A job stopping isn't unusual — weather, a client waiting on a mortgage drawdown or their own cash, a delayed delivery, another trade running behind and blocking your next step, or simply a client asking to pause while they think something over. What's unusual is a paused job that comes back with its cost record intact, because most tradesmen stop tracking the moment the tools go down, exactly when the record matters most.

Costs that keep running during a pause

  • Storage — materials already delivered and now sitting somewhere, sometimes at a cost if it's a rented unit or hired container.
  • Remobilisation — the time and cost of setting back up when the job restarts, which is rarely zero even for a short pause.
  • Price movement on anything still to buy — a pause of a few months is long enough for material prices to have moved since the original quote.
  • Plant or equipment hire — if anything was on-site and hired, a pause that isn't handled (returned or the hire paused) keeps costing money for nothing.

None of these show up on a job that's simply been forgotten about until it restarts.

Close the books on the pause, don't just stop

The moment a job is confirmed paused, it's worth doing three things: noting the date and the reason, checking what's tracked so far against the quote so there's a clean picture of where things stand, and dealing with any live costs — returning hired plant, securing materials — rather than letting them run by default. A job that's actively paused, not just abandoned, is much easier to pick back up cleanly.

Repricing fairly when it restarts

If the pause was genuinely outside your control and material prices have moved, or remobilisation has a real cost, that's worth raising with the client before restarting — not silently absorbed, and not sprung on them as a surprise on the final invoice. Having the actual numbers from before the pause makes that conversation a straightforward "here's what's changed," rather than a vague request for more money.

A worked example

Say an extension is paused eight weeks in while a client waits on planning permission for an unrelated change. If the running job cost was tracked properly to that point, restarting is simple: pick up exactly where the numbers left off, note any price movement on materials still to buy, and continue the same job record rather than trying to reconstruct eight weeks later what had and hadn't already been spent.

How Site Wallet handles this

A job's running total doesn't reset or get lost during a pause — everything tagged before the stop is still there, so restarting is a continuation of the same record rather than a fresh guess. Adding a note against the job for the pause date and reason keeps the full history clear if it's ever needed for a client conversation or the accounts.

FAQ

Should I invoice for work done before a pause?

Generally yes if there's a natural break point — invoicing for completed stages before a pause protects your cash flow and gives both sides a clear record of what's been paid for versus what's still to come.

What if the client never restarts the job?

Having a clean, tracked record of what was spent up to the pause point is exactly what makes a partial-completion invoice defensible if the job never resumes.

Does a long pause change how I should track it?

Not fundamentally — the habit is the same regardless of pause length, though a longer pause makes it more likely prices have moved enough to be worth flagging before work restarts.