When HMRC asks what you knew, and when

You placed the worker, so you answer for the chain: the check, the paperwork, the umbrella you paid through, the hours the client agreed. Your payroll provider holds the money side. Nobody holds the proof, and from October the questions get harder.

Outsourcing the work does not move the liability. If you asked your back-office provider for a compliance pack on every contractor you have out, could they produce it, and what would they charge? BookKept holds one record from vacancy to paid invoice so that pack is a single call.

What it holds

• Key Information Documents under regulation 13A, right-to-work records, AWR clocks and umbrella evidence for joint and several liability, each rule cited next to the thing it governs.
• Self-billed purchase invoices under HMRC Notice 700/62 and your own sales invoices, raised from the same client-approved week.
• Every compliance-relevant action on a hash-chained audit trail, assembled into an evidence pack in one click.
• Compliance rules as dated configuration, so the 1 October 2026 right-to-work reform arrives on its own date rather than in a release.

The rules are about to change again

Joint and several liability for umbrella payroll failures is already in force, right-to-work checking changes on 1 October 2026, umbrella regulation lands from April 2027, and Make Work Pay is still in consultation. The guides below set out what each one asks and what your records must show.

• The compliance timeline, 2026 to 2027
• Right-to-work checks from 1 October 2026
• Umbrella compliance and joint and several liability
• IR35 and where the fee-payer risk sits
• All compliance guides

Run it yourself, or have it done for you

BookKept is built and operated by one consultancy, so there are three ways in and the same software behind all of them. Your own developer can integrate it with the CRM you already run using scoped API keys. COM Computing can write that integration for you as a fixed piece of work. Or COM Computing can do the lot: the agency's public website rebuilt on the same system, on your own address, with the client portal and the worker portal already wired to the record behind it.

• Set up by the people who built it
• The API reference, if you would rather do it yourself

Every part of it, written out

The documentation covers what each part of the product does and which rule it answers: timesheets and client approval, the rota, both invoice series, Key Information Documents, right-to-work records, the umbrella register, the AWR clock, the evidence pack, the importer, the portals and the integration API.

• All documentation
• Timesheets and client approval
• The umbrella register and joint and several liability
• The evidence pack and the audit chain
• Integrations

Built and operated by COM Computing, Isle of Man.