What TradeGOAT Is
What TradeGOAT Is: The Software I Run My Elevator Company On
I own an elevator company in Crandall, Texas, and I've been in the trade a little over twenty years. For most of that time the work in the field was the part I understood and the paperwork was the part that ran me. Proposals got written late at night. Hours came in on scraps of paper. Receipts lived in the truck until somebody asked about them.
TradeGOAT is the software I built to fix that, and it's what Evans Elevator runs on today. It holds the office half and the field half of the company in one place, so the person writing the proposal and the tech standing in the machine room are looking at the same job. You can find it at thetradegoat.com.
It starts with the paperwork you already have
Most software wants you to rebuild your proposal inside its boxes before it does anything for you. TradeGOAT goes the other way. You hand it the proposal you already send, and it turns that document into your template, with your scope language, your look and your payment terms carried over.
Those payment terms don't just sit on the page. When you build a proposal from that template, the terms become the actual billing schedule in real dollars, split the way your document splits them. If your terms say 30 percent at signing, the tool shows you that dollar amount on that job.
Then the job lives in one place
Once a proposal is signed, the job is where everything about that work collects. Here's what that looks like in a normal week at my company:
- A tech opens the ticket for the job on his phone, writes up the work, and finishes it right there. The office sees it post to the job without anybody picking up the phone.
- The crew clocks in and out from their phones, and each punch carries a location stamp. At the end of the week the office gets timecards per person, with anything odd flagged, and approves them.
- Somebody buys a part at the supply house, snaps a photo of the receipt, puts in the amount, and it lands on that job.
- When the payroll person needs hours, they export them. The export carries hours only, never anybody's wages.
None of that needs a separate app. The phone side installs to the home screen like any other app, and it's the same account the office is signed into.
And it tells you what the job made
The part I care about most is the end of the job. The scorecard puts the hours you quoted next to the hours the crew actually clocked, priced at your own rates. You find out whether the job paid the way you thought it would, and you find out on the job itself instead of months later in a spreadsheet.
I didn't build it for elevators alone. It reads the proposal you send, whatever trade you're in, and works from your documents rather than mine. If you run a shop that bids work and sends people out to do it, it was built with you in mind, and the best way to see whether it fits is to drive the demo for a few minutes.
See what your company would look like in one place
TradeGOAT runs proposals, jobs, tickets, the crew's hours and what every job made, on the documents you already use.
Start free — 90 days of Pro →We hand you the top tier for ninety days, because that is a real test of how well the tool fits your company. Every feature, up to 25 users, and we load your documents with you. After that, the first 25 companies in pay half price on whatever plan they choose, for as long as they use the tool. A company name and an email is the entire signup — no credit card. Or drive the demo first.