Every part of DayGraft, explained step by step — logging days, keeping evidence, sending statements contractors respect, and getting your records out at tax time.
Your name, trade and UTR appear at the top of every statement you send. Without a name, DayGraft won't generate a statement at all.
Gross status: if HMRC has granted you gross payment status, set CIS to 0% and the statement will show no deduction.
A contractor is who pays you. A site is where you worked. You create them once, then pick them from a list — a repeat day takes two taps.
The day appears in the list below, and the banner at the top updates with your running total for the week.
Logging a future date marks it PLANNED. It counts towards nothing until the date arrives, so you can block out next week's work in advance.
Day rate — a flat amount for the day. Use Half for a half day and the value halves automatically.
Hourly — enter your rate and the hours worked. You can add a separate overtime rate and OT hours on top.
Auto OT — the smart option. You set a weekly basic-hours threshold and a multiplier once; DayGraft then works out for each day how many hours fall into basic and how many into overtime, based on what you've already logged that week.
Auto OT is worth setting up if your contract says something like "first 40 hours at standard rate, then time and a half". It stops you doing the maths every Friday.
As you log each day, a hint under the hours field tells you exactly how the split was calculated, so you can check it against your own expectations before saving.
Overtime rules apply to days you log from that point on. Changing the rules doesn't retroactively recalculate days you already saved.
Tapping Cancel editing leaves the original day untouched.
A signed daywork sheet or a photo of the finished work is the difference between "I say I was there" and "here's the proof". Photos are time-stamped and tied to the specific day, so they stay in context.
On the free plan, photos are kept in cloud backup for 90 days. Pro keeps them indefinitely. Photos on your device aren't deleted either way — this only affects the backup.
Settings has a bulk export that packages every evidence photo and receipt into a zip, organised into folders by week.
Worth doing once a year when you hand things to your accountant — folders are named by week ending, so they're easy to cross-reference against statements.
DayGraft calculates the driving distance from your home postcode to the site postcode, doubles it for the round trip, and applies HMRC's simplified rate.
Mileage is a tax deduction only. It never appears on the statement you send your contractor. If you claim mileage, don't also claim fuel, insurance or repairs for the same vehicle under Travel expenses.
If you log more than one site on the same day, DayGraft notices and suggests a sensible route total rather than double-counting the trip home. Check the figure — it can't know the order you actually drove in.
The statement covers a single contractor for a single week. If you worked for three contractors, you send three statements.
When the days in a statement have photos attached, a toggle appears at the top of the statement.
Send with evidence when a payment is disputed or the contractor is new to you. Send without when it's routine and you want a tidy one-page document. Your choice is remembered for next time.
A DayGraft statement is a record you create and send. It isn't an HMRC document and it isn't a guarantee of payment — it's evidence of what you did and what you're owed.
If you're VAT-registered, turn it on in Settings and add your VAT number. DayGraft then asks how each contractor should be treated:
Reverse charge (the usual case for CIS subcontractors) — no VAT is added, and the statement states the rate and that the customer accounts for it.
Standard — VAT is added to the whole supply. Use this when the customer is an end user or isn't VAT-registered.
The treatment is remembered per contractor, so you set it once each and forget it. CIS is calculated on labour excluding VAT either way.
Once a payment is logged, DayGraft compares it to what the statement said you were owed and marks the week:
PAID — the full expected amount arrived.
SHORT — less arrived than expected, with the gap shown.
AWAITING — nothing logged against it yet.
The Outstanding figure in the banner is the sum of every unpaid gap across completed weeks. If that number is climbing, someone owes you money.
One file per tax year, with a row per day: date, contractor, site, rate, hours, labour, materials and mileage.
The MTD section shows your income and expenses broken into HMRC's quarterly periods, with the next deadline highlighted. You can export any single quarter as CSV.
These are estimates for record-keeping, not a submission. DayGraft is not yet HMRC-recognised software — you or your accountant still file through your usual route.
After two weeks of logged work, a projection appears estimating your tax-year total at your current rate, and how that sits against the higher-rate threshold for your region.
A rough guide only. The real threshold applies to taxable profit after all allowable expenses and your personal allowance — talk to an accountant before making decisions on it.
