Powered Now Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

Powered Now is UK job management software for tradespeople that handles quotes, invoices, scheduling, payments and trade certificates from one mobile app. It is one of the few in its price band with proper Making Tax Digital support. Best for: UK sole traders and small trade firms. Price: from £28/user/mo, no free plan. Rating: 7.4/10.

What is Powered Now?

Powered Now is a job management app built specifically for UK tradespeople. It pulls the paperwork side of a trade business into one place: quotes, invoices, scheduling, expenses, payments and the compliance certificates that plumbers, electricians and gas engineers have to issue. The whole thing is designed to run from a phone or tablet on site, not from an office desk, which is the point that separates it from generic accounting tools.

The product comes from Powered Now Ltd, a UK company that has focused on trades since the early days of mobile job apps. It carries a 4.7-star Trustpilot rating across more than 1,200 reviews, and the support is UK-based, which matters when your software question is really a VAT or certificate question. We dug into it because the UK trades market is crowded with tools that either do accounting well or job tracking well, and Powered Now is one of the few that tries to do both for a sole trader without enterprise pricing.

What makes it matter now is the squeeze on small trade businesses. Making Tax Digital is no longer optional for many, fuel and material costs have pushed margins tighter, and customers expect a tidy digital quote rather than a scrap of paper. Powered Now is positioned squarely at the one-van and small-team operator who cannot justify a full back office but still has to look professional and stay compliant. It is software that earns its place by saving evenings, not by adding dashboards nobody asked for.

What Are Powered Now’s Key Features?

Quoting and invoicing on site

You can build a professional quote or invoice on your phone while standing in a customer’s kitchen, capture a digital signature, and email it before you leave. Quotes and invoices are unlimited on every plan, including the entry Business tier, so you are never rationing documents to stay under a cap. Tap-to-pay invoice links let customers pay from the document, and the app tracks what is outstanding so you are not chasing money in a spreadsheet.

The detail that earns loyalty here is the on-site signature. A signed quote in the customer’s hand before you drive off is the difference between a job won and a job that drifts. Powered Now also keeps every quote, invoice and expense tied to a customer record, so when someone calls back six months later you can pull up exactly what you charged and what you fitted without digging through email.

Offline mode

Powered Now works with no internet connection and syncs automatically once you are back in signal. This is the feature trades actually care about, because plant rooms, new builds and rural jobs routinely have no data. You can write a quote in a basement and it will not vanish. Many cloud-first rivals stall the moment connectivity drops, so this is a real differentiator.

Forms and certificates

The app ships with more than 80 trade-specific templates, including Gas Safety records, electrical compliance certificates and risk assessments. These live on the Professional plan and up. For a gas or electrical business this is the headline feature, because issuing a compliant certificate from the same app that raised the invoice removes a whole separate piece of software. One gap users flag: there is no clearance certificate template, so a few niche documents still have to be handled elsewhere.

Scheduling and team tracking

Premium adds a drag-and-drop diary with team visibility and staff location tracking, so you can see who is where and slot in an emergency callout without phoning round. The diary is built for the way trades actually work, with jobs you can drag between engineers and days. Staff time and location tracking sit alongside it, which is useful when you are billing labour by the hour and want a record that matches the invoice.

Tax, payments and integrations

Making Tax Digital and VAT return support are built in across the plans, which is genuinely uncommon at this price and removes a recurring source of admin dread. Professional and above integrate with Xero so your accountant is not rekeying figures. Automatic quote and invoice chasing arrives on Premium and quietly nudges slow payers for you, and there is an optional AI Receptionist add-on that answers calls 24/7 plus a free “Here Is My Work” website to show off completed jobs.

How Much Does Powered Now Cost?

Powered Now starts at £28 per user per month on the Business plan, billed monthly and excluding VAT. Professional is £32 per user per month and is the most popular tier, and Premium is £40 per user per month. Annual billing knocks the equivalent of two months off, so Business works out to £280 per year. There is a 14-day free trial with no card required, but no permanently free plan.

Against named rivals this lands in the middle. Tradify, the closest UK competitor, starts at around £34 per user per month on its Lite plan and drops to £28 on Pro for four or more users. ServiceM8 has a free tier but caps jobs, with paid plans from about $29 a month. So Powered Now undercuts Tradify at the entry point and includes certificates that Tradify charges around for, while ServiceM8 wins on having any free option at all.

The catch with Powered Now is the per-user model. A solo plumber pays £28 a month and gets a lot. A three-person firm on Professional pays £96 a month before VAT, which is fine but no longer cheap. Price it as a team, not as one seat, before you commit. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee on top of the trial, so the financial risk of testing it properly is low, but the recurring cost still deserves a quick sum once you add seats and VAT.

Who is Powered Now Best For?

Use Powered Now if you are a UK sole trader or small trade firm, especially in plumbing, electrical, heating or gas, who wants to quote, invoice and issue compliance certificates from your phone. It is a strong fit if you work in places with poor signal, if Making Tax Digital is a headache you want solved, or if you are tired of juggling a separate certificate app, an invoicing app and a diary.

Skip Powered Now if you want a genuinely free tool to start with, because there is no free plan once the 14-day trial ends. Skip it if you run a larger field service operation with dispatching, stock control and complex job costing, where Commusoft or a heavier platform will fit better. And if you need polished back-office admin like customer statements or CC fields on outgoing emails, be aware those are current gaps.

Best Powered Now Alternatives

Tradify

Tradify is the most direct UK rival and the one to compare line by line. It is strong on job tracking, timesheets and reporting, and its interface is clean. Pricing starts at around £34 per user per month on Lite and falls to £28 on Pro for teams of four or more. Tradify has no free tier either, and it lacks a customer portal, but its job management depth edges Powered Now for firms that live in the diary rather than the certificate pad.

ServiceM8

ServiceM8 is the alternative to look at if a free starting point matters. It offers a free tier that caps the number of jobs, with paid plans from roughly $29 a month, and it is well regarded for tap-to-pay and online booking. It leans more toward field service generally than UK trade compliance, so its certificate and MTD story is weaker than Powered Now’s, but the free entry point is a real advantage for a brand new sole trader.

Commusoft

Commusoft targets the bigger end of the market: established field service firms with multiple engineers, stock management, planned maintenance and serious job costing. Pricing is quote-based and not published, so expect it to cost more than Powered Now. It is overkill for a one-person business but the right answer if you are scaling past a handful of engineers and need proper dispatching.

Final Verdict: Is Powered Now Worth It?

Powered Now does the unglamorous job of running a trade business well. The offline mode is the kind of feature you only appreciate when a rival app fails you in a basement, the 80-plus certificates remove a whole separate tool for gas and electrical work, and built-in Making Tax Digital support at £28 a month is hard to argue with. For a UK sole trader or a small plumbing or electrical firm, it is a sensible, fairly priced choice that we would happily recommend.

The reasons it sits at 7.4 rather than higher are the missing free plan, per-user pricing that adds up for teams, and a few admin gaps like no customer statements and no CC field on emails. None are dealbreakers for the core audience, but they matter enough to check first. Run the 14-day trial on a couple of real jobs, price it for your actual headcount, and if you are a UK trade business it will likely earn its keep.