From booking to covered, in ten steps
The same ten steps run on every booking, whether it is one shift or a rolling assignment. Each one exists because skipping it is what causes the failure at the next one.
Booking, confirmation and the match
1. Booking lands
By form or by phone, carrying the class or role, the count, the dates, the shift times and the site postcode. It gets a reference immediately and every timesheet and invoice line for this work hangs off that reference.
2. Confirmed, or declined
We come back with what we can actually cover and the charge rate in writing. A booking we cannot fill gets declined rather than accepted hopefully — the whole value of the answer is that you can act on it.
3. Worker matched
Matched against the work rather than the job title: the vehicle, the run, the drop count, the truck type, whether there is handball. The worker is named to you before the shift.
Compliance, brief and the shift
4. Compliance re-checked
Licence entitlement confirmed from a DVLA check code, Driver CPC card and digital tacho card in date, right to work verified, certificates read against the actual work. Entitlements are re-checked every 90 days for as long as a worker is on our books.
5. Site brief issued
In writing, to the worker: start time, site address, gate contact, vehicle, PPE, induction and what the run looks like. Most first-morning failures are brief failures, not driver failures.
6. On shift
The worker attends and works under your direction on your site. If something goes wrong, it comes back to us on the day rather than surfacing on the invoice three weeks later.
Hours, approval and the invoice
7. Hours logged
Against the booking reference, as a digital timesheet. Not a paper slip in a cab door pocket and not a number recalled on a Friday afternoon.
8. Timesheet approved by you
You approve it or reject it and a rejection carries a reason. Only an approved timesheet can be invoiced, so every invoice line traces back to an approval you gave on a date.
9. One weekly invoice
Every approved timesheet across every booking you ran that week, consolidated into one invoice. Each line names the worker, the site, the date and the hours and carries your purchase order reference if you gave us one.
Steps 8 and 9 are the two that agency labour usually gets wrong and they are the reason the twelve-week Agency Workers Regulations count is reliable rather than reconstructed — the hours are already there, against the reference, week by week.
Next shift covered
A rolling assignment is not a series of unrelated bookings. It is one assignment with a start date, a pattern and a twelve-week clock running on it. Treating it that way is what stops a parity threshold arriving as a surprise. Where the same worker returns, they come back already briefed on your site, which is worth more than most agencies admit.
Where cover has to change, you are told who and why. A different name turning up unannounced is the fastest way to lose a client and it is entirely avoidable.
Workers are sourced against your specific booking rather than pulled from a standing list, then checked and confirmed to you by name before the shift. Matching the person to the seat is what makes cover actually hold. Where we cannot cover a shift we say so rather than confirming it and failing you on the morning.
Questions about the process
What is the fastest a booking can go from request to confirmed?
Minutes, for the confirmation itself. The honest limit is not our response time, it is availability — same-day cover is possible where availability allows and next day is the realistic standard.
Who approves the timesheet on our side?
Whoever you nominate. Give us the name and email with the booking and the timesheet goes to them, which avoids the common failure where hours sit unapproved because nobody knew they were theirs to approve.
What if we disagree with the hours on a timesheet?
Reject it with a reason. An unapproved timesheet is not invoiced, so a dispute is settled before it becomes an invoice query rather than after.
Do you invoice per booking or per week?
Per week, consolidated across every booking you ran. Each line still names the worker, the site, the date and the hours, so it reconciles line by line against what you approved.
How do you count the twelve-week Agency Workers Regulations period?
From the first shift of the assignment, in calendar weeks. A calendar week here means any period of seven days starting with the first day of the assignment and any hours worked in that week count as a full week.
Tell us who you need
Give us the class, the count, the dates and the shift. We confirm what we can cover and say plainly when we cannot.