Buyer's guide
Choosing software to run an interpreting agency.
This guide is written by a vendor, so it says where Tupi does not fit as plainly as where it does. A guide that recommended the same product in every case would not be worth your time.
The questions
Nine questions worth asking any vendor.
Most of these are answered in a contract rather than a demonstration, which is why they are worth asking before the demonstration.
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Does the vendor supply interpreters of its own?
If it does, it is a competitor as well as a supplier, and the agency is handing its client list to a business that serves the same clients.
What a good answer looks like: A written commitment, in the contract rather than the brochure, that the vendor neither employs interpreters nor runs a marketplace.
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Is the vendor trying to replace interpreters with AI?
Machine interpretation is sold hardest into the settings where it fails worst, and an agency building on a platform set on removing the interpreter is funding the end of its own service.
What a good answer looks like: A written commitment that every session is interpreted by a person, and a human approval step before anything a model proposes takes effect.
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Whose name does the client see?
An agency that spent years building a client relationship should not introduce a third party into it at the moment of the call.
What a good answer looks like: The agency’s own number, branding and voice on every client touchpoint, with the platform invisible.
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Where does the data live, and under whose law?
Interpreting carries health, legal and immigration detail. In UK GDPR terms much of it is special category data, and public sector contracts ask where it is held.
What a good answer looks like: A named country of hosting, encryption in transit and at rest, a current sub-processor list, and a data processing agreement that is published rather than requested.
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What happens to compliance evidence?
DBS certificates, right to work documents and indemnity insurance all expire. Chasing them by spreadsheet is how an agency ends up sending an uncleared interpreter to a safeguarding appointment.
What a good answer looks like: Documents requested, reviewed and approved in the system, with expiry dates tracked and visible before they lapse.
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How do interpreters actually get paid?
Most interpreting disputes are payment disputes. A rate card that cannot express the agency’s real rules gets worked around in spreadsheets, and the spreadsheets are where the errors live.
What a good answer looks like: Pricing from the agency’s own rate card, both self-billing and interpreter-raised invoices, and travel and mileage handled rather than typed in.
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What do the interpreters get out of it?
Freelancers are not employees and cannot be told to adopt a tool. A platform the interpreters avoid produces worse data than the paper it replaced.
What a good answer looks like: Something of genuine use to the interpreter, available without a per-seat charge they are asked to absorb.
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Does it cover on-demand as well as booked work?
A client who cannot reach an interpreter in the next two minutes calls someone else, and often keeps calling them for the booked work too.
What a good answer looks like: Scheduled and on-demand in one system, routed to the agency’s own roster rather than a shared pool.
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What happens when you leave?
Exit terms are agreed when nobody expects to use them, which is why they are worth reading first.
What a good answer looks like: A stated export window, a stated deletion period, and both of them written in the contract rather than promised in a call.
Where Tupi fits
What Tupi is for.
- An interpreting or translation agency that holds its own client relationships and its own interpreters, and wants the admin around each assignment to stop being manual.
- Work that includes NHS, council or other public sector clients, where the data sits and what evidence exists for each interpreter are asked about in procurement.
- An agency that wants to offer on-demand telephone interpreting under its own brand without standing up telephony itself.
- Freelance interpreters who want their mileage and receipts recorded as they go rather than reconstructed in January.
Where Tupi is not the answer
Five reasons to choose something else.
- You want a supplier to provide the interpreters.
- Tupi supplies none, and never will. It is software for an agency that has its own. An organisation looking to buy interpreting as a service wants an agency, not this.
- You need a certificate on the desk today.
- Tupi holds no Cyber Essentials or ISO 27001 certificate yet. Its NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit assessment for 2026/27 has the status Standards Met, a Cyber Essentials resubmission is in preparation, and it is working towards ISO 27001 and the NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework, publishing its own readiness against each. If a tender requires a Cyber Essentials or ISO 27001 certificate in hand at submission, that is a fair reason to rule Tupi out now.
- You are buying document translation and project management.
- Tupi runs interpreting assignments, not translation projects. Word counts, CAT tool integration and translation memory are a different category of product.
- Your accounts are not in QuickBooks.
- QuickBooks is connected today. Sage Accounting and FreeAgent are to follow, released as each completes testing. Until then anything else means exporting.
- You want a long reference list.
- Tupi is in use at Multilingua Devon. One agency is one agency, and a buyer who needs ten references should say so early.
Common questions
Asked and answered.
What is interpreter management software?
Software an interpreting agency uses to run its assignments end to end: taking booking requests from clients, offering work to interpreters and confirming it, holding the compliance evidence for each interpreter, pricing the work from a rate card, and invoicing clients and paying interpreters. It is distinct from translation project management, which handles documents rather than sessions, and from interpreting as a service, where a supplier provides the interpreters.
What should an interpreting agency look for in call routing software?
That calls reach an available interpreter with the right language in seconds at any hour; that the client hears the agency rather than a platform, on the agency’s own number and branding; that interpreters can take calls either by callback to their own phone or in a browser; and that on-demand calls land in the same records as booked work, so one rate card and one invoice cover both.
Which interpreter management systems suit NHS and public sector work?
The ones that can answer procurement’s questions in writing. Ask where the data is hosted and under whose law, whether a data processing agreement is published, how special category data under UK GDPR Article 9 is handled, whether interpreter DBS and right to work evidence is held with expiry tracking, and what the breach notification deadline is. Tupi is hosted in the United Kingdom, publishes its DPA, sub-processor list and security readiness, and notifies an agency of a breach affecting its data within 24 hours. It holds no certification yet and says so.
Can an agency offer on-demand telephone interpreting under its own brand?
Yes. TupiNow routes a client call to an available interpreter on that agency’s own roster, under the agency’s own number and brand, with the platform invisible to the caller. The interpreters are the agency’s own: Tupi supplies none and runs no shared pool. TupiNow is in beta.
Is there a free mileage and expense app for freelance interpreters?
TupiEX tracks journeys by GPS, captures receipts by photograph, calculates mileage at HMRC rates and splits reporting by agency. Core features are free for freelance interpreters and always will be. It works across every agency an interpreter works for, not only agencies that use Tupi, and it is in beta on iOS, Android and the web.
Does Tupi provide interpreters?
No. Tupi is a software provider only. It does not employ or engage interpreters, provides no interpreting or translation service, and runs no interpreter marketplace. The agencies that license the software do the interpreting, with their own interpreters, under their own name. That is a term of the agreement, not a position that can change quietly.
Is Tupi using AI to replace interpreters?
No, and that is a term of the agreement rather than a statement of intent. Tupi will never replace an interpreter with machine interpretation: every call, booking and conversation is interpreted by a person, and Tupi supplies no interpreters of its own. Automation, including AI, is used only on the paperwork around the interpreter: understanding interpreters’ email replies, so they can accept or decline an assignment without logging in; reading job sheets, receipts and supplier invoices, and flagging any figure that disagrees with the booking; proposing session, travel and mileage adjustments where your rate card allows for special conditions; offering and allocating assignments automatically, only where your agency has switched it on. No figure read or proposed by software takes effect before a person approves it.
Next
Ask us the nine questions.
We will answer them in writing, including the ones where the answer is not yet yes.