Most firms use subbies at some point, and paying a full seat for someone who does three days a month never made sense. Subcontractors are free in Mucka. They don't count towards your billable seats, and there's no limit on how many you add.
The trade-off is that they see a lot less than your own engineers do, which is the point: a subbie works for other outfits too.
Add one
Head to Settings → Team → People and tap Invite teammate. Fill in their name and email, then change Role to Subcontractor.
You won't be asked to upgrade, and your bill won't move. Adding a subbie is the one invite that never touches billing.
They get an email invite like anyone else. Once they've set a password they're in.
What a subbie can see
Only the jobs you put them on, and their own schedule. That's it.
- Can see: their jobs, the site address and access notes, what needs doing, and the customer's name
- Cannot see: your client list, your prices, quotes, invoices, what a job is worth, your other engineers, or anyone else's work. Nor the customer's phone number or email — your notes on that customer, their payment history and any risk flag stay yours too. If a subbie needs to ring ahead, ring them yourself or send the number on
This list isn't a starting point you can adjust — the Subcontractor role is fixed, and there's no setting anywhere that opens any of it up. If someone needs more, they need an Engineer seat. See roles and permissions.
What their app looks like
Stripped right back, on purpose. The bar along the bottom of their phone is Home, Diary and Menu — no Mucka, because the AI assistant isn't part of a subbie seat.
Two buttons can join it, and only if you've turned the skill on for the business:
- Calcs — the gas calculators, if you've got them. A subbie rating an appliance needs the same sum your own engineer does.
- Hours — their own timesheet, which appears once you switch on workers can log their own hours in Timesheets. They see their days and nobody else's. Mucka also tells them when they've been on jobs and not put the days in — on their home screen on a phone, at the top of their Schedule on a computer — "3 days with no hours logged", with the days named, and one tap opens that week. It's the only prompt a subbie gets, and it stays in the app: Mucka makes contact with your team and never with anyone on the free Subcontractor role, so it won't text, WhatsApp or ring them. Want somebody chased? Move them onto a teammate seat with a role of their own.
If they log in on a computer instead, both sit in the sidebar in the normal way.
They don't get the notepad, the Clients tab or the Engineers page at all. Those aren't just hidden from the menu, they're blocked outright.
What a subbie can do
Three things, all on jobs they're actually booked on:
- Accept or decline the job. They get asked "can you cover this one?" and tap yes or no. If they turn it down you're pinged straight away, with their reason if they gave one, so you can get it covered before the day rather than on it.
- Update the status. Mark it in progress, mark it done. You stop having to chase for updates.
- Add photos and notes. Site photos and anything worth recording, straight onto the job.
They can't edit the job itself, move it, reassign it or delete it.
Mucka won't ring or message a subbie
Ask Mucka to chase one of your own engineers and it will. Ask it to chase a subbie and it says no, and tells you to do it yourself.
That's deliberate. The rules that let Mucka phone and message your team on your behalf lean on them being your employees — your duty of care, their working hours, the fact that it's an internal call within your own business. A subcontractor isn't your employee, so that ground isn't there, and we'd rather not guess.
You can still message them yourself from Messages whenever you like, and their number's on the job so you can ring. Everything else about a subbie is unchanged: they still get the job, still accept or decline it, still get their schedule.
Subbies who work for more than one firm
If a subbie subs for a few businesses that all use Mucka, one login covers the lot. They switch between firms from the menu, and their schedule shows one combined week across all of them, colour-coded per firm, so they can see at a glance whether Tuesday is already spoken for.
That matters because the double-booking that catches a subbie out is almost always between two firms, not within one.
Turning a subbie into a proper teammate
If a subbie comes on permanently, change their role from Settings → Team → People the same way you'd change anyone's. Mucka will ask you to upgrade at that point, because they've become a billable seat.
Going the other way (a teammate down to Subcontractor) frees the seat up.
Common gotchas
- "They say they can't see the job." Check they're actually assigned to it. A subbie only sees jobs they're the engineer on, or named as a helper on. Being able to see the workspace isn't enough.
- "They didn't get told about the job." Assigning a job notifies them, but they need notifications switched on and, on the phone app, to have allowed them when asked.
- Subcontractor doesn't appear in the role list. Very old workspaces may need a refresh before it shows. If it's still missing, raise it with us.
- Don't use a subbie seat to dodge the bill for a full-time engineer. They can't see the client list, prices or invoices, so it won't work as a cheap engineer seat — they'd be missing half of what the job needs.