The office that never sleeps
Your whole office team,
in one app.
Soon every app will make invoices for free. What lasts is an office that does the work: it handles the admin and the customer messages, quotes jobs remotely, keeps the accounts, shows you how the business is doing, finds the cheapest prices, tells you which rules apply and markets the business, while you are on the tools. You do the trade. The app does the rest.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Every figure in this paper carries a source, a date and, for surveys, a sample size. Surveys run by companies that sell to the people surveyed are marked as vendor surveys. Where a number is our own arithmetic or our own aim, it says so. The numbered sources are in section 15.
Summary
The biggest problem a tradesperson has is the sheer amount of paperwork. Most do not use computers much, so they either pay someone to do the quotes, the books and the compliance, or they do it themselves at the kitchen table after work, or they do not do it at all. Quotes go out slowly or not at all, invoices are written on paper or in Word, and jobs go to whoever replied first.
Sleepless Tradesman gives a small trade business the office a bigger firm pays people for, in one app. Inside it are seven office jobs: admin and customer messages, remote quotes, an accountant, an insights analyst, a cheapest-price finder, a legislation and compliance advisor and a marketer. Beside them sit the office’s digital tools, such as calculators, so the physical kit of an office lives in the app too. The tradesperson talks to the app in their own words, by voice or by typing, and the app writes the work up.
In the UK alone there are 885,485 construction businesses, 78% of them with no employees, and about 768,000 self-employed construction workers(sources 1 and 2). From April 2026 HMRC’s Making Tax Digital rules begin pulling sole traders into quarterly digital reporting in three waves, 864,000 in the first (source 3). Only 13% of construction businesses use any AI today, the lowest share of any sector the ONS names (source 7).
Making a quote or an invoice is fast becoming a free feature of every app, so we do not sell documents. We sell the outcome: work won and evenings back. The app is live on iPhone and the web, works for every trade, and paying customers across several trades have come to it with no money spent on advertising. Sleepless Tradesman Ltd (company number 17538029, incorporated 23 October 2026) aims to reach 100 paying customers by the end of April 2027, launch on Android and file to HMRC when HMRC reopens access.
Mission
Take everything except the trade off the tradesperson’s plate, so they can focus on the skilled work only they can do.
Promise
Win more work. Get your evenings back.
Three-year goal
Users in at least 50 countries and revenue of at least £200,000 a month: about 4,350 paying customers at our planned plan mix (section 13).
Ten-year goal
5% of the world’s tradespeople running their business on the app. On the widest measure, the ILO’s 302 million construction workers, that is about 15 million; on self-employed tradespeople alone it is far fewer (source 15).
Why Small Firms Lose Work
Why we exist. Tradespeople quote too slowly and lose the job. They cannot afford the office staff a bigger company has, so the quote waits until the evening, and the customer has often heard from someone else by then. A lot of tradespeople still write invoices on paper or in Word, which looks unprofessional and costs them customers.
Then there is the site visit. A job 45 miles away may be worth doing, but when the customer is getting five or six quotes, the drive is a gamble: first the tradesperson has to work out whether the customer will go ahead at all, then spend half a day to find out. Remote quoting, where the app collects the customer’s photos and answers and researches the prices, is one of the reasons this company exists. The tradesperson should only travel for work they have won.
5h 20m
a week on quotes, invoices and chasing payments, much of it evenings and weekends
NOW Report, 140 UK tradespeople, June 2026, vendor survey (8)
77%
of small business owners do their admin in the evenings, nearly half at weekends
HeyBRB, 167 owner-operators, March 2026, vendor survey, not trades only (9)
38%
of UK adults who asked a tradesperson for a quote never heard back, despite chasing
HomeServe and Opinium, 2,000 UK adults, March 2023 (10)
86 hrs
a year spent chasing late invoices by business owners affected by late payment
Department for Business and Trade, March 2026 (11)
Tradespeople say the same in their own words. On a UK joinery forum, members describe doing quotes “after everyone’s gone to bed” because it is the only quiet time, and admin as something they have lost interest in even though they know it is necessary. A sole-trader electrician looking for job software said he was running himself into the ground with paperwork, could not afford to employ anyone, and had to adjust every quote, invoice and receipt template by hand (forum posts, 2022; source 28 and research notes). Homeowners see it from the other side: one Mumsnet poster had ten firms visit and received two quotes back (source 29). Builders in the FMB’s own magazine now report customers arriving with a ChatGPT price and asking why the quote is higher, which makes a fast, itemised, defensible quote more valuable, not less (source 30).
