Self-billing in haulage: how do you check you're being paid for every job?

HaulBot Guides · Updated 17 August 2026 · General guidance, not tax advice. Check specifics with your accountant

Self-billing is where your customer raises your invoice for you and pays against their own record of the work you did. It is legal, HMRC has rules for it, and it saves you an evening of invoicing. It also moves one risk squarely onto you: if a job never lands on their system, there is no invoice, no shortfall on a statement, and nothing to chase. You only find out by checking.

So the job changes. Under self-billing you are not chasing payment, you are auditing someone else's arithmetic against your own record of what you actually did. That only works if you have a record.

What self-billing actually is

HMRC sets the conditions out in VAT Notice 700/62. The parts worth knowing before you sign anything:

There must be a written self-billing agreement in place before the first self-billed invoice is raised. You are agreeing to accept invoices the customer writes on your behalf.
The agreement has an expiry date, often tied to the underlying contract, and HMRC's advice is to review it every 12 months to confirm you are still VAT registered and still happy with the arrangement.
Each self-billed invoice must carry all the usual VAT invoice detail and the words "SELF-BILLING".
While the agreement runs, you must not raise your own VAT invoices for the supplies it covers. Two invoices for one job is how VAT problems start.
The VAT on those invoices is still your output tax, and it is still your problem if it is wrong. Self-billing hands over the typing, not the responsibility.
Tell them straight away if your VAT registration changes, including a new number or deregistering.

Why haulage runs on it

Agencies, 3PLs and larger hauliers running a bench of subcontractors would otherwise be matching hundreds of small invoices to their own job records every week. Self-billing flips it: they invoice from the job list they already keep, and payment runs to a fixed cycle. For a one-truck business that is a genuine benefit. Money arrives without you raising a thing, and there is no argument about the format of your invoice.

The catch is structural rather than sinister. Their job list is now the only version of events that generates money, and job lists get things wrong the same way everyone does. A late-notice job added by phone that nobody keyed in. A second drop treated as one. Waiting time agreed at the gate by someone who never told accounts. A rate that reverted to the old one in April.

Check the remittance line by line, not the total

The total is designed to look right. Reconciling means going job by job, and it takes about ten minutes a fortnight if your own record is in order:

List every job you ran in the period, with date, collection, delivery and reference.
Tick each one off against a line on the self-bill. Anything unticked is the whole point of the exercise.
Check the rate on each line against what was agreed, not against what last month said.
Check any extras made it on: waiting time, extra drops, a wasted journey, a night out. Extras are the first thing to fall off, because they are agreed verbally at the sharp end.
Check any deduction has a reason attached, and ask for the paperwork behind it if it does not.

Query in writing, quote the reference, and attach the proof rather than describing it. A missing job with a signed POD attached gets added to the next run. A missing job described from memory gets a reply asking for details, and by the time you find them the period has closed.

Your own record is the only leverage you have

All of the above depends on one thing: a list of your jobs that is complete, that you did not have to reconstruct from memory, and that carries the delivery paperwork behind each line. Photos scattered across a camera roll are not that. Neither is a diary, if the diary stops at "Warrington, 6am".

This is where HaulBot fits a self-billed operation. Photograph each signed note and send it on WhatsApp as you finish the drop. It is read on the spot, the reference and date pulled out, GPS-stamped and filed, and a CSV of the day's jobs lands in your inbox each morning. When the self-bill arrives, your side of the reconciliation already exists as rows you can sort, rather than an evening spent rebuilding the fortnight. The owner-driver plan is £39 a month.

Keep that record for six years regardless. The output tax on a self-billed invoice is still yours, so the paperwork behind it is still your record to produce, which is covered in the retention guide. And when a deduction does need arguing, the disputes guide covers the evidence pack that settles it.

Start with the jobs from this week

Message a photo of one of this week's delivery notes to HaulBot on WhatsApp and see what comes back. Under a minute, read and filed, ready to check against the next self-bill. No card, no setup, no app.

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