What Powered Now Actually Is
Powered Now is a UK-based field service management platform aimed squarely at tradespeople. It handles job scheduling, invoicing, quotes, customer management, supplier tracking, and certificate generation all inside one dashboard. The company markets itself heavily at sole traders and small trade businesses, and the interface is genuinely well built for someone who wants everything in one place.
The pricing sits at a monthly subscription. As of mid-2025 the entry tier costs around £29 per month when billed monthly, rising to higher tiers for team features, GPS tracking, and financial reporting. There is a free trial, but the trial requires a card at sign-up and converts to a paid plan automatically. For a sole trader doing a handful of jobs a week, that monthly outgoing is not trivial, especially outside the busier seasons.
Powered Now's strongest selling point is depth. If you run a small team, need to track van locations, manage supplier purchase orders, and reconcile everything with your accountant, it earns its price. The certification module covers CP12s, EICRs, gas work certificates, and electrical installation certificates. For a one-person band who only needs the certificate side and basic invoicing, the extra features add cost without adding value.
What TradeDoc AI Is
TradeDoc AI is a document generation tool built specifically for UK tradespeople. It produces compliant certificates, quotes, invoices, and job sheets using plain prompts, covering gas, electrical, plumbing, and general building work. The free tier gives you 100 documents per month with no credit card required at sign-up. That is not a limited trial. It is the permanent free plan.
The Pro tier costs £15 per month. It adds your logo to the PDF, one-tap email directly to the customer from inside the tool, unlimited document generation beyond the 100-document free allowance, and document vault access beyond 90 days. Most sole traders on lighter workloads stay on the free tier and never need Pro.
TradeDoc does not do job scheduling, team GPS tracking, or supplier purchase orders. It is not trying to. The focus is on producing the correct document quickly and keeping it compliant with current UK law and technical standards. If your main frustration with Powered Now is paying for things you do not use, that distinction matters a great deal.
Key Differences: Side by Side
Comparing these two tools is straightforward once you strip out the marketing language. The honest answer is that they solve different parts of the same problem. Powered Now is a management platform with document capability bolted on. TradeDoc AI is a document platform, full stop. Which one you need depends entirely on which problem is costing you the most time.
Use this list as a quick reference before working through the fuller detail below.
- •Cost: Powered Now from roughly £29/month (card required, auto-renews). TradeDoc AI free for up to 100 documents per month, no card at sign-up, Pro at £15/month.
- •Document speed: TradeDoc AI generates a compliant certificate in about two minutes using plain-language prompts. Powered Now requires manual data entry through a structured form interface.
- •Scheduling and job management: Powered Now has a full calendar and job management board. TradeDoc AI has no scheduling feature.
- •Team and GPS tracking: Powered Now supports multiple users and optional GPS. TradeDoc AI is built for the sole trader; no team management.
- •Invoicing and accounting integration: Powered Now integrates with Xero and QuickBooks. TradeDoc AI produces invoice PDFs but does not connect to accounting software.
- •Compliance currency: TradeDoc AI documents reflect current UK standards including MTD ITSA filing context, CIS post-April 2026 reforms, and current technical standards. Powered Now updates its certificate templates but the pace varies.
- •Customer email: TradeDoc AI Pro tier sends directly from the tool in one tap. Powered Now includes customer communication tools at higher tiers.
- •Free tier: TradeDoc AI has a genuine permanent free tier. Powered Now offers only a time-limited trial.
When Powered Now Is the Right Choice
If you employ or subcontract other engineers, Powered Now earns its monthly fee. Managing multiple diaries, tracking who has attended which job, handling purchase orders against supplier accounts, and producing a consolidated financial picture for your accountant: these are things TradeDoc AI does not do, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.
Powered Now also makes sense if your accountant is already connected to your Xero or QuickBooks and you want job revenue to flow into your accounts automatically. For a sole trader hitting the Making Tax Digital for Income Tax threshold, which from 6 April 2026 applies to anyone with qualifying income above £50,000, having your invoicing tied into MTD-compatible software is a practical consideration. If Powered Now is already doing that for you, pulling it apart to save £29 a month needs careful thought.