What makes a tradesperson look for help
Knowing that other people are using apps now. A busy season. A customer who thinks they are unprofessional. A letter from HMRC about Making Tax Digital. Taking on a first employee. Losing jobs. The problem is felt daily, with every quote, every invoice and every receipt, and it is growing: customers want more documentation, and there is more regulation to comply with each year.
Who feels it most: sole traders and small teams, and builders first, because they price many items and the more complex, more artistic jobs where quoting becomes a nightmare. Some of the admin is optional, such as whether to give a written quote at all. Making Tax Digital, compliance and getting paid are not.
The counter-evidence, stated plainly
Not every tradesperson is short of work. In Screwfix’s 2024 survey of 1,018 trade customers, 75% had work planned six months ahead, and administration ranked fourth among their worries (47%) behind taxes (60%), skilled staff (58%) and the housing market (48%) (source 13). The Home Builders Federation says AI “cannot lay bricks, install roof trusses or plaster walls” and only 6% of construction firms expect AI to cut headcount (source 14). We agree with both. The office work is the part the app takes; the trade stays with the tradesperson. For the fully booked, the promise that lands is the evenings back.
The UK Market, Then the World
Construction has more businesses than any other UK sector, and almost all of them are tiny. The Department for Business and Trade counts 885,485 construction businesses at the start of 2025, 78.1% with no employees. Of those, 519,670 are in specialised construction: electricians, plumbers, heating engineers, joiners, plasterers, decorators and roofers (source 1). The ONS counts 767,969 self-employed and 1,292,315 employed construction workers in the second quarter of 2026 (source 2).
885,485
UK construction businesses, start of 2025
DBT Business Population Estimates 2025 (1)
78%
of them have no employees
DBT BPE 2025, Table 4 (1)
519,670
specialised trade businesses (SIC 43)
DBT BPE 2025, Table 6 (1)
767,969
self-employed construction workers, Q2 2026
ONS Labour Force Survey EMP14 via BCIS (2)
Why now in the UK: Making Tax Digital for Income Tax
- April 2026: 864,000 sole traders and landlords with income over £50,000 must keep digital records and send quarterly updates (HMRC, 5 February 2026; source 3).
- April 2027: around 1,077,000 more, with income over £30,000 (HMRC, 5 October 2026; source 4).
- April 2028: approximately 970,000 more, with income over £20,000 (HMRC, 24 March 2026; source 5).
By 2028 nearly every full-time sole-trader tradesperson is in scope. HMRC’s figures cover all sole traders and landlords; no trades-only count exists.
They are starting from a long way back. In a Sage and IPSE survey of 1,000 UK sole traders, 33% keep their records on pen and paper and only 10% use cloud accounting software; 45% named software cost as a concern (vendor survey; source 6). One in five UK tradespeople uses job management software (ToolTime, 1,000 tradespeople, 2024, vendor survey; source 12). And the ONS finds 13% of construction businesses use any AI, against 28% of all firms with up to nine staff and 58% in information and communication (38,637 responses, June 2026; source 7). That is headroom, and it is also a hard-to-convert audience: cost is the constraint the ONS reports across every size band.
Then the world. The ILO’s modelled estimates put world construction employment at about 302 million in 2025, 8.4% of everyone in work, up from 253 million in 2018 (source 15). No published count of self-employed tradespeople worldwide exists, so the table below shows only the countries where we have read the figure on a source page. The gaps are real gaps, not omissions.
| Country | Working in construction | Self-employed or small firms |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 2.06M | 767,969 self-employed; 885,485 businesses, 78% with no employees |
| United States | 12.1M | Just under 23% self-employed, over 2.5M |
| EU27 | 14.9M | Self-employed count not found |
| Germany | 2.6M | 1,038,126 Handwerk businesses (all crafts) |
| France | Not found | 433,000 self-employed (2022 data); 512,000 artisan firms |
| Spain | Not found | 419,956 self-employed; 86% of all self-employed have no staff |
| Canada | Not found | 255,892 non-employer and 159,514 employer construction firms |
| New Zealand | 302,000 | 60,300 self-employed with no employees |
| Brazil | 7.4M | Mostly informal own-account (2023 profile) |
| Saudi Arabia | 3.4M | Mostly employed labour in contracting firms |
| World | 302M | No published global count of self-employed tradespeople |
Sources 16 to 24. “Secondary” means a reputable write-up of an official figure where the original page could not be opened. India, Japan, Australia and Ireland were not verified and are left out. Saudi construction is overwhelmingly employed migrant labour inside contracting firms, so the sole-trader segment is not visible in its counts.
