Booked from a text message.
The crew gets the day. The invoice writes itself.
Wendy Marsh Sun, 7:42 pm
Could you do the windows Thursday morning? Gate code 4417, dog in the yard.
Read from that message
- When
- Thu, Aug 6 · 9am
- Access
- gate code 4417
- Pet
- dog
Book Thu, Aug 6 · 9am Draft reply
Nothing has gone to Wendy. CrewDocket drafts — you press send.
I clean windows in Collingwood. This runs my company every day.
The problem
It’s Sunday night. You’ve got a text from a customer about Thursday, a job you did on Wednesday that hasn’t been invoiced, and no idea what you owe the guy who did it.
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A text about Thursday
in your phone
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Wednesday’s job, not invoiced
in your head
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What you owe the man who did it
in a notebook in the truck
None of that is on a screen. It’s in your head, your phone, and a notebook in the truck.
That’s the job CrewDocket does.
A customer texts. You end up with a booked job.
What happens between the message landing and the money arriving.
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What the engine returns
Read against Wed 8 Jul
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2:00 pm
“next thursday?”
Thu, Jul 16
“Next” skips the one this week.
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2:00 pm
“friday morning would be perfect”
Fri, Jul 10 · 9am
Morning is nine, and it reads as a yes.
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7:02 pm
“come at 9am?”
Thu, Jul 9 · 9am
Sent after nine, so nine means tomorrow.
Drawn, not a screenshot. Three lines lifted from the 249-case suite, printed beside the answer each one is pinned to. Step one
It reads the text the way a dispatcher would
Not keywords — the sentence. What day they mean, what time, and what they’re after: book, move it, cancel, a price, where’s the crew. It reads “tomorrow” against when the message was sent, so a text that landed at eleven last night doesn’t book the wrong day. The gate code, the dog and the side door come out with it.
249 automated checks hold that engine to its answers, and they run in about a second.
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A drawing, not a screenshot. The stops are made up. Step two
The crew gets the day, with the notes attached
One tap turns that message into a job, and it lands on the day sheet — every stop in the order you set, the weather up top, the gate code and the dog riding with the stop they belong to. The crew works down it: on my way, start, done. You set that order, because there’s no route solver under this and I’d rather say so than sell you one I didn’t build.
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A drawing, not a screenshot. The prices are made up. They accept. The crew marks it done.
Invoice #1041 · R. Caldwell
Thu, Aug 6
- Exterior + screens 310.00
- Gutters cleared 95.00
- Subtotal 405.00
- HST 13% 52.65
- Total due $457.65
Goes out as a link. E-transfer needs no setup at either end.
Drawn, not a screenshot. Same imagined job as the quote above, so the figures are made up — the 13% is the real rate the software applies. Step three
The money follows the work without you retyping it
A quote goes out as a link with up to three packages and tickable extras, so the customer talks themselves up a tier instead of you haggling down one. When they accept, the server prices it from its own copy — the link can’t name its own price.
Finishing the job writes the invoice. They pay by e-transfer, or by card if you’ve connected Stripe. No account, no app, no password at their end.
Who’s behind it, and why you’d believe any of this
I clean windows in Collingwood. I built this because the software I was paying for was made by people who had never stood in a driveway wondering whether the guy had actually done the back of the house.
Everything on this page runs my company — the real book, not a pilot. My crew’s day comes off the day sheet, my customers get their quotes as links out of it, and on Friday it works out what I owe everybody. If it breaks, my week breaks. That’s the whole quality-control story.
Four things I can prove, and one I can’t
- Businesses running on it
- One Mine. I’d rather write that than a number I made up. The next ten I set up myself.
- Automated checks on the money and scheduling maths
- 5,799 Across 15 suites, all green when I counted on 3 August 2026. Anyone holding the code can run them and get the same answer.
- Checks on the text-reading engine alone
- 249 Each one a real sentence a customer might send, pinned to the answer it should give.
- How much of it you can go and check yourself
- All of it Every feature on this page is a file in a repository. So is the list of the ones that aren’t.
- Customers telling you it’s good
- None yet You’d be early. When there are reviews they’ll carry real names and real dates.
Buying software from a one-man shop is a real risk and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. What you get for it is the person who wrote it answering the phone.
What it costs
One price. Per business, not per person. Nothing held back for an add-on.
Not set yet
Per business. Unlimited crew. All of it.
Canadian dollars, month to month. I haven’t settled on the figure yet, and a guess is a promise I’d have to break. Ask me and you get the real one.
Everything is in it — texting, quotes, invoices, the day sheet, crew pay, the lot. The full list is the next section, and so is the list of what isn’t built. Read the second one first.
