Every line points back to a signature

An invoice that gets queried costs you twice: the time to work it out and the days the money sits there. In Platrom the evidence is attached to the line, not in a folder next to it.

Invoice 2026-0412Vestia Maintenance · draft

Expansion vessel breakdown · Kastanjelaan 14Time and materials · job sheet WB-2291

€1,284.50

Where this line comes from

The backup behind invoice line Expansion vessel breakdown, Kastanjelaan 14
Hours	3.5 h engineer · 1.0 h evening rate	€341.25
Materials	Expansion vessel 25 l · filling hose · 2× compression fitting	€618.25
Call-out	Rotterdam · 1 visit	€45
Variation	Inlet combination valve replaced · signed on site	€280

Signed on site

J. Bakker · Thursday 21 August, 16:41 · M. de Groot, engineer

How that line came about

The engineer booked his hours on the job sheet, added the materials he used and agreed a variation on the spot. The client signed. At that moment the sheet is closed.

At invoicing, the open job sheets for that project are gathered up. The lines that come out carry their origin with them. Sheet number, date, engineer, hours, signature. Nobody retypes anything, so nobody can get it wrong.

If the client calls, you open the line and see what they see: who was there when, and what they signed for. That conversation takes ten seconds instead of an afternoon.

Why this is more than tidy admin

Three places where this link is worth money, and none of them is about convenience.

Payment terms

An invoice that is disputed sits there. Not because the client will not pay, but because somebody has to go and find out, and that is nobody’s first job of the day. A line with the job sheet underneath it removes that step.

Variations

The item that goes missing most often. Agreed verbally on site, untraceable three weeks later and then written off as cost. Signed on the job sheet it is simply turnover.

Costing after the fact

If you want to know whether this kind of work is profitable, the hours have to sit on the right project. Job sheets typed up at the office afterwards are roughly right. You cannot calculate a cost price out of “roughly”.

The invoice itself is right too

What you put on paper has to meet requirements. Those requirements sit in the template builder, not in the head of whoever made the template.

Statutory invoice requirements

A check runs through what has to be on an invoice and blocks any template that would not produce a valid one. Better a warning while you are setting it up than a correction at the bookkeeper.

Retention and the G-account

Retention is calculated on the amount excluding VAT, the G-account (the Dutch blocked account for subcontractor liability) on the amount including it. That difference is small to explain and expensive to get wrong. It is built in.

Interim invoices and progress statement

Interim invoices with a progress statement that follows from what has actually been done, and not from a percentage somebody typed in.

Your client prescribes the layout

Large clients demand their own invoice layout. There is a template per client. If there is none, it falls back to the general template and then to the default.

What is coming and what that means for you

Electronic invoicing. Within the European Union, cross-border business-to-business trade has to be invoiced electronically from 1 July 2030, with digital reporting alongside it. For domestic invoices in the Netherlands there is no fixed date yet: a consultation is running and the government is working towards an obligation around 2030. Anyone you may already invoice electronically today, such as public bodies and clients who ask for it, can be handled the usual way.

What we will not tell you is that you have to do something about it today. What we do is make sure the data is in order. An invoice line that knows where it came from is a line that can be put into any format.

Handover files. Under the Wkb, the Dutch Building Quality Assurance Act, a contractor has to hand over a file at completion showing that the work was carried out as agreed. Unless you agree otherwise with your client. Platrom is not a document management system and does not pretend to be. What it does is this. The photos, the signed job sheets, the materials used and the maintenance history sit together per site. That is what a file like that gets built from.

Bring your most awkward invoice

The one that always gets queried. In the demo we work it back: where would the evidence have come from, and what would have prevented the argument?

Book a demo