Trade software for managing jobs, quotes and invoices
The enquiry is on a notepad, the price is in a text message, the diary is on the kitchen wall and the invoice happens on Sunday night. Good trade software collapses all four into one record, so the job you quoted on Monday is the job your engineer opens on Thursday and the invoice that goes out on Friday.
Opsler runs that whole line for UK trade businesses — enquiries, customers and sites, quotes off your own price book, a diary your team can be dropped onto, job cards in the field and VAT invoices at the end. Two seats are free permanently. Above two people the price is $25 a seat a month, with no minimum to meet and nothing above it to be upsold into.
- 2 seats
- free, no expiry
- 50 jobs
- a month on free
- $25
- per seat, per month
- 14 days
- trial, no card
Trade-business software—not financial trading software
One word, two industries. Half of what ranks for “trade software” is built for people trading shares and currency pairs. This page is for people in the trades — a boiler swap in Bolton, a consumer unit in Croydon, a fortnightly clean in Leeds.
So, plainly: trade software here means the administration your business runs on. Customers and their addresses. Quotes that get accepted. A diary that says who is where. The record of what actually happened on site. The invoice that follows it. Some people call it trades software, some call it business software for tradespeople, and the search box gets all of it. The product underneath is the same, and so is the reason to buy it: the hours your evenings currently lose to re-typing what already exists somewhere else.
What follows is that line in order — enquiry, quote, diary, job card, invoice — with the figures attached at each step, so you can hold it up against whatever else is on your shortlist.
Which trades and team sizes this page serves
Service and maintenance trades: plumbing and heating, electrical, air conditioning and refrigeration, cleaning, appliance repair, pest control, security and CCTV, and the general maintenance firms that do a bit of everything. If the shape of your week is a customer, an address, a visit and an invoice, this is software for trades built around exactly that shape — trades software for the work, rather than a general business tool you have to bend into position first.
Pick your trade when you sign up and the account already speaks it. Service calls and maintenance visits for a heating engineer, treatments and follow-ups for pest control, installs and repairs for appliance work — the job types and the service catalogue arrive in your language rather than as an empty database somebody has to fill in over a fortnight. You are dispatching in week one.
On team size, the free plan is deliberately two seats — one admin, one engineer — because that is the real shape of a sole trader who has someone doing the books, not a single-user tier that falls over the day you take on help. Above that, seats are $25 each with no minimum and no band to jump, and the same number holds whether you run three vans or fifty. A growing firm is the case this pricing is built for: your tenth engineer costs what your second one did.
Each trade also has its own page with the detail that only matters to that trade — plumbing, electrical and heating and air conditioning — and this page is the cross-trade view that sits above them, for the multi-trade firm whose team does not divide neatly into one.
Connect enquiries, customers and sites
The second call from a customer should be easier than the first. In Opsler an enquiry becomes a customer record with its service address and job history attached, so when they ring back in eighteen months about the same boiler, the engineer opens what was done last time instead of asking.
Requests that come in out of hours land as pending, waiting for someone to approve or decline them; approve one and it becomes a job with the customer, address and detail already on it. The nine-o’clock-at-night enquiry is on the board by morning rather than on a notepad in the van.
Addresses travel on the job itself, which is what makes this work for landlords, letting agents and facilities customers: one account, many properties, each job landing at the right door with its own notes. That is the practical difference between job management software for tradesmen and a calendar — the history is attached to the place, not to whoever happened to go last time.
Create quotes and move approved work forward
Quotes come off your own price book — your labour rates, your parts, your margins — so the number that goes out is the number you meant to charge, at eleven at night when nobody is checking your arithmetic.
Send one price, or send three tiers on the same quote and let the customer choose. Three prices change the question they are answering — no longer whether to go ahead, but which option to take — and that is the cheapest upsell in this trade. The customer who was always going to pick the middle one never gets a reason to ring somebody else for a second price.
Approval happens on one page in the customer’s own browser. They enter a one-time code sent to their email, pick their tier, and sign — typed or drawn. Nothing for them to register for, nothing to remember, no paperwork going back and forth in the post. What you keep is a record of who approved, which option they took and when, and the approved quote converts into a scheduled job with its lines intact.
