I've been in the trades long enough to know one thing with absolute certainty: the business side of contracting is broken.
Not the work itself. The work is fine. You learn a trade, you get good at it, you build something real with your hands every day. That part works.
It's everything else. The quoting at 9 PM. The invoicing on Saturday. The spreadsheet you built three years ago that's held together with prayer and conditional formatting. The price book from last quarter that just cost you $400 on a panel upgrade because copper moved again.
That's why I built Pilot for Trades.
The Problem Nobody's Solving
There are hundreds of contractor software tools on the market. I've tried most of them. Here's what I found:
The enterprise platforms (ServiceTitan, FieldEdge) cost $300+/month and are built for companies with 50 trucks and a dedicated office staff. If you're running a 1–5 person shop, you don't need a dispatch command center — you need a tool that helps you build a quote in the truck between jobs.
The lightweight tools (Jobber, Housecall Pro) handle scheduling but not real quoting. They can't tell you your margin on a job. They don't understand that a 200-amp panel upgrade has different material requirements than a service call.
The generic business tools (QuickBooks, FreshBooks) are accounting tools pretending to be field ops tools. They're great at books. They're terrible at everything that happens between pulling into the driveway and sending the invoice.
None of them let you build a quote by talking. None of them know what NEC 2023 says about conductor ampacity. None of them track your job profitability in real time.
So I built one that does.
What Pilot Actually Is
Pilot for Trades is an AI-powered platform that handles the business side of running a trade contracting shop. Quoting, dispatch, customer communications, invoicing, profitability tracking, and QuickBooks sync — in one tool built specifically for electricians, plumbers, and HVAC contractors.
The defining feature: voice-first operation.
You talk to Pilot the way you'd talk to a knowledgeable colleague standing next to you. "Quote a 200-amp panel upgrade, Square D QO, 42 spaces, 150 feet of 2/0 copper." Pilot builds the estimate — materials at today's prices, labor at your rates, markup at your margin target — while you're still on-site.
No typing. No spreadsheets. No "I'll send you the estimate tonight." The estimate exists before you leave the driveway.
Why Voice-First Changes Everything
Contractors don't work at desks. You work in attics, crawl spaces, rooftops, and basements. Your hands are occupied. Your phone is in your pocket. The last thing you want to do after a 10-hour day is sit down and type up quotes.
Voice-first means the tool works the way you already work. Between jobs, driving to the next call, standing in front of the panel — you describe what you see, and the software does the rest.
This isn't a gimmick. It's the core architecture. Every feature in Pilot is designed to work by voice, by tap, or by both. But voice is the primary interface because that's how tradespeople communicate — quickly, precisely, in the shorthand of their trade.
Pilot speaks electrician. It speaks plumber. It speaks HVAC. Not generic "contractor language" — actual trade terminology, part numbers, and code references.
The Features That Matter
I'll be direct about what Pilot does, because I know contractors hate marketing fluff:
Voice AI Quoting — Describe the job out loud. Pilot generates a full line-item estimate with current material pricing, your labor rates, and your markup. Works for panel upgrades, repipes, system replacements, service calls — anything you quote.
Real-Time Material Pricing — Your estimates use today's prices, not last month's. When copper spikes 15% or a manufacturer updates their catalog, your quotes automatically reflect reality.
Smart Dispatch Board — Route techs by location, manage appointment windows, handle emergency calls, and auto-notify customers with real-time ETAs. Built for the chaos of seasonal surges.
Live Job Profitability — Track materials, labor, and expenses against the quoted price as the job happens. Not three weeks later when you reconcile invoices. Know your margin on every job, every day.
Customer Communications — Automated appointment confirmations, on-my-way notifications, invoice delivery, and payment reminders. Always preview-before-send. No robocall energy — professional, human-feeling messages.
QuickBooks Online Sync — Bi-directional. Invoices, payments, and customer records push to QuickBooks automatically. Your bookkeeper sees everything without you touching it.
Offline Operation — Works in basements, attics, and dead zones. Everything syncs when you get signal back. No lost work, ever.
Who This Is For
Pilot is built for the solo contractor and the small team — 1 to 15 people. The operators who don't have a dedicated office manager, dispatcher, or bookkeeper. The ones doing the work AND running the business.
If you're spending 15+ hours a week on admin, losing money because your quotes use stale pricing, or flying blind on job profitability — Pilot is built to solve exactly those problems.
We're starting with electrical contractors as our launch vertical, with plumbing and HVAC following shortly after. The Voice AI already understands all three trades, and the platform architecture supports trade-specific features from day one.
What It Costs
$149/month for the Starter plan. Up to 5 users. Every feature listed above.
I know $149/month sounds like a real line item. Here's the math: if Pilot saves you 15 hours a week in admin time — and based on our testing, it does — that's $750/week at a $50/hour billable rate. $3,000/month in recovered revenue for a $149 investment. The ROI isn't theoretical. It's arithmetic.
For the first 50 customers, we're offering Beta Founder access: 3 months free, direct access to me as the founder, and priority input on the product roadmap. You help shape the tool; you get it before anyone else.
Why I'm Building This
I didn't start this company because I thought the world needed another SaaS product. I started it because I watched talented tradespeople lose money, lose time, and lose their evenings to administrative friction that software should have solved a decade ago.
The trades are a $500 billion industry running on spreadsheets and sticky notes. That's not a technology gap — it's a respect gap. Nobody's built software that genuinely respects how tradespeople work. Software that works in the field, not just in the office. Software that speaks your language, literally.
Pilot for Trades is that software.
Get Early Access
We're in the final stretch before launch. If you're an electrician, plumber, or HVAC contractor and you want early access:
Let's build this together.
— Tom
