Guide
Certificates and forms: which trade apps include them
Updated
For a lot of trades this is the whole decision. If the paperwork does not come out of the app, the app has not replaced anything.
The tier trap
Certificates are the classic upsell in this market, and the pattern is consistent enough to plan around. On Tradify, forms and certificates start at the Pro tier (£37 per user per month), not Lite (£34). On Powered Now, forms and certificates start at Professional (£32), not Business (£28), and automated certificate reminders come with them. On Joblogic, Electronic Forms are in the Standard plan but the custom form builder is held back to Enterprise. Budget from the tier that has your paperwork in it, not from the headline.
What each supplier says it produces
- Gas Engineer Software
- Tradify
- Powered Now
- ServiceM8
- Okappy
- Joblogic
- YourTradebase
- Fergus
Every description is what the supplier states on its own pages, read on 15 August 2026. A named feature is not a guarantee that the output matches the certificate body's current template, which changes independently of the software.
Two questions that settle it in a demo
- Ask them to produce the exact certificate you issue most often, filled in, as a PDF, on a phone, in front of you. Not a screenshot from a slide.
- Ask what happens when the certificate template changes: whether the supplier updates it, whether you rebuild it, and whether your old ones stay readable in their original form.
Keep the old ones
Whatever you choose, work out where the last few years of certificates live and how you get them back out. Retention periods are set by the scheme or the customer contract rather than by your software supplier, and the moment you want an old certificate is the moment you have already left the previous system. Ask what an export looks like before you migrate, not after.