Why now abroad: e-invoicing mandates, with an honest caveat
Digital invoicing is becoming law across our language markets. Germany requires every business to issue structured e-invoices from 1 January 2028. France brings small and micro firms in on 1 September 2027. Spain’s self-employed must comply by 6 October 2028. The UAE’s mandate reaches every business from 1 July 2027 (vendor and adviser pages; source 25). The caveat: these are business-to-business or VAT-scale rules, and most exclude invoices to households. Only the UK’s Making Tax Digital reaches sole traders by income, so the “regulation forces them to digitise” argument is strongest at home and must be made country by country abroad. Spain (419,956 self-employed in construction, 86% with no staff) and France (433,000 self-employed, 512,000 artisan firms) look the most like the UK market.
At £29.99 to £59.99 a month for a sole trader and from £100 a month for a team, the UK alone is a market worth several hundred million pounds a year in subscriptions. That is our arithmetic on the DBT business count, not a published figure, and it assumes nothing about materials: ordering through connected trade accounts is on the roadmap as a convenience for the tradesperson, not as a revenue line.
What Tradespeople Use Today
Most tradespeople use Word, Excel or Xero for quotes and invoices, WhatsApp for customers, a spreadsheet for prices and a shoebox or a phone camera roll for receipts. Xero costs £18 to £70 a month ex VAT; Word, Excel and WhatsApp cost nothing but time. A partner or the accountant does the books at the end of the year, if anyone does.
The software built for the trades so far is job management: forms to fill in and a list of tools. In the UK the job-management apps charge per user: Tradify £34 to £44, Powered Now £28 to £40 ex VAT, Fergus from £39, while ServiceM8 charges by job volume from a free plan to £269 a month and Jobber prices in US dollars (pricing pages, 30 October 2026; source 26). They are good at what they do. None of them does the office jobs for you, and none of them is built so you tell it what you want and it writes it up.
Being honest about the rivals
AI in these apps today writes text and answers phones. Tradify’s SmartWrite drafts descriptions on its Plus plan; ServiceM8’s Office Agent drafts emails, quotes and invoices for approval; Powered Now launched an AI receptionist from £29 a month in summer 2026; Jobber sells a $29 receptionist and takes voice commands; Fergus takes typed or spoken job updates; and Mucka, a UK app for heating and plumbing firms, offers an AI receptionist, spoken quotes and self-chasing invoices from £29 (sources 26 and 27). Checkatrade sells “AI job management tools” inside its £30 a month Approved membership and gives TradeMore away free. So voice input and AI-written quotes are not unique to us. What we have not found anywhere is one app that covers all seven office jobs: nobody else lists a materials price finder or a regulations and compliance advisor, and nobody else lets the customer send photos through a link so the job is quoted without a visit.
What tradespeople praise in these apps, in their reviews, is looking professional to customers and getting evenings back. What they attack is price rises, automatic renewals, lost data and support they cannot reach (Trustpilot UK, March to October 2026; source 28). Nobody asked for more AI. That tells us two things: the outcome we sell is the right one, and the way we bill and support people will matter as much as what the app can do.
Books are moving towards free: FreeAgent is free with a NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle account, Xero is 90% off for six months and QuickBooks’ sole trader plan is £1 a month for six months (source 26). Invoicing is on the same path. That is why the accountant is one of seven jobs in our office rather than the product.
Seven Office Jobs and the Tools
Tradespeople see admin as separate jobs: the quotes, the accounts, the marketing. We agree, which is why the app is one office that handles all of them. One office, seven jobs, no made-up staff. Each job is written as a job title, never as an invented person. A named persona promises a person, and when it slips the disappointment is personal. Messages to the tradesperson’s own customers go out in the business’s name and say plainly that an assistant wrote them.
