Free during closed beta
TradeMargin tracks what you’ve actually spent against what you quoted — per trade, per job — so a job that’s going wrong tells you while you can still do something about it.
1 job is over 90% of budget
2 of 3 jobs need attention
Portfolio budget
£33,400.00
Spent to date
£27,680.00
14 Elm Street
R. Whitfield
Riverside Commercial Fit-Out
Halden Estates
The Crown Hotel Rewire
Crown Hotels Ltd
[01] Quote
Enter the budget you quoted for each trade on the job. Plumbing £2,400, electrical £1,800.
[02] Log
Materials, labour, subcontractors. Whatever you spend, against whichever trade it belongs to.
[03] Watch
Under 70% of budget is green. 70 to 89 is amber. 90 and over is red. The job takes the worst status of any trade on it.
/ What it does
A job takes the worst status of any trade on it, never an average. Add these two together and the job is at 75% of budget — amber. Electrical on its own is at 96%, so the job is red.
8 Fenwick Road
CriticalA progress bar physically can't show more than a full track, so the number does the talking instead. Anything past 100% is stated in figures, not flattened into a bar that just looks finished.
Roofing
CriticalBudget
£1,200.00
Spent
£1,608.00
134% of budget used
There is no running total stored anywhere to drift out of date. Spend is the sum of the entries against that trade, added up on load — so deleting a cost moves the figure, the percentage and the status in the same instant.
Recent costs
The trade list is a lookup table, not an enum in the code. Adding one — groundworks, glazing, whatever you quote for — doesn't need a new version of the app shipped first.
Trades
Rows in a lookup table, not a list in the code.
/ Trust & security
Job costing means storing who the job was for and what it cost you. That deserves saying out loud rather than a padlock icon.
Your jobs, budgets and cost entries are scoped to your account by Postgres itself, not by the app remembering to filter. A request for someone else's row comes back empty because the database refuses it.
Delete your account from settings and it goes — your profile, every job, every trade budget and every cost entry, removed at the database. No email to send, no waiting on us to action it.
No analytics scripts, no ad pixels, no tag managers, on this page or in the app. A content security policy blocks anything trying to load from elsewhere, and nothing about your jobs is sold or shared.
/ FAQ
Then this is probably the wrong tool for you. TradeMargin assumes a budget per trade. That's the whole mechanism, and it's how it can tell you which trade is bleeding instead of only that the job is down. You can put a single figure against one trade and still get a red, amber or green, but you'd be paying for a spreadsheet with better colours. Worth knowing before you sign up rather than after.
Yes, if you want the status to mean anything. Spend is only ever the sum of what you've entered — nothing is estimated, imported from your bank, or filled in for you. A job missing half its costs will sit there showing green while it loses money. That's the honest limitation of anything you have to type into.
It's free during the closed beta. No card, no trial countdown, no billing set up at all. There will be a paid tier later — that's the plan, and it's better said now than sprung on you in three months.
You get told the price before it applies to you, not after. Nothing gets locked, hidden behind an upgrade prompt, or held hostage while you decide. If the answer is no, you can delete your account and everything in it from settings and walk away.
No, and it isn't trying to. There are no invoices, no VAT returns, no payroll, no bank reconciliation, and it is not a book of record. It watches one thing: what a job has cost you against what you quoted, while the job is still running. Your accountant still gets the accounts.
Not yet. There's no export or download in the current version. You can read everything in the app and delete everything from settings, but there's no CSV button. If getting your data out again matters to you, that's a real gap and you should factor it in.
Free during the closed beta. Set up a job, put a budget against each trade, and see where it stands.