A gas engineer running a small domestic and commercial book with two employed engineers, sub-contractors on occasional jobs, and a service contract portfolio is the profile Powered Now was designed for. At that scale the subscription cost is a fraction of the admin time it saves.
When TradeDoc AI Is the Right Choice
The sole trader doing three to eight jobs a week from a single van, invoicing customers individually, and filing their own self-assessment does not need a scheduling board, GPS tracking, or multi-user access. What they need is to produce the right certificate quickly, have it look professional, and send it without hassle. That is the exact problem TradeDoc AI solves.
It is particularly well suited to tradespeople who use a separate calendar tool (Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, even a paper diary) and a separate accounting tool (FreeAgent, QuickBooks, or a spreadsheet) and just want the document side handled properly. The free tier covers 100 documents a month, which for most sole traders is four to five weeks of full output.
Tradespeople switching away from Powered Now mid-contract are sometimes nervous about losing their certificate history. It is worth noting that under the Limitation Act 1980 you have six years to pursue a contract claim in England and Wales, so keeping your historical certificates accessible for that window matters. TradeDoc AI's vault retains documents for 90 days on the free tier and indefinitely on Pro. For historical records already in Powered Now, export them as PDFs before you cancel.
Compliance: Where Both Tools Have to Get It Right
Whatever platform you use to generate documents, the certificate itself has to be correct. A CP12 produced through Powered Now and a CP12 produced through TradeDoc AI both have to meet the requirements set out under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, specifically Regulation 36, which places the duty on the Gas Safe registered engineer to carry out the annual inspection and issue the record. The software is just the delivery mechanism. If the fields are wrong, the issuing engineer carries the liability.
The same applies to electrical certificates. An Electrical Installation Certificate or an EICR must reflect the standards in force at the time of the inspection. From 15 October 2026, BS 7671:2018 Amendment 4:2026, the Orange Book, is the only version in force. During the transition period running from 15 April 2026 to 15 October 2026, the previous edition remains valid alongside A4. Any software generating EICR templates after October 2026 needs to reflect the new chapter structure including the revised Section 710 for medical locations and the new Section 826 for battery energy storage systems. Whether you are using Powered Now or TradeDoc AI, it is worth checking that your certificate template has been updated.
For electricians doing low-carbon work, specifically EV charging installation, solar PV, or battery storage, the Electrotechnical Assessment Specification 2026 requires that from 1 October 2026 every person carrying out periodic inspection or low-carbon installation work must hold the relevant Level 3 award. There are no grandfather rights for the low-carbon categories. The software you use to generate the certificate does not change that qualification requirement, but a good platform should prompt you to record the relevant qualification number on the certificate.
For any sole trader above the Making Tax Digital threshold, the interaction between invoicing software and MTD-compatible quarterly reporting matters. From 6 April 2026, sole traders with qualifying income above £50,000 must file quarterly digital updates under MTD ITSA. The £30,000 threshold follows in April 2027. If you use Powered Now for invoicing and it feeds into an MTD-compatible accounting package, that workflow has real compliance value. TradeDoc AI produces invoice PDFs but does not file to HMRC. If MTD is a live issue for you, factor that into your comparison.
CIS and Subcontractor Documents
Sole traders working under the Construction Industry Scheme need to keep their paperwork tighter than ever following the reforms that took effect from 6 April 2026. The new rules introduced a 'knew or should have known' liability test aligned with the VAT Kittel principle, meaning that if a subcontractor in your supply chain turns out to be fraudulent, HMRC can now look at whether you took reasonable steps to verify them. Gross Payment Status can be revoked immediately under the new rules, and the reapplication ban has extended from one year to five years. Penalties can reach 30% of the lost tax.
Neither Powered Now nor TradeDoc AI is a CIS filing platform. Both can produce payment certificates and remittance advice documents, but CIS monthly returns are filed through HMRC's own system or your accountant. What matters in the context of this comparison is whether your invoicing records are clean enough to support verification if HMRC comes asking. A well-structured invoice PDF showing the gross amount, CIS deduction, and net payment, produced consistently, is what you need. TradeDoc AI generates CIS-formatted payment documents as part of its core document set.