Each job reports what it did. The line in quotes on each card is the kind of report a tradesperson sees, so the value is measured in enquiries answered, quotes accepted and pounds collected, not in documents produced. The status line says what is live today.
Admin and customer messages
Writes up invoices, answers new enquiries and drafts replies for WhatsApp, SMS or email. You send them from your own number, in your business name.
“Answered 9 enquiries while you were on site”
Live
Remote quotes
Sends the customer a link, collects photos and answers to the questions a surveyor would ask, and turns them into an itemised quote without a site visit.
“Sent 6 quotes, 2 accepted”
Live
Accountant
Reads receipts and supplier bills from a photo, tracks income and expenses, works out profit per job and prepares the quarterly Making Tax Digital figures for you or your accountant.
“Your quarter is ready to export”
Live; HMRC filing waits on HMRC
Insights analyst
Shows what each job earned, who owes you and what to charge, so decisions are made on numbers rather than a feeling at the end of the month.
“Your best-paying jobs this month were bathrooms”
Live; weekly reports next
Cheapest-price finder
Looks up material prices online, falls back to a price database when the web is quiet, and shows the cheapest option it found with the product code, ex VAT and inc VAT. Every price is labelled an estimate.
“Found the boiler parts £84 cheaper”
Live (Premium)
Legislation and compliance advisor
Tells you which regulations and certifications apply to the job in your country, and says so when it is not sure, rather than inventing a rule.
“Part P applies to this job”
Live
Marketer
Lists the business so local customers can find it and passes on homeowner briefs from our quote pages. Next: asks for a review when an invoice is paid and writes a social post when a job is finished.
“3 new reviews this month”
Partly live; reviews and posts next
Office digital tools
The calculators and the other kit an office keeps in a drawer: hourly rate, profit margin, material markup, labour cost, electrical load and more, in the app and on the website.
“Day rate for this job: £240”
Live
A new category: your whole office team, with AI
Job-management apps describe what is in the box. Accounting apps do the books for every kind of business. We are building one thing for one customer: the whole office team for a small trade business, so it runs like a well-organised firm while staying a one-van or five-van company. We want fewer tools and more done: a new tool only ships if it does an office job.
How a job flows through the office
A bathroom refit for a customer 40 miles away, from first message to the quarter’s figures, without a wasted trip.
1. Send the link
The customer enquires at 10pm on a Saturday. The app drafts a reply and sends a remote quote link. The customer gets the same questions a 9am Monday enquiry would.
2. Photos and answers
The app asks the questions a surveyor would, collects photos of the room, and hands over a job brief. No phone tag, no site visit yet.
3. The quote
From the brief and the photos the app writes an itemised quote with material prices, labelled as estimates, and flags that Part P applies to the electrics. The tradesperson checks it and sends it. They only drive out once the job is won.
4. The invoice
Accepted work becomes an invoice with the business's own branding and bank details, as a PDF. Card payment links are next on the roadmap.
5. Receipts and profit
Receipts from the merchant are photographed; the app reads them, books the expense and shows what the job actually earned.
6. The quarter and the review
The Making Tax Digital figures are ready to export for the tradesperson or their accountant. Next: once the invoice is paid, the app asks the customer for a review and drafts a post about the finished job.
Homeowners find us too
Homeowners describe a job on our quote pages and get a price range in minutes, then send the brief to local tradespeople who use the app. Every brief is a lead for a tradesperson. The homeowner pays nothing and we charge no lead fee.
Branded to the business
Every quote link, quote, invoice and message carries the tradesperson’s own company name and trade. Messages the app drafts for the customer say an assistant wrote them. The tradesperson sends them from their own WhatsApp, SMS or email.
Usability First
The most capable AI in the world is worthless to a tradesperson who cannot find the button. Our users run their businesses from a van, on site, often one-handed and between jobs. Many use Word, Excel or Xero today and want something quicker. So ease of use comes above new features and above polish. When a feature makes the app harder to understand, ease of use wins. Switching is a psychological step more than a technical one: nobody has to move their data or leave a contract, they have to believe the app will be easy enough to be worth it.
Our first principle
“If it isn’t easy to use, it isn’t finished.”
