Contractor Invoice Management Without the Chase

A subcontractor finishes a job, snaps a photo of the invoice, and sends it on WhatsApp. It sits in a chat thread until someone remembers to key it in — or until the contractor chases payment and reminds you it was never entered at all.

This is one of the most common admin gaps in trades, construction and any business that works with subcontractors — and it's rarely fixed by a better spreadsheet.

Why the chase happens

The invoice usually starts on the contractor's phone, not yours. By the time it reaches your accounting system, it's been forwarded, screenshotted, or retyped at least once — and every handoff is a chance for it to get lost or delayed.

No amount of asking contractors to "just email it properly" fixes this. The invoice starts where the work happens, on a phone, and any solution has to start there too.

Letting contractors submit directly

Sumext's contractor portal gives subcontractors a mobile portal to submit their own invoices and timesheets — no app store install, just an invite link. They snap the invoice, the details auto-fill, and it lands in your review queue.

You review it before it enters your books — nothing posts automatically just because a contractor submitted it. Once approved, it syncs to your connected ledger with the original file attached.

What this replaces

It replaces the WhatsApp thread, the screenshot, the manual re-entry, and the awkward conversation when a contractor asks why an invoice they sent three weeks ago still hasn't been paid.

Dext offers a version of this aimed at accountants inviting clients; Tofu and most OCR-first tools don't offer anything comparable for contractors submitting their own work.

Getting started

Invite one contractor, have them submit their next invoice through the portal, and see how it compares to the WhatsApp-photo-to-spreadsheet routine you're used to.

See the contractor portal →

No credit card. Setup takes 2 minutes.