Is the government waste tracking service free?

We are not going to print a figure here. Charging for the government service is set by Defra and the Environment Agency, and anything we quoted today could be wrong by the time you read it, so the gov.uk guidance is the only honest answer on fees. What we can say is that the service is the destination for the records of the waste you receive, not the thing that fills them in. The cost that bites a small yard is rarely a licence fee, it is the hour someone spends turning a stack of weighbridge tickets into rows that upload without coming back.

Yes, and for some yards that is the right call. Defra's guidance sets out the routes for reporting receipt of waste, one of which is their own spreadsheet uploaded by you, so read that guidance against your permit before you spend anything. If you take a handful of loads a week, have decent signal where the skips are weighed, and one person is content to key the details in, that route may be all you need. The case for software starts when the volume, the signal or the staffing stops making that comfortable, or when a bounced upload eats the time you had to correct it. Which software counts as approved is a separate question, and it has its own page.

It writes the record once, at the weighbridge, and then gives you the files the regulator and Defra's service want. A transfer note with the EA-mandated fields, waste type, EWC code, quantity, carrier details and destination site, can be completed on a phone or tablet in under two minutes, saving to the device first with a plain queued, syncing or synced status on it. Those same notes become receipt-of-waste rows in Defra's template column order for your yard to upload, and the quarterly EA return comes out as a one-click CSV in the column layout you set, with no manual reformatting. It also tracks your carrier, broker and dealer registrations against their expiry dates, emails you about anything falling due within 30 days, puts those dates in your own calendar, and shows you what you have logged with tonnage by waste type. The weighbridge and the office each sign in as themselves with t

There is a receipts screen next to the quarterly return. You pick a date range and the rows come out in Defra's template column order, for your yard to upload to their service. Every row is checked against Defra's upload rules first: only rows that pass are exported, it tells you how many were held back, and each failing row links to the field that needs fixing. The same check runs when a note is saved, including offline, so a field that would bounce gets flagged while the driver is still on the weighbridge. The receiver's site name, permit or authorisation number and contact details live on the site screen, so they go onto every load without anyone retyping them.

The dashboard carries a card of notes not yet reported, grouped as overdue, due today and due tomorrow, worked out from the two working days you get to report a load. After a receipts download, Skiplog asks whether you have uploaded them to Defra, and on confirm it stamps each note in that batch as reported, with the date, the note count and who confirmed it. That is the point of the card: no separate list on the office wall. Check gov.uk for the reporting deadline that applies to your own permit, because it is the regulator's rule, not ours.

You can record Defra's waste tracking reference against a reported receipt, with the date you recorded it, so there is something to show that a load is in their system. If a rejection notice arrives, you mark the receipt as rejected with the date on the notice, and that date sets a fresh correction deadline on the record. Correct or remove a note that already carries a reference and it is flagged as a correction to report to Defra, keeping the reference it went in under and the old and new value of what changed. Skiplog does not submit or amend anything inside Defra's service on your behalf: you make the change there, and Skiplog keeps the trail.

This is the practical reason operators look past the government service on its own. Notes save to the device first and sync automatically when connectivity returns, and the status on the note tells the person holding the tablet whether it is queued, syncing or synced, so nobody has to guess. Offline notes and a copy of the screens already opened sit on that device until they go. Signing out gives up that device's queue and clears the saved screens from it, which matters on a tablet two people share.

No, and any supplier who says otherwise is overselling. Skiplog is built to help you meet the mandate's requirements: it captures the records, keeps them straight when the signal drops, checks each receipt row against Defra's upload rules, and formats the quarterly return. It cannot guarantee a compliance outcome, because that depends on the accuracy of what your team keys in and on format or rule changes outside anyone's software. Our terms say the same thing in the same words, which is deliberate.