This didn't start with a builder complaining about being underpaid. It started with a loft conversion at my own house, and a piece of work I asked for that never reached the bill.
The job was a big one and it ran for weeks. Partway through I asked him to sort the water pressure — the new shower was going in up in the loft, and there wasn't enough pressure to get water up there properly. He agreed on the spot. It was a fair request and he was happy to do it.
Then he forgot. He was running two or three other loft conversions at the same time, and I'd asked him standing on a landing with nothing written down.
And I forgot too. I'd asked for it, he'd agreed to it, and neither of us thought about it again.
It surfaced near the end of the build, when the shower went in and the pressure was exactly what it had always been. By then the job was nearly finished and the price had settled in both our heads, which made raising it awkward for the two of us rather than just one.
Nobody was difficult. There was no argument, because there was nothing to argue about — the whole thing had evaporated between two people who each had other things on their minds.
I'd assumed unbilled extras were a story about awkward customers refusing to pay. Sometimes they are. But that wasn't what happened to me, and the more trades I've asked since, the less common that version turns out to be.
What actually happens is quieter. It gets forgotten. Or it's remembered too late, when the invoice has grown so far past the quote that the builder knocks money off his own bill rather than have the conversation.
That last one is the one I keep coming back to. It isn't a paperwork failure, it's a timing problem. £310 agreed on the day the rot is found costs a customer nothing — they can see the hole, they asked for it sorting. The same £310 buried in a final invoice six weeks later feels like being had.
So I built something deliberately narrow. Not another quoting app, not another job management system with variations buried three menus deep. One thing: get the extra written down, priced and agreed in the thirty seconds while everyone is still standing over it.
I won't tell you this replaces your job management software, because it doesn't. I won't claim numbers I haven't measured. And I'll tell you when you don't need it — if you're on your own doing short jobs for people you've known for years, a text message does this for free, and I'd rather say so than take your money.
Early, and building it in south east London. The whole chain works and it's been tested on real phones rather than in a browser on a desk. No firm has run a full job through it yet — you'd be among the first, and I'd rather say that plainly than have you find out.
If you'd like to be one of them, or you just want to tell me I've got it wrong, I'd like to hear it.