Who It's For

Who TradeGOAT Is For

By Travis Evans, Founder of TradeGOAT · 20+ years in the trades

I built TradeGOAT for a company that looks a lot like mine. Evans Elevator has a few trucks, a handful of guys in the field, and one office that keeps the whole thing moving. That's the shop I had in my head on every screen, because it's the one I run every day.

If that sounds like your company, this is who it's for. The trade doesn't matter much. Elevator, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, it's the same shape of business underneath: you bid the work, somebody signs, you send people out, and at the end you find out whether it paid.

The owner who still bids the work

In a shop this size the owner is usually the one pricing jobs, and a lot of it lives in his head. TradeGOAT starts from the proposal you already send. You upload your Word or PDF, it marks the spots that change from job to job, and the rest stays in your words. When the customer signs, the job is created and the sold price on it is locked, so the number you promised is the number the office works from.

The one person running the office

Most shops I know have one person holding the office together, and sometimes that person is married to the owner. They're the ones chasing hours at the end of the week and asking a tech what happened on a call. In TradeGOAT the crew clocks in and out from their phones, and the week arrives as a timecard per person with anything odd flagged. The office asks about the few that need a question and approves the rest. When payroll needs the week, the export carries hours only, never anybody's pay rate.

The guys in the truck

A tech doesn't want another program to learn. He opens the ticket on the job from his phone, writes up the work, and finishes it right there, and it lands on the job where the office can see it. A receipt from the supply house goes on that same job with a photo and an amount, so it isn't riding around in a cup holder until Friday.

The owner at the end of the job

This is the part I built it for. 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 made money while you still remember the job.

Who it probably isn't for

If your company has its own IT staff and a dedicated estimator for every trade you run, you likely already have software built for that size, and you should keep it. TradeGOAT is for the shop where the same few people handle the work from the first price to the last invoice, and where every hour spent on paperwork comes out of somebody's evening.

If that's your shop, you can see how it would fit at thetradegoat.com.