NDT Invoicing Software for Inspection Companies in the UK and Europe

Invoices from timesheets and completed jobs, with payments and reminders. Request a demo. Affordable. Accessible. Fully customizable. Quote on request.

NDT billing in the UK and Europe: purchase orders first

If you run an inspection company in Aberdeen, Teesside, the Midlands, Rotterdam or the Ruhr, you know the first rule of getting paid: no PO, no pay. Most large UK and European clients run strict purchase-to-pay processes. An invoice without a valid purchase order or call-off number, or with lines that do not match what was ordered, goes back to you — and the payment clock starts again from zero.

European NDT work is often bought under framework agreements with a schedule of rates, then released through call-off orders per job, per shutdown or per month. Offshore work in the North Sea adds rotations, helicopter logistics and weather standby. Fabrication for pressure equipment brings notified body involvement and drawing-level traceability. Cross-border work within Europe brings different VAT treatments on the same day's invoices.

The Invoicing app in the Atlantis NDT ERP is set up for this. It is part of our NDT ERP, pre-configured for inspection companies and deployed by our team. Approved timesheets, equipment issued by serial number and consumables drawn from stock become invoice lines that carry the project, PO or call-off, site, method and technician.

This page covers how UK and European NDT companies typically bill — frameworks and call-offs, offshore rotations, pressure equipment fabrication, VAT and reverse charge, payment terms and retention, and GDPR — and how the app handles each.

Frameworks, call-offs and what the invoice must show

A typical UK or European client relationship runs like this: a framework or master agreement sets the schedule of rates; a call-off or PO authorizes a specific job or period; a client representative approves timesheets or a job sheet; and accounts payable matches your invoice to all three. Many clients also expect the invoice to reference their own work order or cost code.

In the Atlantis ERP, the Project app records the client PO, contract, site, methods, codes and scope. The invoice header carries the NDT project, the job or PO number, the site, the invoice type and the industry sector. Each line can carry a cost centre, method, equipment serial, technician, rate type and days or hours, with separate subtotals for labour, equipment and consumables.

Many large clients also require invoices through supplier portals or procurement networks. The ERP does not claim a built-in connection to any of these. It produces invoices that already carry the references those systems ask for, and any specific export format for a key client can be part of the customization scope agreed with you.

The invoice PDF uses a custom layout configured for your company, including your registered company details and VAT number, so it meets the presentation your clients and your accountant expect.

North Sea offshore: rotations, travel and weather

Offshore inspection out of Aberdeen and the wider North Sea is billed in its own way. Technicians work long shifts on a rotation, with mobilisation through a heliport and sometimes days lost to fog or high winds. Contracts differ on whether travel days, survival-training days and weather standby are billable, and at what rate. Rope access inspection teams add their own rate structures.

Timesheets in the ERP record a work type for each entry — inspection, travel, standby or setup — along with method, site, client and equipment serial. A billable flag and a rate multiplier on each entry let an offshore day, an onshore standby day and a travel day each be billed according to your contract. Waiting on weather logged as standby, and approved by your supervisor, reaches the invoice with its date and reason already visible.

The Team Assignments app records mobilisation and demobilisation dates and blocks double-booking of technicians and equipment serials, so the people and instruments on the invoice match the rotation that actually went offshore. It also warns when assigned equipment is out of calibration — an important check before a unit spends two weeks on an installation you cannot easily get back to.

Offshore expenses — hotels before flights, travel to the heliport, per diems — are recorded in the Expenses app and can be re-billed to the job under whichever rule your contract sets.

Certification evidence: PCN and EN ISO 9712

Clients in the UK and Europe usually expect NDT technicians to hold third-party certification to EN ISO 9712, commonly through PCN administered by BINDT in the UK or through national schemes elsewhere in Europe. Some operators with US links also accept ASNT-based certification. Every client expects the certificate to be valid on the day of the inspection.

The Certificates app records each technician's scheme (PCN, ISO 9712, CSWIP, SNT-TC-1A and others), level, method, certifying body and expiry, with automatic status for expiring soon and expired. The Timesheets app warns when a technician's certificate is not valid, so the supervisor sees it at approval — before the hours reach an invoice. See the Certificates app for more.

To be clear: Atlantis does not provide PCN, ISO 9712 or CSWIP training or certification. The app records certificates your technicians already hold. Our own training programmes are based on ASNT SNT-TC-1A.

This matters for billing because an invoice line for a technician whose certification lapsed mid-job is exactly the line a careful client will refuse to pay, and possibly the job they will ask you to repeat at your cost.

Pressure equipment and fabrication work

Fabrication shops building to the Pressure Equipment Directive 2014/68/EU, and to harmonised standards such as EN 13445, often buy NDT per weld, per drawing or per job, with examinations carried out to standards such as EN ISO 17640 for ultrasonic testing or EN ISO 17636 for radiographic testing. A notified body may review the records, and the shop's client wants full traceability from weld map to report.

