Built by the trades, for the trades

The money isn’t lost when they don’t pay.
It’s lost the day you start without a signature.

TradeDesk runs the whole job, first contact to final check. Enter it once and it becomes the estimate, the signed contract, the schedule, your crew’s hours, the invoice, and the deposit in your bank. Every piece feeds the next, so the paperwork does itself while you work, and nothing starts unsigned. One flat price, whole crew included, one truck or twenty.

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• Free during early access, no card
• Works offline
• Whole crew, one price
• Built by a contractor's family

First call to final payment

One flow. The whole job.

The lead becomes the estimate becomes the job becomes the invoice. One thread, no re-typing.

Get paid & protected

No signature, no lien.
Most contractors learn that too late.

A mechanic's lien is the strongest legal claim a contractor has on unpaid work, and it depends on paperwork that exists before the work does. Documented scope, signatures, notice deadlines measured in days. TradeDesk builds that paper trail into the normal flow of every job, so it's simply there if you ever need it.

• Scope e-signed before work starts: your lien rights stay intact
• Lien deadlines tracked from the day the job completes
• The whole paper trail: estimate, signature, change orders, invoices, ready if you ever have to file

Mileage & hours, hands off

You don't press start.
You just drive.

Every mileage app in the trades has a button you forget to hit. TradeDesk doesn't. Our engine catches the moment the truck pulls out, and once a job has an address on it, knows when you land there. Drive, work, drive home. The log writes itself.

TrueSuite

Measure the job without
measuring the job.

Trace it off the map or walk the room with your phone. The numbers land in the estimate, priced at your rates.

Every measurement is a line item, not a note. A traced roof or a scanned room comes into the estimate as priced work, so the bid you hand over matches what you actually measured.

See the estimate flow →

Why TradeDesk

Built from what contractors
said the other tools got wrong.

I didn't guess at this. I read the contractor forums, the reviews, the threads where guys rip on the software they pay for, and built TradeDesk to fix the complaints. Same jobs the big names do, run cleaner and faster, whether you're a one-truck owner or a twenty-crew shop tired of getting bled dry on per-seat fees. Here's what came out of that.

See the side-by-side+

How everyday jobs compare between TradeDesk and other platforms

Everyday job	TradeDesk	The others
Estimate → signed → deposit	In one visit	2–3 tools
Crew time on site	Logs itself, no button	Manual / add-on
Mileage & taxes	Built in	Separate app
Add a crew member	Included	Per-seat fee
Apprentice OJT hours	Logged per employee	On you
Lead RRP paperwork	Pamphlet signed & kept	Not handled
Bid with no signal	Works offline	Needs internet
Works great on a phone	Built for it	Desktop-first

Where we draw a line

We will not put a robot in front of your phone.

Contractor software is racing to sell you an AI that answers your calls. Before you switch that on, ask yourself one question. Have you ever called a company, gotten dropped into a maze of automated prompts, and just wanted to reach a human being?

If that ever frustrated you, remember that feeling, because it is what your next customer feels when a robot answers instead of you. Your phone is the first impression of your business, and a homeowner is deciding whether to trust you with a key to their house.

So we built the opposite. Your phone rings to you, and you answer it. What TradeDesk does is make sure the call is worth answering: type the address and the property details are already pulled, so you can price the job while you are still on the line. A real voice, better prepared, beats a machine that never misses a ring.

Why I built TradeDesk

I married into a house full
of master tradesmen.

A master electrician, a master plumber, and a painter. I picked up the lingo at the dinner table years before I wrote a line of code for it. I spent five years in the Marines working on Rolls-Royce turbine engines, so precision work and reading the manual before you touch anything is how I'm wired. I'm not billing hours in the field, but I do my own work on my own house with the code book open on the bench, and I've spent years around masters who correct me when I'm wrong. I know what an hour of real labor costs.

My day job is fixing how small businesses run by putting better tools in their hands. I've done it for over 170 small business owners. So when my brother-in-law, who runs a painting company, showed up with five years of receipts in a Sterilite box and asked me to get them organized well enough to survive an audit, I did the thing I do. I built. That was version one of TradeDesk: a receipt scanner that ran his income and expenses through the IRS framework and told him what he owed, year by year, measured against the figures on his final returns.

Then my other brother-in-law, who runs a plumbing business with his father, came to me with a handful of finished jobs that never got paid. Clients just went quiet. So we started down the mechanic's lien process, and we hit the wall about ten minutes in.

You need a signed proposal to enforce a lien, and you have four months from the completion date to file it. He had neither. The deals were handshakes, and the completion dates were buried somewhere in old text messages.

Version two was the proposal workflow and the lien engine, so that could never happen to him again. After that the goal got simple: make the app do the remembering. Log the miles itself. Fill in the timesheets itself. Watch the deadlines itself. A contractor's job is the work, not the paperwork. And paperwork almost never gets done during work hours. It gets done at nine at night at the kitchen table, after a twelve-hour day, with everybody else already in bed. Across those 170 businesses, that is the part that costs the most, and it never shows up on a bill. Not the money. The evenings.

TradeDesk is two of us. I build it, and my wife is the one I bounce every screen off before it ships. Our families' businesses run inside this app, so we're not chasing an exit and we're not going anywhere. If it breaks, it's our own family's paycheck on the line, and we'll be here fixing it as long as the good Lord lets us.

