Guest post · MTD Readiness Checker

A painter's record book: paint, mileage and receipts, kept the way quarterly tax needs them

Painters lose money to messy records more often than to bad painting. The paint is bought job by job, the mileage piles up in small trips to the trade counter, half the payments land by bank transfer and the rest in cash, and the receipts live in a van door pocket until January — when they have faded, or vanished. The fix is not more paperwork. It is three facts per transaction, written down the day it happens.

1. Three facts per transaction — that is the whole record

Under the UK's Making Tax Digital rules, a digital record of any business transaction is just three things: the amount, the date, and the category. The same categories Self Assessment uses. That is the legal core, and it is also the practical one: if every tin of paint, every mile and every payment carries those three facts, your quarterly figures practically write themselves. The tax authority receives category totals four times a year — it never sees your individual receipts — so the record is for you as much as for them. A full explanation of what counts as a digital record is on the MTD site, including what a photo of a receipt can and cannot do on its own.

The categories a painter actually uses are few: paint and materials, primer and sundries, mileage and travel, tools and equipment, and income per job. Pick them once, use the same words every time, and never invent a new category on a Friday afternoon. If your turnover is under £90,000, the UK rules even let a sole trader record just whether each transaction is income or an expense — but keeping the five categories above costs nothing extra and makes the year-end far easier.

2. What to record on every job

Run the job through the paint calculator before you quote, so the paint quantity is a number, not a guess — the full maths for a standard room is in how much paint a 12×12 room needs. Then record the job in four lines:

Paint and materials, with the receipt. Date, amount, supplier, job name. Buy the paint yourself so the receipt is yours — it is your material cost and your proof. Note the leftover tin on the same line: brand, colour code, where it is stored.
Mileage and travel. Date, miles, job. Two trips to the trade counter and one to the client add up to real money over a year; a notebook line per trip beats reconstructing a year of journeys from memory.
Your time. Days on site, including prep — washing, filling, sanding, masking. Time is what your quote is built on, and it is the number that tells you whether a job actually paid. How to price all three parts of a job is in pricing a painting job as a side hustle.
The payment, the day it arrives. Date, amount, job, method. Cash payments are the ones that go missing from records — write them down the same day, in the same place as everything else.

A photo of each receipt is good backup, but the photo alone is not the record — the dated, categorised entry is. Keep the receipts themselves, paper or photo, for at least five years after the 31 January filing deadline for the year, in case you are ever asked to show them.

3. The quarterly rhythm — and why painters feel it first

If you are a UK sole-trader painter in Making Tax Digital, your software sends the tax authority a summary of your records four times a year — due 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May — and the figures come straight from the records above. A missed deadline earns a penalty point from the 2027/28 tax year, and four points cost £200. The deadlines never move, so the only variable is whether your records are current when the date arrives. Not sure which wave you are in, or whether MTD applies to you yet? The MTD readiness checker works it out from your income.

The same rhythm protects you even outside MTD. Set aside the tax share of each job's profit the day you are paid — a separate account, untouched — and the quarterly date becomes a formality instead of a scramble. Painters feel the quarterly cycle first because the work is seasonal: a busy summer pays for a quiet winter only if the summer's tax money was never spent as profit.

4. A fifteen-minute Friday routine

Records fail when they are a January job. Make them a Friday job instead — fifteen minutes, every week, no exceptions:

Empty the van door pocket. Every receipt from the week gets its three facts entered — amount, date, category — and the photo filed by job.
Write up the mileage. Trips to the trade counter, the client, the tip. If you did not write it down, it did not happen.
Log the payments. Every job paid this week, including cash, matched to the quote.
Check the running totals. Income and expenses so far this quarter, at a glance. If a number looks wrong, it is a small fix now and a large one in January.

Landlords repainting between tenancies face the same discipline from the other side of the job — the order to paint in, what to fix first, and how much paint a void period needs is in repainting a rental between tenancies. And if you want to know how the calculator's default assumptions were chosen, the About page explains them. Three facts, every week, in the same place: that is the whole system.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to scan every receipt?

No. What must be digital is the record — amount, date, category — kept in software that works with the tax rules. Keep the receipts as proof, paper or photo, for at least five years after the 31 January deadline.

Can I keep records in a spreadsheet?

Yes, if the spreadsheet is digitally linked to the software that submits your updates — the figures must move by a link, not by retyping them. A standalone spreadsheet with no link to submission software does not meet the rules.

What if I only know what a job paid after expenses?

Record the full amount the client paid and the expenses separately. Recording only the net figure understates both your income and your costs, and the quarterly totals will be wrong.

Guest post by the MTD Readiness Checker team. Free information, not tax advice — confirm your own position with HMRC or an accountant.