The interface is deliberately plain: describe the job in your own words, by voice or by typing, and the quote, the invoice and the paperwork follow. The app writes things up rather than asking a long list of questions. Every screen is held to a written standard:
One obvious next step
Every screen has a single primary action, and the home screen shows what needs doing today: quotes awaiting a reply, invoices to chase, tax dates coming up. Not a menu of features.
Three taps to anything that matters
Quoting a job, sending an invoice, messaging a customer or scanning a receipt takes three taps or fewer from the home screen.
Built for the van
Large tap targets, readable text, strong contrast and controls within thumb reach, for one-handed use on site, in gloves or in sunlight.
Plain trade language
Every icon carries a word, and every word is the one a tradesperson would use. No accounting or technology jargon.
Few places, always in the same place
A small, fixed set of destinations that does not get reshuffled, so people can build habits rather than relearn the app.
Forgiving by design
Mistakes are undone, not prevented with warning dialogs. The AI asks rather than guesses when it is unsure.
The measure that matters is how fast a new user gets their first quote out without help. We aim for under three minutes, and we treat every “where do I find...?” support question as a defect to fix. These are rules we hold ourselves to, not test results we have published.
What the App Is Built From
The user sees a chat box. Behind it the app combines a large language model, photo understanding, live web search, a memory of the business and the rules for the tradesperson’s country, and turns the answer into a quote, an invoice, a message or a set of accounts. In plain terms:
A language model that writes the work up
It understands trade terms, asks a follow-up question when something is missing and produces structured quotes, invoices, messages and memory updates from ordinary conversation.
Photo understanding
Reads job-site photos, receipts and supplier bills: identifies materials, assesses scope, pulls line items and totals off a receipt.
Material price lookup with a fallback
Searches supplier prices online and falls back to a price database when the live lookup is unavailable, showing ex VAT and inc VAT and the product code. Every price is labelled an estimate.
Regulations for the country
Flags the rules and certifications for the job in the tradesperson's country, and says when it is not sure. It does not invent a regulation.
A memory of the business
Rates, materials, customers and working methods carry across conversations, so the app gets better at the business every week. That record belongs to the tradesperson.
Voice and hands-free
Speech in and speech out, so a message can be dictated from the van and a reply read aloud in the workshop.
16 languages and regions, iPhone and web
UK first, with localised currency, terms and rules for 16 locales. The iPhone app is on the App Store; the web app runs on any browser; Android is awaiting Google Play under the company's new organisation account.
Making Tax Digital, built to spec
The quarterly update figures are built to HMRC's format and tested in HMRC's sandbox. Filing from the app is not yet available: HMRC closed production credential requests for new 2026 to 27 products on 15 September 2026 and says more about the process is expected in early 2027. HMRC does not recommend any product (source 31).
Whose data it is
The tradesperson stays the controller of their customers’ data. Sleepless Tradesman and its AI provider act as processors under written terms, and the AI provider does not train its models on customer content (sources 32 and 33). Where the app shows a tax estimate, HMRC’s software standards require a disclaimer as to its accuracy; we show one on every price, regulation and tax figure. Every user can delete their account in the app, and exporting all your data is next on the roadmap.
What We Will and Won't Do
Six values, in the order we would give them up last. We would keep each one even if it cost us.
Helping tradespeople
Every feature saves the tradesperson time or wins them work, and we can say how. We do not build things because they are clever or because they help us more than them.
Honest
Prices, limits and what the AI cannot do are stated plainly. Customer messages say an assistant helped. Cancelling is easy. No hidden charges, no fake reviews or statistics, no claims we cannot back.
Valuable insights
The app tells the tradesperson something they did not know: what a job really earned, who owes them, what to charge. Not a dashboard full of numbers that lead to no action.
No useless tools
A new tool only ships if it does an office job. Unused features get removed. The main thing is the office, not the length of the feature list.
Easy to use
A tradesperson on site, on a phone, with dirty hands, gets a quote out in minutes without training. No forms, no jargon, no setup screens, nothing that needs a manual.
What we offer, we deliver
A feature only goes on the website or the App Store listing once it works in the app. We do not advertise HMRC filing before HMRC allows it, or Android before it is in the store.
Three lines we will never cross
- We will never sell your data. The record of your jobs, customers and accounts is yours.
- The app will never send a message you did not want. Marketing texts and emails to sole traders need their consent under UK law, and public listings are not consent (source 32). We do not cold-text tradespeople, and the app does not message your customers without you.