Logan S

Founder, TradeDesk

From the field

It showed them what they
were giving away.

Clean up the bill

You're not buying software.
You're renting five of them.

The big platforms hook you with a base price, then charge for the estimate tool, the GPS, and every crew member you add. It stacks up to hundreds a month and a fistful of logins that don't talk to each other.

→

Early access

Free while we build it
with you.

Everything included, your whole crew, no card. Nothing is sold in the app.

Questions

Straight answers

What is TradeDesk?+

TradeDesk is all-in-one business software for trade contractors. Lead intake, estimating, e-signed proposals, scheduling and dispatch, automatic mileage and crew time tracking, invoicing, card payments, bookkeeping, tax prep, and mechanic’s-lien deadline tracking for all 50 states. Enter a job once and it carries through every stage without retyping. It works offline and syncs when you get signal back.

How much does TradeDesk cost?+

TradeDesk is free to use during early access. Nothing is sold in the app. If we introduce paid plans, they will be offered on our website, and we will tell you before anything is charged. Your whole crew and every feature are included, with no credit card.

Does TradeDesk track mileage automatically?+

Yes. Drives get logged without anyone pressing start, and landing on a job site is recognized on its own as long as that job’s address is in the system. The miles flow straight into your books as a deduction, and the same engine fills in your crew’s timesheets.

Does TradeDesk have AI phone answering?+

No, and that is on purpose. When a homeowner calls a contractor, they want a person. A robot answering your phone costs you more jobs than it catches. What we do instead is pull the property details off the address so you are better prepared when you pick up.

What trades is TradeDesk built for?+

Painting contractors, plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs, handymen and general contractors. Anyone running the business out of a truck instead of an office, whether that is one truck or twenty.

How do I get started?+

Create an account on your phone and start. Every feature, your whole crew, no limits, no credit card. No add-ons, no per-seat fees, no "call sales."

Will I ever be charged by surprise?+

No. Nothing is sold in the app and nothing is charged today. If we introduce paid plans, they will be offered on our website, and we will tell you before anything is charged. No surprise bills, no fine print.

How is this different from Jobber or Housecall Pro?+

They're solid tools, and they proved out what this kind of software should do. TradeDesk takes everything they do and does it better, cleaner, and faster. Your whole crew is included instead of per-seat fees, the books and mileage live in the app instead of a second subscription, and we handle the things nobody else does: mechanic's-lien deadlines, apprentice OJT hours, and lead-paint RRP paperwork. Same job, fewer taps, one app.

Do I have to install anything?+

There is a native iPhone app, and it is in beta right now: we send you the link once your account is set up. It also runs in any browser on your phone, tablet or computer, so you can start on the web today and move over to the app whenever you want. Everything stays in sync between the truck and the office either way.

Can my crew use it too?+

Yes. Add your whole crew at no extra cost. Employees get permission-gated access: they see their schedule, clock in on site, and log materials, without seeing your books.

How do payments work?+

Card payments run through Stripe. Take a deposit the moment the estimate is signed, and take final payment right off the invoice, and the money deposits straight to your bank.

What about taxes and liens?+

Drives log themselves, receipts take one photo, and the deduction engine compares mileage vs. actual for you. Subcontractor totals stay organized for your accountant. Lien deadlines surface before they become problems.

Can I get my data out?+

Everything you enter (clients, jobs, invoices, books) is yours and stays visible in the app from day one. You can pull clean, tax-ready exports and bulk invoice downloads anytime, month after month, plus a full year-end tax package when it counts. Your books stay current and ready whenever you are.

I'm switching from another app. Can I bring my data?+

Yes. Export your clients and open jobs from your current tool as a CSV, send it over, and we'll load it for you at no charge. You don't have to retype three years of work to try something new.

I'm not techy. How long to get going?+

A few minutes on your phone. Add your business name and you can build your first real estimate on the spot. No setup call, no training, no manual. If you can text a photo, you can run TradeDesk.

What happens to my data if I leave?+

It's your data, and we don't hold it hostage. You can pull clean, tax-ready exports and bulk invoice downloads before you go. Nothing gets deleted out from under you. Leave whenever you want, with your books in hand.

Is my data safe in there?+

Everything is encrypted on the way to us and while it sits on the server, and the servers are in the United States. Card payments run through your own Stripe account, so a full card number never touches TradeDesk. And when you hand your phone to a client to sign, Face ID locks the app to the signing screen, so they see the proposal and nothing else. The details are in our Privacy Policy.

Does TradeDesk work without internet?+

Yes. TradeDesk is built offline-first, so you can price a job, build the estimate and capture a signature in a basement or a dead zone with no bars at all. It syncs the moment you are back on signal. Most of these tools just spin.

Is this tax or legal advice?+

No, and we won't pretend it is. TradeDesk keeps your records clean and surfaces the paperwork and deadlines that matter (mileage, receipts, lien dates, RRP forms) so you and your accountant or attorney have what you need. It's the organized shoebox, not the CPA or the lawyer.

Not ready to sign up?

Then don't. Ask first.

TradeDesk is two people: me and my wife. No sales team, no call center, nobody whose job is to talk you into anything. Send the question and you get an answer from one of the two of us.