Schedule jobs and assign field staff
One drag-and-drop board holds the whole firm. Drag a job onto a day and a person and it is booked, with its customer, address, scope and history along for the ride. A multi-trade business runs one diary, not one per trade, which is the single biggest reason a two-van outfit and a twelve-van outfit can use the same tradesman job management software without either of them outgrowing it.
Book the same engineer twice and Opsler tells you while it is still a scheduling problem — not at half past eight when two customers are both waiting in.
On Pro, route optimisation is an Opsler feature: hand a dispatcher a scattered day and it comes back in the right driving order, with any appointment you committed to staying exactly where you committed it. A dispatcher runs it when the day looks wrong; it does not quietly rearrange the board behind you. On a six-drop day across a city that is the difference between finishing at four and finishing at six.
The diary in full detail — capacity, reassignment, the week view — is on UK job management software.
Use job cards and field updates
The job card is what your engineer opens at the door: the address, the scope, the notes, and what was done at that property last time. No phone call to the office to work out which flat, which boiler and which entry code.
Photos, notes, time and materials attach to the record as the work happens. Parts come off van stock, so the inventory stays honest and you know what the job cost you before you price the invoice. Before-and-after photos taken on the day are also the fastest way to close an argument three weeks later.
Status moves through the day on Pro — on the way, arrived, done — which covers the two calls your office fields all afternoon: whether anybody is on the way, and whether they have got there. Both are answered off the screen rather than by ringing the van and interrupting the work.
The same records open on a phone, a tablet or the office laptop, which is what stops trades software becoming an office system that the field never touches. The mobile side in full is on the UK tradesman app page.
Create invoices and track them through to paid
The invoice is built from the completed job, carrying the lines you quoted, the materials actually used and the time recorded. It is the work that happened, not a reconstruction of it on a Sunday evening with a pile of photos and a bad memory.
VAT sits on the line where it belongs. You set your tax types up once, mark the one you use as default, and it applies as quotes and invoices are built — so a VAT-registered firm sends out a properly itemised invoice without anyone doing percentages by hand.
Then the status field, which is the most underrated thing in this whole category: every invoice is tracked from raised through to paid, and the ones that are not paid are a one-click list rather than a feeling. Firms that can see their unpaid invoices collect faster than firms that cannot, and the gap compounds every single month you run.
Installs from the browser, works in a cellar, and your customer downloads nothing
Open Opsler in a supported browser on a phone, a tablet or the office laptop and you install it from there, full-screen, with its own icon. Nothing to search for, nothing to download, and nobody stuck three versions behind because they never tapped update — the whole team is on the same version the moment it reloads.
Under a floor, in a plant room, in a basement with no bars: the checklist, the photos, the notes, the signature and the invoice all carry on working with no signal at all, and sync themselves the moment the phone finds a network again. Your engineer closes the job standing next to the work, which is when a customer is most likely to pay on the spot.
On the customer’s side there is nothing to install. A link gets them to their quote, their visit and their invoice — no account, no password, no app — and they are emailed when a job is completed, rescheduled or cancelled. Every message is about something that is really in the diary, which is the kind customers actually read.
VAT, your accountant, and where the trade-specific pages take over
Two things a UK trade business wants to know before it commits: what happens to VAT, and what your bookkeeper gets at the end of the quarter.
VAT is configured once and then it is simply there — a tax type you set up with your rate, marked as your default, applied per line as quotes and invoices are built. Your books are in GBP and your invoices are itemised the way a UK customer expects to see them.
At quarter end, your invoices and payments come out as a CSV file in the format QuickBooks or Xero expects, so your accountant gets a clean import rather than a shoebox. One export, one import, no evening spent reading receipts aloud to somebody.
And if you came looking for one trade specifically, take the trade page: it carries the terminology, the job types and the detail that only apply to that work. This page is the cross-trade entry point — the one to send your business partner — and the trade pages are where the specifics live.
