Built for the tools.
Born from the paperwork.
The Back Office started with one tradeswoman's evenings disappearing into quotes that still weren't getting sent.
The kitchen table story.
One tradeswoman, buried in quotes and receipts.
It started at a kitchen table.
A member of Adam's family runs a trade business. She's good at the work and never short of it, but she was struggling to get quotes out, invoices sent, and the general admin and paperwork side of the business managed at all.
Adam builds software for a living. So instead of recommending another app to learn, he built the fix: an office manager you message like a mate.
Voice note the job on the way back to the van, and the quote comes back done — branded, itemised and ready to send.
Then she sent it to another tradesperson. Nobody asked her to. He passed it on to someone else. That's the point we stopped calling it a favour and started building it properly.
Then we did the homework.
And a lot of direct conversations with tradespeople who were happy to tell us exactly what was broken.
That became Jan.
The back office manager.
The people behind it.
The Back Office is a Manchester-built technology company with a pretty simple mission: give small trade businesses their evenings back.
We're a small team, backed by the people and technology behind T5C — a software company that's spent years building products used by millions of people.
That means we're starting small, but we're not starting from scratch.
No call centre. No layers of support. While we're building The Back Office, if you message us, there's a good chance you'll speak to one of the people actually building it.
Average team tenure: 7.1 years.
Built for every trade.
If you quote it, fit it, fix it or build it, Jan can run the paperwork.
Not built for big contractors or site-based project teams. This is for small trade businesses.
The Back Office is quoting, invoicing and admin software for UK tradespeople — run from the chat you already use.
Whether you're a sole trader or running a small crew, Jan keeps your quotes moving, your invoices chased and your books MTD-ready.
Your business is
your business.
Short version: securely stored, properly protected, and always your data.
You're trusting The Back Office with real business information — customers, quotes, invoices, receipts and what you're owed.
We take that seriously.
Your information is stored securely using AWS infrastructure and protected using modern encryption and access controls.
We don't sell your data. We don't use your business information for advertising. And nobody at The Back Office is sitting around browsing through your books.
But we don't want to give you a comforting answer that isn't technically true either.
A small number of authorised people may need to access account information when there's a genuine reason — for example, if you ask us for help, something isn't working properly, we need to investigate a security issue, or we're maintaining the service.
That's the reality of running the product, and we'd rather tell you plainly.
No.
Not to advertisers, not to lead generators, not to anyone.
We make our money from people paying for The Back Office. Your business data isn't the product.
Normally, you.
Your information isn't there for us to browse.
Access within The Back Office is restricted to authorised people and used only where there's a legitimate reason — such as providing support, investigating a problem, maintaining the service or keeping it secure.
We don't routinely inspect your quotes, turnover, customers or what you're owed.
No username and password to remember.
The Back Office uses secure magic links to authenticate access to your dashboard.
We're also introducing a PIN for returning access, giving you another simple layer of protection when opening sensitive business information without making you manage another password.
This is a committed product change, not an exploratory feature.
The Back Office runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the world's largest cloud infrastructure providers.
Your data is encrypted when it's being sent and protected while it's stored. Access to our systems is restricted to authorised members of the team.
Yes. Whenever you want.
Quotes, invoices, receipts and your business records belong to you.
We don't believe your own paperwork should be used to lock you into our software.
Jan works through WhatsApp, so messages you send pass through WhatsApp and our messaging provider, Twilio, before reaching The Back Office.
That includes the text, voice notes, photos, receipts, invoices or other files you choose to send to Jan. Twilio then delivers the message to The Back Office securely so we can process what you've asked Jan to do.
We store the business information we need to provide the service — for example your customers, quotes, invoices and receipts — within The Back Office's own systems on AWS.
Using Jan through WhatsApp does not give Meta or Twilio general access to your Back Office dashboard or your wider business records. They process the WhatsApp messages needed to deliver the conversation; your Back Office account and stored business data remain within our own systems.
We keep the information shared with third-party services to what is needed to run the service, and we're configuring Twilio's privacy controls to minimise retained message content wherever technically possible.
Your data is still yours.
If The Back Office ever stopped operating, we'd provide a way for customers to export their business records.
We'd also tell you what was happening rather than simply disappearing.
The Back Office helps organise your records and keep your books ready for Making Tax Digital.
Filing remains with you, your accountant or your connected accounting software.
No vague promises. No pretending nobody can ever access anything. Just sensible security, restricted access and a clear rule: your business data is yours.
T5C Technology Limited · Company no. 11034162 · 125 Deansgate, Manchester M3 2BY · ICO registration ZB695326 · support@thebackoffice.uk