365 is built specifically for this work. A UK-based supervised team runs subbie onboarding (right-to-work, insurance, CSCS, CIS verification), document control (RAMS, method statements, certificates), applications for payment on schedule, stage invoicing, retentions tracking, supplier admin and the standard call handling and quote follow-up that every trade office needs. Pricing starts around £999/month for a dedicated VA package and steps up to Desk365 unlimited at £1,999/month for the full back office.

Where each option wins. An in-house office manager wins when you've got 15+ staff, multiple concurrent projects, a need for someone physically at site occasionally, and the volume to keep them busy five days a week. Outsourcing wins when you've got 3–15 staff, the workload spikes with the project pipeline, you want continuity through holidays and sickness, and you can't afford to carry £50k of fixed admin cost in the quiet months.

The real cost of doing nothing. Late applications for payment cost you cash. Slow subbie onboarding costs you site days. Lost certificates cost you contracts. Forgotten retentions cost you cash you've already earned. We routinely see construction firms with £40,000–£100,000 of retentions sitting unrecovered because nobody chased. That alone usually pays for two years of Trade365.

What changes in the first 60 days with Trade365. Subbie packs go out the day a new contractor is onboarded. RAMS and certificates live in one place, in date order, ready for any audit. Applications for payment go out on the agreed cycle, every time, with the right backup. Retentions are tracked and chased. CIS is reconciled monthly, not at year end. Calls during the day get answered and qualified. Quote follow-up runs on a 2-7-14 cadence.

The hybrid model. For firms above £2m, the best answer is usually hybrid — one in-house office lead handling site coordination and the relationships that need to be on the ground, plus Trade365 absorbing the document-heavy admin (CIS, subbies, applications, retentions, document control). You get the cost discipline of outsourcing plus the on-site presence of a hire, and neither side has to do the bit they're worst at.

Why this isn't a generic VA. Construction admin breaks generic virtual assistants. CIS verification, retention schedules, applications for payment, CSCS checks and main-contractor portals all have their own rules and timing. Trade365 was built by people who've run trade businesses, supervised by VA365's UK team, with construction-specific SOPs and templates. The onboarding is two weeks; we shadow a real project, document your workflow, and from week three we own it.

The honest fit test. If you're under £500k and admin is genuinely under 10 hours a week, you probably don't need this yet. If you're £500k–£3m, drowning in subbie paperwork and quoting late, you almost certainly do. If you're over £3m, you need both — an in-house office lead and Trade365 sitting behind them.

The next step. Book a 15-minute call with Jo Hannah. Bring your last three applications for payment and your subbie onboarding list. We'll tell you honestly whether to hire, outsource or run a hybrid — and what it'll cost either way.