Being the bank for your consultants
When the engineer’s invoice arrives before the client has paid you, you either pay it yourself or ask the engineer to wait. Both cost something: your cash flow, or the relationship. Passing consultant fees through your own invoice can also blur who is supplying what, which matters for GST and for any later dispute.
The planned workflow
- Build a proposal from your usual stages and add each consultant’s fee to the stage it belongs to.
- Consultants confirm their own lines in a free consultant portal (planned).
- The client accepts once and pays per stage through a regulated payments provider (planned).
- Each payment is split: your share to you, each consultant’s share to them, each with a tax invoice in the supplier’s name.
Workflow example: a new home
- Stage 1: concept (you)
- A$2,750
- Stage 2: planning drawings (you) + feature survey (surveyor)
- A$3,850 + A$1,210
- Stage 3: documentation (you) + engineering (engineer) + energy rating (assessor)
- A$4,400 + A$2,420 + A$715
- Client pays three stage payments
- A$15,345 total
An example of a split schedule, not a fee guide.
Registration differs by state
Building designers are registered or licensed differently around Australia: compare Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania, or see all locations.
Everything described here is planned or in development: DrafterShare is pre-launch, and payments will run through a regulated payments provider once live. You can try the workflow now in the live demo with sample data.