The outsourced commercial department for UK subcontractors
The applications go in. Every month. Whether you've had time or not.
Most subcontractors don't lose money on the jobs they price wrong. They lose it on the application that went in late, the variation nobody wrote up, and the retention nobody chased. We run that side of your business for a fixed monthly fee — prices published, no tie-in.
The problem
Where the money actually goes
None of it is a pricing problem. All of it is a paperwork problem — and paperwork is the cheap part to fix.
What we do
Three desks. One commercial function.
Your monthly applications and valuations, drafted from your records in your format, issued on the contract date, and checked against the certificate when it comes back.
- Applications for payment & valuations
- Payment and pay-less notices checked
- Certificate-versus-application reconciliation
- One-page monthly cash report
The rest of the commercial function: variations written up properly, final accounts closed, retention recovered, contract correspondence answered in time.
- Variations & compensation events
- Final accounts & retention recovery
- Contracts reviewed before you sign — risks flagged plainly
- NEC administration and early warnings
Available as an add-on to any desk, or as a one-off: a tender priced and written by people who deliver this work — measured take-offs, compliant returns, honest inclusions and exclusions.
- Measured take-offs from the drawings
- Priced, compliant tender returns
- PQQs and prequalification packs
- Fixed fee, agreed before it starts
How it runs
Your month, counted in working days
We work to your contract dates, not ours. Every month runs the same way, counted back from your application date.
We ask you for the month's information. The same request, the same day, every month.
You have a drafted application in your own format, measured from your site records, with the variations written up and evidenced.
It goes in. On the contract date, every time.
You get one page: what went in, what came back, what's outstanding, and the two or three things that need you.
We check the certificate against the application. If it's short, it's queried in writing while the notice periods are still open — this is where most of the money in this service gets found.
The promise
Miss a deadline? That month is free.
If we miss a payment-application deadline, and you gave us what we asked for in time — that month is free.
That's the whole guarantee, and it's on the one thing we control.
We won't promise you'll win tenders. The award isn't ours to control, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
Prices, on the pageWho does it
Built by people who deliver the work
The QS Desk is run by the team behind AXYCAD — nearly two decades delivering major infrastructure. HS2, National Highways, the water industry. Reinforced concrete, groundworks, civils, drainage. We've built the work, priced the work, and argued the accounts afterwards.
Which means when we write up your variation, we know what the instruction should have said. And when we read your subcontract amendments, we know which one is going to hurt you in November.
Every credential above is independently checkable on the registers.
Send us a live tender, or last month's application.
We'll come back inside two working days with what we'd have done differently. Free, and there's no call to sit through unless you want one.