Nule vs Fergus: Which App Is Best for Tradespeople?

Both are built for trade businesses. Both do quotes, jobs, scheduling and invoices. Both will tell you what a job is costing you against what you priced.

The difference is who they are built for.

Fergus is built for a business with a crew. Nule is built for one person doing all of it, or small limited companies.

The wider list is in Best Apps for Self-Employed Tradespeople, if you are not sure which kind of app you need at all.

Fergus: built around a team

Fergus organises work across people. Quoting and estimating, scheduling, job cards, timesheets, supplier invoices matched to jobs, and reporting that shows how a job is tracking while it is still running.

That last part matters when someone else is doing the work. Fergus's own line is that you can see a job running over budget before you lose your margin. If a job is drifting and you are not on site, you want to know on Wednesday, not when the invoice goes out.

It goes further than the job: GPS so you can see who is nearest to a call-out, tasks you can assign with due dates, and reporting on hours worked against hours billed.

What it does not do is your accounting. It syncs invoices, contacts and payments to Xero or QuickBooks, and your books live there — its own help pages say your accounting software stays the single source of truth for your expenses. So a Fergus setup is two apps: Fergus for the work and the crew, an accounting package for the money.

It sells in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and it is a New Zealand company with a Manchester office.

Nule: built around one person

Nobody assigns you a job. You quote it, you do it, you invoice it, and you do the books on Sunday night.

So Nule starts where you start.

You price the job. Put a labour price on it, hours or days, at your own day rate. Add the materials. Add the outside costs. Add a buffer for what you cannot see behind the wall yet.

The customer accepts, and the quote becomes the job. You do not type it in again. The price you set stays attached to it, so at the end there is something to compare against.

Then the week happens. You photograph the receipt at the merchant. Thursday's two hours go on the job. Materials, expenses and mileage go on the same job. It works on a site with no signal and backs itself up when you are online again.

You invoice from the job. The invoice already knows what the job cost you.

When the job closes, Nule tells you how the price held up. Not a spreadsheet — a line saying the materials came in £140 over what you quoted, or that the job ran £230 over budget.

Then it looks across all of them. One job over is bad luck. Nule tells you which jobs lost money, where your expenses actually went, and which kind of work you keep underquoting. Not once, which you would notice. Again and again, which you would not.

Five main numbers sit on the home screen: what is safe to spend, how much tax is put aside, VAT to save (if registered), income and profit. Tax is forecast as you go. Your accountant gets the same records. Making Tax Digital submissions are in beta.

There is nothing in it for managing staff. No timesheets, no GPS, no assigning work to anyone. It is UK only, and that is the point of it.

Side by side

When Fergus is the better answer

You have people working for you. Timesheets, tasks, GPS, and knowing what everyone is doing this week. This is the whole reason Fergus exists, and Nule does not compete with it.

You run several jobs at once. Fergus is built to hold more than one job in the air, and to tell you mid-job which one is slipping.

Your accounting already works. If your accountant uses Xero or QuickBooks and the returns go out on time, you only need the job side fixed.

Tradify covers similar ground: Nule vs Tradify: Which App Is Best for Tradespeople?

When Nule is the better answer

You work on your own, or with one other. You are not managing anyone, so you are not paying for the tools that manage them. Fergus charges from £12 a month for each timesheet user; you would never add one.

You do not have accounting software. Your records are a pile of receipts and a bank app, sorted out in January. There is nothing for Fergus to connect to, so you would be buying and learning an accounting package as well.

Not every cost belongs to a job. Fergus keeps job costs and sends the rest to your accounting software. In Nule the fuel, the parking and the odd tool sit with the job costs, in the records you file from.

You want the pattern, not just the job. Fergus reports the money: profit and loss, what this job is making, hours worked against hours billed. Nule looks at your quoting, whether the materials came in where you thought, whether it took the days you allowed, and whether you keep underquoting the same kind of work.

Making Tax Digital applies to you, or soon will. Quarterly updates are easier when the records are made as you work, not put together afterwards.

Which one

If you have a crew, buy Fergus. It is built for that and Nule is not.

If you are on your own and doing all of it yourself, the question is whether you want your books in a second app. That is the case for Nule.

They answer different questions. Fergus asks how the work is going. Nule asks how good you are at pricing it.

Fergus's features, plan tiers and prices are as published by Fergus on 6 August 2026, and change. Check the current details with them before you buy.