Without an account, everything lives on this device only. If you lose or reset the phone, the data is gone.
Signing in on a second device pulls everything down, so you can log on your phone and print statements from a tablet.
Turn on App Lock in Settings to require Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode before DayGraft opens. Your device needs a passcode set for this to be available.
Simple Hours starts with one job. Tap the job name at the top to set it up — everything else follows from the rate you put in here.
Unpaid break per day — enter the minutes deducted automatically from every day, e.g. 30 for a half-hour lunch.
Pay half a day if under … hours — for day-rate jobs where a short day is paid at half. Set 0 to turn it off.
A premium day counts as overtime for all its hours. Fixed day £ pays an agreed amount for the whole day however many hours you work — useful when the boss offers a set price to come in on a Sunday.
Rules apply to days you log from then on, not to hours already saved.
The main screen is your week, one row per day. Tap a day's start or end time to set it — the hours and pay calculate as you go.
Days that ran into overtime show an OT marker, so you can see at a glance which days pushed you over.
Swipe or use the arrows to move between weeks. The Today button appears whenever you're not on the current week and jumps you back. Tapping the date range lets you pick any week directly.
Which day your week starts on is configurable in Settings → Week starts on. Set it to match how your contractor runs their pay week.
If your hours barely change, tap Copy last week's times and the whole week fills in from the previous one. Adjust the days that differ.
It won't overwrite a week that already has hours in it — clear the week first if that's what you want.
The bottom of the week shows Total Time and Total Pay, split into basic and overtime so you can check the numbers against your own reckoning.
Turn CIS on and the total shows what you'll actually receive after deduction, with the gross figure alongside. Set the percentage in Settings — 20% if you're registered, 30% if not.
Two ways: enter your round-trip miles per day directly, or let DayGraft work it out from postcodes.
Tax deduction only — never shown on your invoice.
If you logged days before setting up mileage — or the figure has changed since — DayGraft can update your past days without you deleting and re-entering anything.
You can run this more than once. If your mileage changed partway through the year — a new site, a house move — update the whole year first with the old figure still showing correctly, then run it again from the date it changed with the new figure. Each run only touches the dates you choose, so earlier and later periods keep their own numbers.
Tap History to see every week you've logged time on. Tap any week to jump to it, or use the buttons on each row to share a summary or download that week's CSV.
The share-summary option is the quickest way to send your hours to a boss who just wants the numbers in a WhatsApp message.
Tap Invoice to turn the week into a document you can print or save as PDF, using the details you set in Settings.
Add your name in Settings first — an invoice without a name won't generate.
Tap + Add another job in the job sheet to set up a second job with its own rate and rules. A switcher then appears in the header so you can move between them, each with its own separate week grid and history.
If you outgrow Simple Hours — you want evidence photos, several contractors, or payment tracking — switch in Settings → Tracking style.
Nothing is deleted when you switch. Your Simple Hours history stays exactly where it is, just hidden, and comes back if you switch again.
The banner updates with your running total for the tax year.
The categories match HMRC's expense types, so the totals line up with the boxes on your Self Assessment:
If you claim mileage on the Days tab, don't also log fuel, insurance or repairs for the same vehicle under Travel. HMRC lets you claim one or the other, not both.
Till receipts fade. A photo taken the same day is worth more than a shoebox in April.
Photograph it in the van before you drive off. It takes five seconds and you'll never do it later.
You can save an expense with no photo — it shows as "no receipt photo" in the list. Still worth logging, since a record with a date and amount is better than nothing, but a receipt is much stronger evidence if HMRC ever asks.
The bulk photo download in Settings → Evidence & receipts includes receipts alongside your day evidence, organised into folders.
The banner shows total spend for the current tax year and the number of receipts logged. Mileage from your day records is tracked separately and shown with its own total.
Expenses are included in the main CSV export in Settings → Export data — one file per tax year, with categories intact so your accountant can slot them straight into the right boxes.
Export at the end of each tax year and keep the file somewhere safe alongside the photo zip. That pair is your whole year's records.
The guide is written by the person who builds the app. If something here doesn't match what you're seeing, tell me and I'll fix it.