Save the Certificate. The Invoice Is Already Written.

The Mint Books integration turns every certificate you complete in iCertifi into a ready to send draft invoice. No re-typing, no forgotten jobs, no chasing paperwork at the end of the week.

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Think about what happens after you finish a job. You have already keyed the client name, the property address, the type of certificate and every test result into iCertifi. Then, back at the van or at the kitchen table that evening, you open a separate invoicing app and type most of the same information in again: who the customer is, what you did, where you did it, and what it costs. It is duplicate work, it is where transcription errors creep in, and it is the step most likely to be put off until “later”, which is how jobs slip through the cracks and go unbilled.

The iCertifi and Mint Books integration removes that second round of typing entirely. Mint Books is UK bookkeeping and invoicing software built for tradespeople, from sole traders and limited companies to partnerships and CIS contractors. Once it is paired with iCertifi, the act of saving a certificate is also the act of raising the invoice for it.

This is not a loose export or a CSV you upload once a month. It is a live link between the two apps. In the words of the integration itself: “Every certificate you save automatically creates a ready-to-send draft invoice in Mint Books.” The moment you complete and save a certificate in iCertifi, a draft invoice appears in Mint Books, already populated with the client, the work and the price.

The integration maps the fields you have already completed in iCertifi straight onto the invoice. The service description is built from the certificate type and the property, so a completed EICR at 14 Oak Lane comes through as a clear line item reading “EICR, 14 Oak Lane SW1” rather than a vague “electrical work”. Pricing is not guessed; it is pulled from the rates you set in Mint Books for each certificate type, so the figure on the draft is the figure you actually charge.

Because it is a draft rather than a finished invoice, you stay in control. Add a call-out charge, apply a discount for a repeat landlord, split a job across two line items or tweak the wording, then send it. Nothing goes to a customer until you say so.

Plant rooms, rural farmhouses and basement risers rarely have a signal, and an integration that only works on full 5G is no use on a real job. This one is built offline-first. Certificates saved without a signal are queued and sent automatically the moment you reconnect, so a job finished in a steel-clad substation still raises its invoice; it simply lands in Mint Books when your phone next sees the network. You do not have to remember to go back and re-sync anything.

That is the whole setup. Three steps once, and then it runs quietly in the background for every job you complete. If you already run your certification through the iCertifi BS 7671 app, the workflow you know does not change; the invoicing simply happens alongside it.

The integration is not limited to new work. You can sync historical certificates from a custom date range, so certificates completed before you paired the apps can still be pulled through into draft invoices. This is useful if you realise a batch of recent jobs was never billed, or if you want to bring the last quarter into Mint Books in one pass.

Two things keep that tidy. First, deduplication is automatic: if a certificate has already generated an invoice, re-syncing will not create a second one, so you never end up double-billing a customer. Second, a sync log tracks the status of what has come across, giving you a clear record of which certificates have been turned into invoices and which are still queued. If a job is missing, the log is the first place to look.

Client names, addresses and pricing are commercially sensitive, so the link between the apps is secured accordingly. All traffic between iCertifi and Mint Books travels over HTTPS encryption. The API key that authorises the connection is held in the iOS Keychain, which is hardware-protected on the device rather than sitting in plain storage, and each request is authenticated with a bearer token. In practice that means the pairing you set up in Settings is doing the authorising, and your job data is not being passed around in the clear.

Once the invoice exists in Mint Books, it sits inside a full bookkeeping app rather than a one-trick invoicer. You can see exactly where every invoice is, with delivery confirmation and payment status, so you know what has been sent, opened and paid without ringing round. Alongside invoicing, Mint Books handles quotes, expense and receipt capture, mileage tracking, bank feeds that sync your transactions automatically, and standard reports including profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow. Making Tax Digital support for VAT is on the roadmap. It is designed to take a job from “certificate signed” all the way through to “paid and reconciled” without you leaving one tidy system.

The obvious win is time: you stop typing the same job details twice. The bigger win is cash flow. Most late invoicing is not deliberate; it is the gap between finishing the work and finding a quiet hour to raise the paperwork. During that gap, jobs get forgotten, details get misremembered and money that should be in your account is sitting in a pile of “to invoice” notes. When the invoice is drafted at the moment the certificate is saved, that gap disappears. You can review and send from the same phone before you have left the driveway.

It also tightens your records. Because the description and price are built from the certificate itself, the invoice matches the job on file: the same client, the same address, the same scope. When an accountant, a client or an audit asks what a payment was for, the certificate and the invoice tell the same story. For a busy contractor running dozens of EICRs, EICs and minor works certificates a month, that consistency is worth as much as the time saved. If you keep your certification in the cloud with the iCertifi cloud app, your billing record and your compliance record stay in step by default.

Do I need a particular version of iCertifi?
Yes. The integration requires iCertifi V12.12.51 or above. Update on the App Store, then open Settings to find it.

Where do I actually turn it on?
Inside iCertifi, under Settings. That is where you enter the 6-character pairing code and manage the connection.

Does the integration cost extra on top of iCertifi?
No. There is no additional charge for the integration itself. Mint Books has its own separate subscription for invoicing and accounting, and your first month of it is free.

Will invoices send themselves to my customers automatically?
No, and that is deliberate. The integration creates a draft invoice. You review, adjust if needed, and send it when you are ready.

What happens if I have no signal on site?
Nothing is lost. Certificates saved offline are queued and sync to Mint Books automatically as soon as you reconnect.

Can I bring older jobs across?
Yes. You can sync historical certificates from a chosen date range, and automatic deduplication stops any job being invoiced twice.