Per case · after the decision
When it reaches you, and why then.
The one question this needs to answer is when the money arrives. Everything below is either an answer to that or the reason there is not one yet.
The fee
80% of the pool
The chartered review and case management lines of what the customer paid. The document line is not in it.
| Application | Pool | You, 80% | Wren, 20% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Householder | £349 | £279.20 | £69.80 |
| Minor | £1,395 | £1,116 | £279 |
| Major | £4,495 | £3,596 | £899 |
| Appeal | £499 | £399.20 | £99.80 |
The rounding goes against the platform rather than against you. Where a split lands on a fraction of a penny, Wren’s share rounds up so that the pool always adds up exactly and no rounding error can quietly land on our side.
One fee per case, however many documents you sign on it. The fee belongs to the case’s lead professional: signing a document on somebody else’s case does not earn it, and the earnings page will not show you money that is going to transfer to another account.
The states
Five states, in order
01
Earned
You signedThe fee is known and shown to you from this moment. Nothing has moved and no clock is running, because your work on the case is not finished and the council has not decided. Showing it here is what makes earned but not yet paid a real state rather than an absence.
02
Held
The council decidedThe decision is recorded and the clock starts. Not when you signed, and not when the application was submitted. When there is an outcome.
03
Available
The clock ran outNo dispute was raised, so the transfer is created. This is the only point in the entire system where money moves to a professional, and it is one place, in one job, that can be audited and switched off.
04
Paid
Your bank has itReported when the payment provider confirms a payout carrying it reached your account. It is asked of the payout, not of the transfer, so this can be late but never early.
05
Frozen
Something is disputedNo transfer at any clock value while it stands. Clearing it returns the fee to where it was, and it releases on the next run if the clock has since run out.
The clock
14 days. 30 for your first 3 decided cases.
Counted from the day the council's decision is recorded.
The longer window while you are new is counted over cases that have actually reached a decision, not over cases assigned or documents signed, because the point of it is that Wren has seen three of your cases through to an outcome. Your third decided case is still on the longer window and your fourth is not.
The length is fixed on the row the day the clock starts. If the policy changes later, it cannot retroactively move money already promised to you on the old terms.
The clock is not coupled to the approved plans arriving. Councils routinely issue a decision notice days before the stamped drawings, sometimes by post, and holding your money for the council’s admin would be punishing you for somebody else’s process.
Design
Why nothing is created and then reversed
This is the single decision the whole payout engine turns on.
No transfer exists until a fee is released. Until then it sits in Wren’s own balance, where it can be withheld by not sending it.
That is a different thing from sending money and reversing it. A reversal can fail, can leave a connected account in negative balance, and is visible to you as money being taken back. Not sending has none of those properties.
So the single line in the entire codebase that can move a professional’s money sits behind the clock, the dispute flag, and a claim only one concurrent run can win. One place to audit, one place to switch off, and one place a double payment could ever come from.
Your page
What the earnings page shows
Every figure on it is a real row or it is absent. There is no estimate anywhere.
Earned, held, available, paid and frozen totals. A countdown on every held fee, computed from a single clock so two fees clearing on the same day cannot show different day counts. A ledger of every case with its state. Twelve months of history, keyed on the month each case was signed.
Your bank details, your payout schedule in words, and any payout the provider has actually created and dated. Nothing is computed from a schedule, because a planner who reads “next payout Friday” and plans around it has been misled by us rather than by the bank.
A zero prints as a zero. Where the engine has not yet written a fee, the figure is genuinely nothing, and inventing something warmer would be the one failure that page could not come back from.
Practical
The practical bits
Where it goes
Your own connected payment account, set up once through the provider's own onboarding. Wren never holds your bank details and never grows a form that would have to.
Invoicing
None. There is nothing to raise and nothing to chase. The fee is recorded when you sign and released on its own clock.
Tax
You are engaged as an independent professional and are responsible for your own tax and national insurance. Wren does not deduct anything.
Insurance
You carry your own professional indemnity, and it is recorded with its insurer, policy number and expiry. The portal warns you as the expiry approaches.
If a case dies
A case withdrawn or cancelled before a decision has no decision to start a clock. If you have signed, the fee is recorded as earned and stays visible rather than disappearing.
If we get it wrong
A signature with no fee recorded against it is reported as earned at zero rather than silently dropped, because a signed case missing from the ledger is something somebody needs to see.
Start here
Apply, and see the ledger for yourself.
The earnings page is one of the first things you can open, before you have taken a case. It will show zeros, and it will show them honestly.