The ERP's invoice lines carry the method, technician and equipment serial, and day-rate or hourly billing flows directly from timesheets. Unit-based billing — per weld, per radiograph, per drawing — is set up as service products and rate rules during implementation, following your contracts.

Reports and invoices come from the same job. The ERP's NDT Reports app captures drawing, WPS and procedure references and runs the report through review and approval before it is sent, which is usually what the shop needs before approving your invoice.

For asset owners who want inspection results in context rather than a stack of PDFs, our companion product, Digital Twin Reporting Software, places findings on a 3D model of the asset. It is a separate product that works alongside the ERP, and it can make the difference when bidding for owner-side integrity contracts.

VAT, reverse charge and e-invoicing

European NDT companies often issue invoices under several VAT treatments in the same week. Domestic work is charged at the local rate. Many cross-border business-to-business services within the EU fall under the reverse charge, where the invoice shows no VAT and the customer accounts for it, with specific wording required. UK companies supplying services to EU clients, and EU companies supplying UK clients, face their own post-Brexit place-of-supply rules. Offshore work can raise further questions depending on the installation's location.

The ERP uses standard Atlantis ERP accounting for taxes. During implementation we configure the VAT rates, fiscal positions and invoice wording your accountant specifies, so the correct treatment applies per client and per supply. We follow your adviser's view on what applies; we do not decide it.

Several European countries have introduced or are phasing in mandatory business-to-business e-invoicing, and others are following. We claim no certification against any national e-invoicing scheme. Where a requirement applies to your business, we discuss it with you and your adviser during scoping and agree what is included.

Multi-currency work — sterling, euro, Norwegian krone and others — is set up during implementation if your contracts need it.

Payment terms, late payment rules and retention

The EU Late Payment Directive sets default business-to-business payment periods and gives suppliers a right to statutory interest and recovery costs when invoices are paid late. The UK has its own late payment legislation with similar rights. In practice many large clients still push for long terms, and the invoice date and receipt date become important evidence if you ever need to rely on those rights.

In UK construction, the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act sets a payment notice regime for construction operations, and retention is commonly held on construction contracts. Whether your NDT scope falls under those rules is a question for your adviser, but where it does, invoice timing and content matter.

The ERP sets payment terms per client, records payments against invoices using standard Atlantis ERP payments, and sends standard payment reminders with wording and timing you choose. The outstanding invoices view on the financial dashboard shows which clients are holding your cash.

Retention and application-for-payment style billing are configured as part of the customization scope agreed with you. Out of the box, the invoice type field distinguishes interim from final invoices, and cost centres let a long project be followed on its own.

GDPR and technician data on invoices

NDT invoices can carry personal data. A line showing a technician's name, the dates they were on a client site and their hours is personal data under GDPR and the UK GDPR, and some clients insist on names while others do not need them.

Because the invoice layout is custom, what appears on the client-facing document is decided during implementation. Some companies show full names; others show initials, an employee reference or only the technician level. The underlying records stay in the ERP, where access follows the standard Atlantis ERP permission model, so billing staff see what they need and technicians see their own timesheets.

Keeping technician certification, vision tests and radiation badge details inside the ERP rather than in email attachments and shared folders also makes it easier to answer the question of where personal data is held and who can see it.

Equipment, consumables and the quote behind the invoice

Advanced UT equipment, eddy current arrays, crawlers and rope access kit are expensive to own, calibrate and ship to an offshore installation or a refinery in another country. Most European schedules of rates let them be charged separately, but only if you can show which units were used and for how long.

In the Atlantis ERP, instruments are tracked by serial number in the Asset Management app, with issue and return records approved by supervisors, reservations with clash prevention and inbound and outbound movements. Rental rates can be recorded against equipment. Invoice lines can carry the equipment serial, so the equipment subtotal ties back to the instruments actually issued to the job. Calibration records and certificate expiry sit on the same equipment record, which helps when a client asks for evidence that the unit on the invoice was in calibration while it was used.

Consumables — couplant, penetrant and developer, magnetic ink, film and chemicals, PPE — are tracked with reorder levels and a movement ledger, so the consumables subtotal reflects what was drawn for the job.

The invoice also depends on what was quoted and accepted. In the Quotations app, NDT service products are flagged by method and category, and each quote carries the job type, site, project dates and applicable codes. The client can accept the quote online, and it converts to a sales order. When invoicing time comes, the accepted rates and scope are already in the system, not buried in a framework PDF and an email thread.

Who uses the Invoicing app

• Accounts and credit control staff prepare invoices from approved time, equipment and consumables, check PO and call-off references, apply the right VAT treatment, record payments and chase overdue accounts.
• Operations managers and offshore coordinators approve timesheets, confirm standby and travel days and check equipment issued to each rotation.
• Contract managers check invoices against framework rates and call-off scope, especially on long shutdowns and fabrication packages.
• Directors and owners watch margin, receivables and revenue by sector and country on the financial dashboard.
• Technicians log hours by work type; clear entries mean fewer queries from the office and faster invoices.