- The AI never invents a price or a regulation without saying so. Prices from live lookups are labelled estimates. When it is not sure of a rule, it says so rather than making one up.
And we only advertise what works today. UK law has banned fake and undisclosed incentivised reviews since 6 April 2025; every review we show is a real App Store review pulled live.
What we will not build: merchandise, physical tools that are already made by someone else, entertainment videos, or a shop selling everyday supplies. The mission settles feature requests and partnerships: if it is not an office job for a trade business, it is not for us.
Where We Are
Sleepless Tradesman is built in the UK by a small team with advisers who work in the trades, and the tradespeople using the app tell us what the office should do next. The app has been built since early 2026; the company, Sleepless Tradesman Ltd, was incorporated on 23 October 2026. The position below is as of 30 October 2026.
Live
iPhone app on the App Store
Apple App Store, UK
Live
web app, on any browser, for every trade
sleeplesstradesman.com
Pending
Android, awaiting Google Play under the company's organisation account
Google Play Console
Growing
organic search traffic, month on month since February 2026
Google Search Console
The first customers paid in June 2026, and the paying customers today work in several trades. Every customer so far has come from search, the App Store and word of mouth; no money has been spent on advertising. Organic search traffic has grown month on month since February 2026, almost all of it landing on our free calculators, rate guides and comparison guides for tradespeople. People who left had never created anything; the ones who made a first quote or invoice mostly stayed.
What is live, and what is not
- Live: iPhone app on the App Store; web app; remote quote link; AI quotes from a description or photos; invoices with bank details; receipts, expenses and profit by job; quarterly Making Tax Digital figures ready to export; Xero link; voice; 16 languages and regions; team plan; public listing and homeowner quote pages.
- Not yet: Android (awaiting Google Play under the new organisation account, D-U-N-S number issued); HMRC filing from the app (built to spec, sandbox only, waiting for HMRC to reopen production access); card payment links on invoices; the 7-day trial and annual plans; review requests and social posts.
Pricing
Revenue is subscriptions. There is no lead fee, no materials commission and no data sale. The accountant is included in every paid plan, because a trade business should not need a second subscription for the books. The same prices apply on the web and in the App Store.
Free
£0
Your first invoice is free. Launching shortly: after that first invoice, a 7-day free trial with card details up front, which converts to a paid plan unless you cancel.
Starter
£29.99 a month
Quotes and invoices with PDF, photo analysis, the accountant, 100 AI messages a month.
Premium
£59.99 a month
Everything in Starter, 500 messages, unlimited conversations, the cheapest-price finder, priority support.
Enterprise
From £100 a month
Four seats (one manager, three staff), then £25 a seat up to ten seats and £20 a seat after. Team chat, live team map, shared numbering, job reassignment.
- Monthly today; annual plans launching shortly. Annual plans will come with two months free, the discount both UK trade apps that discount use and the second most common across 585 software products with a stated discount (CostBench, July 2026; source 34). Until they launch, every plan is monthly.
- A 7-day free trial, launching shortly. After the first free invoice, a 7-day trial with card details up front, which converts to a paid plan unless you cancel. Until it launches, the first invoice is free and paid plans start straight away.
- Early customers keep their price for 12 months from the day they subscribe, whatever we change later. This is company policy from today.
- Referrals. A customer who refers another gets a free month. No other standing discount.
- Cancel any time. From billing settings on the web, or from device settings for an App Store subscription.
For context, UK job-management apps charge £23 to £44 per user a month and accounting apps £18 to £70 ex VAT (source 26). Starter sits inside the job-app band. Premium is priced against a job app and an accounting subscription together, and against hiring help, not against a single tool. We know the ceiling is real: 54% of UK small business owners spend under £50 a month on all their software (HeyBRB, 167 owner-operators, 2026, vendor survey; source 9), which is why Starter is the plan we expect most people to choose.
Does it pay for itself?
Tradespeople in the NOW Report spend 5 hours 20 minutes a week on quotes, invoices and chasing (source 8). At a £50 hourly rate that is about £270 a week, or roughly £13,000 a year of evenings and weekends; that is our arithmetic on their figure, at an assumed rate. Starter costs £29.99 a month and Premium £59.99. If the app gives back even one of those hours a week, it has paid for itself. We have not yet measured how long our own users take per quote, so we do not claim a per-task saving.