If you work predominantly on construction sites and need to produce CIS deduction statements quickly for multiple subcontractors, the document generation speed of TradeDoc AI is a practical advantage. Powered Now handles CIS deductions within its invoicing module, which suits users already embedded in that workflow.
Common Confusion Points
The most common confusion when comparing these two tools is treating them as direct substitutes. They are not. A tradesperson who switches from Powered Now to TradeDoc AI and expects to also manage their job diary from TradeDoc AI will be disappointed. The switch only makes sense if you are happy managing scheduling separately.
A second confusion point is around what 'free' means. Several platforms advertise free tiers that are actually just free trials. Powered Now's free access is time-limited and requires a card. TradeDoc AI's free tier is genuinely permanent and requires no card at sign-up. If you are searching for a free Powered Now alternative UK tradespeople can rely on without a commitment, the distinction is important.
A third confusion point is assuming that the more expensive tool produces more legally valid documents. A certificate is valid because it is completed correctly by a competent, registered person, not because of which software generated it. A CP12 typed on a free template and signed by a Gas Safe registered engineer is as valid as one produced by a £100-per-month platform.
Worked Scenario: Sole-Trader Plumber, 6 Jobs Per Week
Take a self-employed plumber based in Sheffield. She does roughly six jobs a week: a mix of bathroom installations, boiler services, and landlord CP12 inspections. She invoices each job individually and files her own self-assessment. Her qualifying income is below £50,000, so MTD ITSA does not apply to her until April 2027 at the earliest. She currently pays £29 per month for Powered Now but uses only the invoicing and CP12 certificate modules. She does not use the scheduling board, supplier tracking, or financial reporting.
Over twelve months she spends £348 on Powered Now. Switching to TradeDoc AI Free costs her nothing. Her six jobs a week produce roughly 24 to 30 documents per month (invoices, quotes, and CP12s combined), well inside the 100-document free tier. She generates each CP12 in about two minutes using TradeDoc AI, emails the PDF to the landlord, and keeps her own copy in Google Drive.
After three months she decides the branded PDF matters for her professional image and upgrades to TradeDoc AI Pro at £15 per month. Her annual cost is now £180 instead of £348, a saving of £168 per year, and she has gained one-tap email to customers directly from the tool. She continues to use Google Calendar for scheduling and FreeAgent for her annual accounts, both of which she was already using. The switch requires no change to those workflows.
Migrating Away from Powered Now: Practical Steps
Before you cancel, export everything. Powered Now allows PDF export of historical certificates and invoices. Download a full archive and store it somewhere you control, whether that is Google Drive, Dropbox, or a folder on your laptop with a proper backup. As noted earlier, the six-year window under the Limitation Act 1980 for contract claims in England and Wales means you want at least six years of job records accessible. For gas certificates under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, Regulation 36 requires landlords to keep CP12 records for two years, but engineers keeping their own copies for longer is good practice.
Once your archive is secure, cancel Powered Now before the next billing date. Check whether you are on a monthly or annual contract. If you committed to an annual plan, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you a 14-day cancellation right for contracts concluded at a distance, though this is most relevant at the point of initial sign-up rather than mid-contract renewal.
Set up TradeDoc AI on the same day. You are on the free tier immediately, no card, no waiting period. Generate your first document as a test. Most tradespeople complete their first working certificate within ten minutes of registering.
TradeDoc AI: Try It Without Committing to Anything
TradeDoc AI generates a compliant certificate, invoice, or quote in about two minutes. It is free for your first 100 documents a month, no card required at sign-up, and all four UK trades (gas, electrical, plumbing, and building) are covered in one place. If you want your logo on the PDF and one-tap email send to the customer, Pro is £15 per month.
Sign up at tradedoc.co.uk, you are on Free from the first second, and you can generate your first CP12, EICR, or invoice straight away. That is the honest pitch. No lock-in, no trial countdown, no surprise charges.
