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Industries · Construction · Trades & Fit-Out

The note in the glovebox turns into Friday’s invoice.

In construction and trade businesses the key information is created on site and typed up later – hours, measurements, materials, photos – and forgotten items never get invoiced. We build capture that works on site in seconds, no signal needed.

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Honest up front

In this sector we have no publicly nameable client reference. What you read here describes what we build – not who we have already worked for. You will not get an invented case study from us.

Check the standard first

There is good standard software for trade businesses. If an off-the-shelf product covers your case, it is cheaper – and we say so, rather than building bespoke what you could simply buy.

Offline is mandatory

Shell construction, basements, roof spaces, dead spots: capture that needs a signal does not get used. For us, offline capability is the starting point, not an optional extra.

At a glance

Who it is for

Trade businesses of every trade
Construction and fit-out firms
Electrical
Plumbing and heating contractors
Landscaping and groundworks
Facility services

Typical trigger

Hours, measurements and materials are captured on paper and typed up in the office – with delay, follow-up questions and forgotten items that never make it onto an invoice.

What we build

Mobile capture for hours
Measurements and materials
A site diary with photo documentation
Defect and handover records
A job overview for scheduling
Integration with your existing trade or accounting software

And beyond that

For many businesses the bigger lever is not software but visibility – see Established Businesses &

Growth.

01 — Starting point

Where money gets left on site.

Not on the big line items – those are in the quote. On the small ones that come up along the way and never land anywhere.

Extra work with no record

The client asks for a small addition, it gets done, it does not get written down. By the end of the month nobody remembers it – and it appears on no invoice.

Hours from memory

Filled in on Friday for the whole week. What exactly happened on Tuesday gets reconstructed roughly – and “roughly” is an expensive word when you bill by the hour.

Measurements on a scrap of paper

Dimensions noted on paper, transferred into a spreadsheet in the office, then into the quote. Two transfers, two sources of error, one renegotiation.

Photos nobody can find again

Site photos sit on private phones, in messenger threads and on memory cards. When a warranty claim needs the evidence, it exists in theory.

Defects by word of mouth and paper

Handover with a clipboard, list by email, follow-up in someone’s head. Nobody fully knows who closed which item and when – and that is exactly what the client asks about.

Scheduling by telephone

Who is where, what is finished, where is material missing? Answered by phone calls – which interrupt precisely the people who are supposed to be working.

02 — User Stories

What we build for construction and trades.

Use cases from the site to the office. What you read here describes how we work – we show no client references in this sector, because we have none we are cleared to name.

“As a fitter, I want to record hours and materials on site.”

A handful of fields, large buttons, picking rather than typing – done in under a minute, straight after the job. Without a signal too; syncing happens automatically.

App development

“As a site manager, I want a site diary that writes itself.”

Weather, attendance, progress and photos captured in a structured way and retrievable day by day. In a dispute that is the difference between an assertion and a proof.

“As a business, I want to record extra work while it is still fresh.”

One entry with a photo, made on site, signed off by the client on the screen. These are exactly the items that otherwise never get invoiced.

“As a client, I want to be able to track defects.”

A defect list with photo, owner, deadline and status – instead of a spreadsheet that travels back and forth by email and exists in three versions.

“As a scheduler, I want to see where the crews are.”

A job overview with status taken straight from what people capture – instead of calling people who are currently standing on a ladder.

“As a business, I want to be found, not just recommended.”

For many trade businesses visibility is a bigger lever than software: plenty of work by word of mouth, but no enquiries from the web and no way into larger contracts.

Established Businesses & Growth

03 — Principles

Why capturing data on site fails.

On the same six points, every time. Respect them and you get capture rates worth talking about – ignore them and you buy an app nobody opens after three weeks.

Under a minute, or not at all – Ask someone to spend five minutes typing into a form after eight hours of work and they will not do it. We build around picking rather than entering, and cut every field that never gets analysed.
Built for gloves and sunlight – Large buttons, high contrast, usable one-handed. An interface that looks elegant in the office is unusable on scaffolding.
Offline first – Shell construction, basements, rural sites: a signal is the exception, not the rule. Capture, photos and signatures have to work locally and sync back automatically.
The benefit has to reach the person capturing – Whoever fills it in needs something out of it – fewer questions from the office, no paperwork on Friday, no argument about hours. Capture that only serves management peters out.
Integration, not a second system – Your trade or accounting software stays the system of record. We hand over to it through its existing interfaces – nothing is worse than two systems that are both half maintained.
Start small, one trade, one crew – What holds there gets rolled out. What does not has cost little. A company-wide rollout with no real trial first is the most reliable route to an expensive, unused solution.

Devices

Phone and tablet, iOS and Android – built with Flutter from a single codebase

Integration

Your existing trade and accounting software, through its own interfaces

Visibility

Established Businesses & Growth · Website development

Processes

Quoting, approval and invoicing workflows: Administration & Back Office

04 — FAQ

Frequently asked questions from construction and trades.

There is off-the-shelf trade software. Why build something of our own?

Most of the time you do not need anything of your own, and we say so. For quoting, invoicing, time recording and materials there are mature standard products that cost less than anything we would build bespoke. We come in where the standard does not fit: a trade-specific way of measuring, an inspection or handover procedure your client dictates, or an integration that does not exist off the shelf. If your case is a standard case, we recommend the standard.

Does it work without a signal?

It has to. On a site in shell construction, in a basement or out in the countryside, connectivity is the exception. We build so that capture, photos and signatures work locally on the device and sync automatically as soon as there is a signal again. For the person on site the difference is invisible – and that is exactly the point.

Our people are not particularly tech-minded.

That is the normal case, and it is no obstacle if the application is built accordingly. The standard is simple: if capturing something needs training, it has been designed wrong. A few large buttons, picking rather than typing, done in under a minute. Where businesses build to that standard, capture rates come out markedly higher than with more feature-rich solutions.

What about time recording and co-determination?

Time recording and location data about employees touch employment and data protection law; in companies with a works council, systems capable of monitoring performance and conduct virtually always require co-determination. We build with data minimization – the location of a single entry is a different thing from continuous tracking – and we raise it early. The employment-law assessment belongs with you and your advisers.

Do you have references from the trades?

None we can show publicly. We would rather say that than invent one. What we do have is experience with exactly the process patterns at issue here: capture by external people without system access, proof towards third parties, mobile capture in poor conditions, integration with a system of record. A delivered project with precisely that pattern – capture by external people, analysis inside the organization, proof to the outside world – is described under Public Sector & Municipalities.

We get enough work. Do we need a website?

If your order book is full and you do not want to grow: no. But if you want to reach larger or higher-margin work – commercial clients, main contractors, refurbishment projects – that selection now happens online. What that means in practice is on Established Businesses & Growth.

How much extra work appears on no invoice?

Hardly any business knows that number – and it is usually bigger than assumed. Tell us briefly how things get recorded at your company; we will say whether the standard is enough or whether something of your own pays off.

Discuss a project

05 — Related