What Lasts When Quoting Is Free
A feature is not a moat. A quote or an invoice can be copied in a week, and soon every app will make them for free. AI models are getting cheaper and more alike. What lasts is the work done for the tradesperson without being asked, the record of the business that builds up, and a clear idea.
Three things that would make a feature list worthless
Free AI quoting in every invoicing app. The trade platforms adding AI staff: Powered Now launched an AI receptionist from £29 a month in summer 2026, Checkatrade sells AI job management inside a £30 membership and gives TradeMore away free, Simpro launched four AI agents in May 2026, and Elyos AI raised $13 million in January 2026 for phone agents (sources 26 and 27). And AI assistants built into the phone itself. An office that answers, quotes, files and reports, and shows the results, survives all three, because the value is the outcome, not the document.
The record of every job
Quotes, photos, invoices, receipts and customers build up in one place, and the app's memory of how the business works gets better every week. Starting again elsewhere means starting from nothing. We never sell that data; it is the tradesperson's.
Work done without being asked
Enquiries answered at 10pm, quotes followed up, reviews requested, the quarter's figures ready before anyone asked. Each job reports what it did, so the proof builds with every week of use.
Built for many countries from the start
16 languages and regions today, with currency, terms and rules localised; 50 countries is the three-year goal. Doing this well takes regional knowledge that cannot be copied in a week.
Connected trade accounts, in future
Once the app has priced a job, the tradesperson will be able to order the list through their own merchant accounts. A convenience that keeps them in the app, not a revenue line, and not a marketplace.
A clear idea
The whole office team in one app, for small trade businesses. Job-management apps describe their features; we describe the night shift we take off the tradesperson.
The large platforms are built around firms with a full office and dispatchers. Ours is built around the owner-run firm, from the sole trader with no office at all to the team whose office closes at five. The lead is measured not in features that can be copied, but in what compounds: the memory of each business, the record of every job, the results each office job reports, and ownership of a simple idea.
The Plan
- Remote quote link and homeowner instant quotes
- AI quotes from a description or photos, with material prices
- Invoices with PDF and your bank details
- Receipts, expenses and profit by job
- Quarterly Making Tax Digital figures, ready to export
- Xero link
- Voice and memory
- 16 languages and regions
- iPhone app and web app
- Referral free month
- ○Review request when an invoice is paid
- ○A social post written when a job is finished
- ○AI-first support with a person stepping in
- ○Export all your data
- ○Annual plans with two months free
- ○A 7-day trial after the first free invoice
- ○Android on Google Play
- ○Card payment links on invoices
- ○HMRC filing from the app once HMRC reopens production access
- ○A weekly report from each office job
- ○Quote follow-ups and polite payment chasing
- ○VAT summary
- ○Order the quoted materials through your own trade accounts
- ○More languages and regions
- ○Once the office is complete, tools that help on site, robotics included
Targets. 100 paying customers by the end of April 2027, the month HMRC’s second Making Tax Digital wave begins. About 210 paying by October 2027. In three years, users in at least 50 countries and revenue of at least £200,000 a month. At the mix we plan for, 60% Starter, 30% Premium and 10% teams, the average customer pays about £46 a month, so £200,000 a month is about 4,350 paying customers. These are aims, and the arithmetic is ours. The twelve-month markers we will hold ourselves to: monthly churn under 5%, at least one acquisition channel with a known cost per paying customer, Android live, and paying users outside the UK.
Ten years. 5% of the world’s tradespeople running their business on the app. The base is uncertain. The widest measure, the ILO’s 302 million construction workers, would make that about 15 million; on the self-employed-only share it is far fewer (source 15). Either way, the goal is stated as a share, and the measure of progress is simpler: tradespeople telling us the app made the job a lot easier.
Beyond the office
Once a tradesperson has every piece of software they need, the next thing we can take off their plate is on site. UK construction needs about 41,200 extra workers a year to 2030 while its workforce is in long-term decline (CITB Construction Workforce Outlook 2026; source 35), and 72% of small and medium builders already report a shortage of skilled trades (FMB and CIOB, 493 responses, H2 2025; source 36). CITB forecasts output roughly flat in 2026, so this is a labour gap, not a boom.