How you actually get billed. There’s no subscription system and nothing has your card. I invoice you from CrewDocket itself, once a month — which is also the fastest way to see exactly what your own customers will receive.
What’s in it
What you get. Then what you don’t.
Talking to customers
- Texting
- Two-way SMS from your own number, beside that customer’s jobs and debts.
- Regulars
- Every eight weeks, this service, this price. It never books by itself.
- Seasonal campaigns
- Text a whole list at once. Opt-out sticks to the number, not the record.
The day
- The day sheet
- Every stop in the order you set, weather up top, access notes attached.
- Job photos
- Before and after, shrunk on the phone, GPS stripped before they leave it.
Getting paid
- Quotes
- Three packages and tickable extras on one link. The server prices it.
- Invoicing
- Finishing a job writes it. E-transfer needs no setup. Cards need your Stripe.
- Chasing money
- Who owes you, whose quote went quiet, whose regular lapsed. Worst first.
Where the money went
- Crew pay
- Rates, commission, cash collected, one statement per person as a spreadsheet.
- Profit per job
- Gross: what came in, minus the crew cut and the sales cut. By client or person.
What isn’t in it
Printed here so you find out now instead of in week three.
- Bringing your old list in Not built
- No import tool. We type your clients in together on the setup call.
- Saving work with no signal Partly
- The day reads with no bars. Marking one done needs signal, and says so if not.
- Notifications on a closed phone Not built
- None. Alerts land while the app is open; the day sheet gets texted out.
- Crew tracking Not planned
- Not built, not planned. It never asks for a location.
- Route optimisation Not built
- You order the run. One tap hands it to your maps app. No solver underneath.
- Tax outside HST Not built
- HST only. BC and Saskatchewan need two taxes on different bases. Not built.
- Customers booking themselves Deliberate
- They accept and pay from a link. They can’t touch your calendar. Deliberate.
- Accounting integrations Not built
- None. No QuickBooks, no Xero. Reports come out as CSV and open in anything.
How it actually works
The practical questions. The ones about trust are over here.
What do I need to run it?
A phone and a browser. It adds to a home screen like an app, but there’s nothing to download from a store and nothing to update. Your crew sign in on their own phones.
Do my customers need an app or an account?
No. They get a link. They open the quote, pick a package, tick the extras they want, accept it and pay — no password, no install, nothing to sign up for. Invoices work the same way.
Whose phone number do the texts come from?
Yours. You get your own number as part of setup, and replies land back in the app beside that customer’s history. Carrier registration for business texting in Canada takes a few days, and it starts when you sign rather than when you go live — nothing in software makes that queue shorter, so I’d rather you hear it from me first.
How do I actually get paid?
E-transfer works from day one — your address prints on the invoice, there’s nothing to set up and nothing comes out of it. If you want card payments you connect your own Stripe account and each invoice gets a pay link; when it’s paid, the invoice marks itself off. Card fees are Stripe’s and go to Stripe, not to me.
Where is my data stored?
Ask me on the call and I’ll tell you exactly where your setup sits, because it depends on when you come on board. I’m not printing one blanket answer here that might not be true for you.
The questions you’d ask me on the phone
Is it going to start texting my customers on its own?
No, and it can’t — there’s no scheduler in it. The job that used to sweep threads and send texts was deleted and left un-exported, so a routine deploy can’t quietly bring it back. Every text this has ever sent went because a person pressed the button.
What happens to my book if I stop paying?
You take it with you. Clients, receivables, tax figures, crew statements, the roster — all out as spreadsheets, today, without asking me. What I can’t claim yet is one button: right now it’s six screens, and a whole-book export is being built. No fee, and no call you have to sit through.
Half my jobs have no signal. Does it work in a dead spot?
Partly, and here’s which parts. The crew can read the whole day — stops, addresses, services, access notes — with no bars at all, and photos taken offline upload themselves later. Marking a job done needs signal, and if a change doesn’t save the app says so rather than showing a tick and losing the work.
You’re one guy. What if you get hit by a bus?
Then you’d have your data and you would not have the software. That’s the real shape of buying from one person and I’m not going to dress it up. It’s also why there’s no contract, no minimum term and nothing to cancel out of.
Ten operators. I set each one up myself.
We do it on a call — your services, your prices, your tax, your crew — and your book goes in before you start. You keep the founding price for as long as you’re a customer.
Starting takes about a minute and puts your trade’s price list in for you. No card, no trial clock. The email button opens a note with what I need before a call.
What I don’t ask you for
- How you heard about me.
- Your estimated annual revenue.
- A credit card, to look at software you haven’t used yet.
- A countdown, or an offer that expires.
There’s no sales team here to hand you to, and I won’t chase you. Whenever you’re ready, it’s me on the other end. — Sam, Collingwood