Access follows the standard Atlantis ERP permission model and is set during implementation, which also supports GDPR principles of limiting who sees personal data.

The financial dashboard

The Invoicing app includes a financial dashboard with revenue, cost of sales, gross margin, operating expenses, EBITDA, outstanding invoices, vendor bills and expenses, and a 12-month view. With cost centres by country, branch or service line, and the industry sector on every invoice, you can see whether offshore oil and gas, renewables, power generation, fabrication or aerospace is carrying your margin. For companies operating both sides of the North Sea, or with offices in the UK and continental Europe, cost centres give each office its own numbers while directors see the combined picture.

Refinery, power and petrochemical shutdowns in Europe

Planned shutdowns at refineries and chemical plants in the Antwerp-Rotterdam cluster, on the Humber, at Grangemouth and along the Rhine, and outages at power stations across the UK and continental Europe, pack months of inspection into a few weeks. NDT contractors often work alongside mechanical and scaffolding contractors, on day and night shifts, under the client's permit-to-work system. Clients want daily progress and invoices that reconcile with their shutdown cost control, frequently split by unit, work package or equipment tag range.

Shutdown billing breaks down when the office tries to rebuild three weeks of paper timesheets in the week after demobilisation. Night-shift premiums get missed, standby while waiting for permits or scaffolding is argued, and the equipment charge for the eddy current and IRIS kit that spent the whole event on exchanger bundles is understated.

In the Atlantis ERP, timesheets are approved as the shutdown runs, with work type, method, equipment serial and rate multiplier recorded when the hours are worked. Cost centres on invoice lines let one shutdown be split by unit or package as the contract requires, and the separate labour, equipment and consumables subtotals match the way most shutdown budgets are structured. Before mobilisation, Team Assignments blocks double-booking of technicians and equipment serials and warns about out-of-calibration equipment, so the crew and kit on the invoice are the crew and kit that were actually available.

The result is a shutdown invoice that goes out while the client's cost engineers still remember the job, supported by approved records instead of recollection.

Implementation for a UK or European NDT company

We deploy and configure the ERP for you. For UK and European companies, Invoicing implementation typically covers:

1. Mapping framework schedules of rates to work types, technician grades, methods and rate multipliers, including offshore, onshore, travel and weather standby rules.
2. VAT rates, fiscal positions and reverse-charge wording configured with your accountant for the countries you invoice from and into.
3. Legal entity and currency setup for companies trading in more than one country.
4. Cost centres by office, country, service line or major client.
5. A custom invoice layout with registered company details, VAT number, PO and call-off references, and technician details shown to the level your GDPR approach allows.
6. Equipment by serial with rental rates, and consumables such as couplant, magnetic ink, penetrant and film.
7. Payment terms per client and a reminder sequence that reflects your credit control policy.
8. Migration of open invoices and opening balances, and short training for billing staff, coordinators and technicians.

Anything beyond that — a specific export for a client's procurement network, retention schedules on construction contracts, application-for-payment formats — is agreed as part of the customization scope, so you know in advance what is included.

Frequently asked questions

Will invoices show the client's PO or call-off number?

Yes. The invoice header holds the NDT project, job or PO number, site, invoice type and industry sector, and each line can carry a cost centre.

Can it apply reverse charge VAT?

VAT treatments, including reverse-charge wording, are configured during implementation using standard Atlantis ERP accounting, following your accountant's instructions. No certification is claimed.

Is it certified for national e-invoicing mandates?

No. Where a mandate applies to you, we review it with you and your adviser during scoping.

Can offshore standby and travel be billed separately?

Yes. Timesheet entries carry work types — inspection, travel, standby or setup — with a billable flag and rate multiplier.

Does it record PCN and ISO 9712 certificates?

Yes, the Certificates app records them and timesheets warn when a cert is not valid. Atlantis does not train or certify for PCN or ISO 9712.

Can I hide technician names on invoices?

Yes. The custom invoice layout is set during implementation to show names, references or levels as your clients and GDPR obligations require.

Book a demo for your UK or European operation

We deploy the ERP for you, map your framework rates and configure VAT with your accountant. The ERP is affordable, accessible and fully customizable, with pricing on request. See all ERP apps, then book an Invoicing demo or request a quote.

Invoicing by region

• Invoicing global overview
• Invoicing in United States
• Invoicing in Canada
• Invoicing in Middle East
• Invoicing in India

Works with

• Purchase: Purchase orders for consumables, film, couplant and equipment.
• Inventory: Stock of consumables, sources and equipment across sites.
• Expenses: Field expenses and per diems, approved and rebilled to jobs.

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