Underentreprenörer: Hire Subcontractors Without Risk

Hiring underentreprenörer — subcontractors — lets you take on bigger jobs than your own crew can cover, but it does not hand off the risk. To the customer who signed with you, you are still the one responsible for the work, the deadline and the defects, including the parts a sub carried out. So before you bring anyone on, do three things: check they are a legitimate, insured, tax-registered business with the right qualifications; put the scope, price and timeline in a written subcontract; and keep enough control of the work that you can prove it was done properly. Get those three right and a subcontractor multiplies your capacity. Skip them and you have quietly signed up to carry someone else's mistakes.

Underentreprenörer, employees or labour hire — know which you have

A genuine subcontractor runs their own business. They invoice you, carry their own insurance, bring their own tools, and decide how the work gets done — you agree what and by when, not the method and the hours. That distinction matters, because if you direct someone like staff and pay them like staff, the tax authority can decide they were staff, and the back-tax and social charges land on you.

• In Sweden the dividing line is F-skatt. A business approved for F-tax handles its own income tax and social contributions; you pay the invoice and nothing else. Hire someone without it and you may be liable to deduct tax and pay employer contributions on what you paid them.
• In the UK the same trap is called false self-employment, and the IR35 / employment-status rules decide it.
• Labour hire (Swedish bemanning / personaluthyrning) is a third thing again — you rent a worker who stays the agency's employee. Useful, but it is not subcontracting and the paperwork differs.

Vet the subcontractor before the first day

Most subcontractor disasters trace back to a firm nobody checked. The checks take an afternoon and they are the cheapest insurance you will buy.

Add references from two recent jobs and a look at how they invoice. A firm that sends a clean, itemised invoice usually runs a clean site.

Who is liable when a subcontractor's work fails

You are — to your customer. The contract chain runs client → you → sub, and claims flow up it. You can pass a defect back down to the sub who caused it, but the customer never has to chase your sub; they chase you, and you carry it. On a consumer job this is written into Swedish law: the customer's contract is with you under the Consumer Services Act (konsumenttjänstlagen), and it is you who owes the fix.

There is a second liability most contractors miss. In Swedish construction, main-contractor wage liability (huvudentreprenörsansvar) means that if a subcontractor further down the chain fails to pay its own workers, those workers can claim the wages from the contractor above — and ultimately from the main contractor. So an unpaid sub's staff can legally become your bill. The defence is the same in both directions: keep the chain short, vet every link, and do not sub-let to a firm you cannot stand behind.

Put the scope in a written subcontract

A handshake sub is a dispute waiting for a date. The subcontract does not need to be long, but it needs to be specific. Cover:

• Scope and exclusions. Exactly what they do, and the boundary work they do not — that boundary is where every argument starts.
• Price basis. Fixed price or time-and-materials (Swedish löpande räkning), and how variations get agreed and priced before they happen.
• Timeline. Start, finish, and what happens if they slip and drag your own deadline with them.
• Payment terms and retention. When you pay, against what evidence, and how much you hold back until defects are cleared.
• Materials and insurance. Who supplies what, and confirmation their cover is live for the duration.
• Documentation. The photos, self-inspection and certificates they must hand you — because you owe the same to your client.

On larger and commercial jobs, Swedish contracting runs on standard agreements — AB 04 and ABT 06 — and their terms are designed to flow down to subcontractors so the whole chain plays by the same rules. If your head contract uses them, mirror them in your subcontract rather than inventing your own terms that conflict.

Know exactly who is on your job

On most Swedish construction sites you must keep an electronic personnel register (personalliggare): everyone working the site, including every subcontractor and their staff, logs in and out, usually with an ID06 card. Skatteverket can turn up unannounced, cross-check the register against who is holding a drill, and fine you for anyone missing. As the firm running the site you are responsible for that register covering your subs — "they were just a sub" is not a defence.

Beyond the legal duty, this is basic control. You cannot manage quality, safety or liability for people you cannot even name. Keep an up-to-date list of which sub is on which job, who their people are, and that their registrations and insurance are still current on the day they turn up — not the day you first hired them.

Get the VAT right: reverse charge on construction

When one construction business buys construction services from another, Sweden uses reverse-charge VAT (omvänd byggmoms): the subcontractor invoices you with no VAT, and you account for the VAT yourself in your own return. It applies when you buy construction services and you also sell construction services on. Get it wrong — a sub adding VAT that should not be there, or you missing the reverse charge — and you are into corrected invoices and a nervous bookkeeper. Agree which way the invoice goes before the first one arrives.

This is not a Swedish quirk. The UK has run a domestic reverse charge for construction under CIS since 2021, and it works the same way: the customer accounts for the VAT, not the supplier. If you are unsure which side of the line a job sits, check the current rules with your tax authority before you invoice, not after.

Payment, retention and holding money back

Pay against evidence, never against promises. Tie each payment to documented progress you have actually seen — photos, a signed-off stage, a passed inspection — and hold a retention (Swedish innehållna medel) of the agreed percentage until the defects period is clear. That withheld slice is the only real leverage you keep once the sub has left site; give it up early and a snag list becomes a favour you are begging for.

Where you can, match the timing of what you pay the sub to what your client pays you, so a slow-paying customer does not drain your account through a sub who invoices on time. And never pay the final account before you have inspected the work yourself.

Keep control of quality — and prove it

You are on the hook for the sub's workmanship, so you need evidence it was right, not just a verbal all-clear. Require the same documentation you owe your own customer: a self-inspection record (egenkontroll), before-and-after photos, test results and any certificates the trade demands. Collect it as the job runs, not in a panic at handover when the sub has moved to the next site and stopped answering.

This is far easier when the sub works inside the same system you do. In OdinTask you can add a subcontractor to the job, share the job card, and have their photos, self-inspection and time land against that job in one place — so the proof of quality and the paper trail you may need if it is ever disputed build themselves as the work happens.

If you are hiring subcontractors outside Sweden

The structure is universal; only the labels change. Everywhere, you stay liable to your client for a sub's work, so verify registration and live insurance before day one and keep control of quality. In the UK that means CIS registration, the domestic reverse charge, and watching employment status so a sub is not really an employee. In New Zealand and Australia, a written subcontract plus the Security of Payment / Construction Contracts regime governs how they claim and how you hold retention. ROT, F-skatt, ID06 and personalliggare are Swedish specifics — ignore those and keep the rest: vet the firm, write the contract, insure the risk, and never sub-let work you could not stand behind yourself.

Bring subcontractors onto the job without losing the thread

Subcontractors go wrong for one boring reason: the work happens somewhere you cannot see it and the proof is meant to appear later. Fix that by running the sub on the same job as your own crew — shared job card, their photos and self-inspection attached where you need them, and the documentation ready when the customer or an inspector asks. Try OdinTask free for 14 days, or see pricing.