Trade software evaluation checklist
Eight questions worth putting to every product on your shortlist, with Opsler’s answers written out in full. Every piece of business software for tradespeople looks complete on a feature grid; these eight answers are what actually separate one piece of trade software from another.
| Ask every vendor | Opsler’s answer |
|---|---|
| Can two people run a real week on it for nothing? | Yes. The free Budding plan is 2 seats — one in the office, one on the tools — with 50 jobs a month, unlimited customers, 100 inventory items and one inventory location. It does not expire. |
| What does the sixth hire cost? | $25. Seats are priced one at a time with no minimum and nothing above Pro to be upgraded into, so growing the team never re-prices the product. |
| Does the quote the customer approved become the job? | Yes. An approved quote converts straight into a job with its line items intact — nothing retyped, so nothing mistyped. |
| Can one board hold every trade on the team? | Yes. Plumbers, sparks and cleaners sit on the same drag-and-drop diary, and booking one of them twice over is caught before anybody drives anywhere. |
| Does VAT sit on the invoice line? | Yes. Set your tax types up once, mark VAT as your default, and every quote and invoice line carries the right treatment without anyone doing sums at the end of the month. |
| What still works in a cellar with no signal? | The whole visit. Your engineer works the checklist, takes photos, gets the signature and raises the invoice underground, and it all uploads itself as soon as the signal comes back. |
| What does the customer have to install? | Nothing. They get a link — no account, no password, no app — to approve the quote, see the visit and pick up the invoice. |
| How long before you are dispatching real work? | Pick your trade at signup and the job types, service catalogue and language are already yours. The 14-day trial takes no card. |
Run one real job through it this week
Take the next enquiry that comes in, quote it from the price book, put it on the board, let the engineer close it on the phone and send the invoice. That is the whole test, it takes one job, and on the free Budding plan — 2 seats, 50 jobs a month, unlimited customers, no expiry — it costs nothing to find out. Pro is $25 a seat when you want the whole team on it, with a 14-day trial that takes no card.
Trade software questions
Trade software is the one system a UK trade business runs its week on: the customer and the address, the quote they approved, the day it is booked for, what the engineer did on site, and the invoice with VAT on it at the end. The honest test is whether you can answer "where does that job stand?" from one screen without ringing three people. Opsler does that across plumbing, electrical, heating and air-conditioning, cleaning, appliance repair, pest control and general maintenance work — two seats free permanently, then $25 per seat per month with no seat minimum. If you searched for stock or forex platforms, that is a different category entirely; this is field-service software for trades.
Three names, three zoom levels, one territory — which is exactly why buyers get stuck. Job management software for tradesmen describes the lifecycle of a single job, enquiry through to payment. A tradesman app is the delivery end: what your engineer holds on a wet Tuesday and what it does when the signal goes. Trade software is the level above both — the whole business across office and field, and the question of which product suits your particular trade. On Opsler the capability is the same in all three cases; only the emphasis changes. Know already that the lifecycle is your problem? Take the job management page. Is it the field team slowing you down? Take the tradesman app page. Weighing up tradesman job management software for the first time, with nothing bought yet? Stay here.
They share a word and nothing else. Trade-business software — this page — runs customers, quotes, diaries, job records and invoices for plumbers, electricians, heating engineers and cleaners. Stock and forex platforms run financial market positions. If it is the market you are after, you want a broker's platform. If it is a boiler in Bolton and an invoice on Friday, you are in the right place.
Opsler publishes one number: $25 per seat per month, no seat minimum, no tier above it, and a 14-day trial that never asks for a card. Underneath that sits a free Budding plan — 2 seats, 50 jobs a month, unlimited customers, 100 inventory items and one inventory location, free forever — which is enough for a sole trader with an office half to run a genuine month before deciding anything. Most business software for tradespeople prices in bands, so your first employee costs you a plan rather than a seat. Here the fourth engineer costs the same as the first.
Choose a trade-specific page
UK job management software
The full enquiry-to-payment workflow
UK tradesman app
The phone end: job cards, photos, no-signal working
UK plumbing software
Plumbing and heating call-outs and installs
UK electrician software
Electrical contractors and domestic rewires
UK HVAC software
Heating, air conditioning and recurring servicing
UK cleaning business software
Contract cleaning and one-off deep cleans
UK maintenance scheduling software
Planned visits that book themselves
Pricing
$25/seat/month, free Budding plan
One system for every trade on your team
Enquiries, quotes, the diary, job cards and VAT invoices in one place. Free for two seats, $25 a seat after that, and a 14-day trial that never asks for a card.
Free forever on the Budding plan. No credit card required.