Site robotics is arriving, but through main contractors: robot dogs scan sites for large contractors at $75,000 and up, and Monumental’s bricklaying robots are on UK trial at about £1 a brick (source 37). Nothing yet is built or priced for a one-van business. The trade bodies agree on the shape of it: AI takes the office work, people keep the site work. Our plan follows that order. First every office job; then, as site robotics becomes affordable for small firms, the tools to use it. We make no dated promise on the second step.
Investors
Sleepless Tradesman Ltd is a UK limited company (company number 17538029, incorporated 23 October 2026). It is founder-led and has been self-funded so far. Investors who would like to see the company’s deck can contact the company at support@sleeplesstradesman.com.
This paper is not an offer of shares, not an invitation to invest and not financial advice.
Sources
Every figure in this paper is listed here with its publisher, date and, for surveys, sample size. All pages were read on 30 October 2026 unless the entry says otherwise. “Vendor survey” means the survey was run or commissioned by a company that sells to the people surveyed.
- 1Department for Business and Trade, Business Population Estimates 2025, Tables 4 and 6. 2 October 2025. Official estimate. www.gov.uk
- 2ONS Labour Force Survey dataset EMP14, Q2 2026, as reported by BCIS, 19 August 2026 (BCIS notes LFS quality caveats). bcis.co.uk
- 3HMRC press release, 864,000 sole traders and landlords face new tax rules, 5 February 2026. www.gov.uk
- 4HMRC press release, sole traders and landlords earning more than £30,000 urged to act now (around 1,077,000 more from April 2027), 5 October 2026. www.gov.uk
- 5HMRC policy paper, reduction of the MTD mandation threshold to £20,000 from April 2028 (approximately 970,000 additional individuals), 24 March 2026. www.gov.uk
- 6Sage and IPSE survey of 1,000 UK sole traders not registered for VAT, published 12 January 2026. Vendor survey. ipse.co.uk
- 7ONS, Artificial intelligence in UK businesses: 2023 to 2026, Business Insights and Conditions Survey wave 159, 38,637 responses, 20 July 2026. www.ons.gov.uk
- 8The NOW Report 2026, commissioned by Powered Now and Installer, fieldwork by Fusion Insight, 140 UK tradespeople, published 22 July 2026. Vendor survey. powerednow.com
- 9HeyBRB, UK Admin Drain Report 2026, 167 UK small business owner-operators (not trades only), March 2026. Vendor survey. www.electricaltimes.co.uk
- 10HomeServe, research by Opinium, 2,000 UK adults, fieldwork 3 to 7 March 2023. www.homeserve.co.uk
- 11Department for Business and Trade, Time to pay up: government response to the 2025 late payment consultation, March 2026. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
- 12ToolTime research, 1,000 UK tradespeople, reported 30 September 2024. Vendor survey. electricalcontractingnews.com
- 13Screwfix, Voice of the Trade Manifesto 2024, 1,018 trade customers, survey June 2024. Merchant survey. media.screwfix.com
- 14Home Builders Federation and Pluto Finance, Artificial Intelligence and skills in the home building industry, 24 March 2026 (sample size not published). www.hbf.co.uk
- 15ILOSTAT modelled estimates, employment in construction (ISIC Rev.4 F), world aggregate, 2025 projection, pulled 30 October 2026. rplumber.ilo.org
- 16US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey table 18, 2025; NAHB Eye on Housing analysis of the 2022 American Community Survey (self-employed share). www.bls.gov
- 17Eurostat tec00109, employment in construction, EU27, Q3 2025, via DBnomics. api.db.nomics.world
- 18Destatis first estimate for 2025 (via anwaltonline.com and zdfheute, secondary); ZDH Kennzahlen des Handwerks 2025. www.zdh.de
- 19INSEE, Emploi et revenus des indépendants, édition 2025, fiche 2.3 (2022 data); CAPEB press release, 6 November 2025. www.insee.fr
- 20UPTA, Informe afiliación autónomos primer semestre 2025, on Seguridad Social data, June 2025. Trade body. upta.es
- 21ISED Canadian Industry Statistics, NAICS 23, Statistics Canada tabulation 2025. ised-isde.canada.ca
- 22Stats NZ Household Labour Force Survey, June 2026 quarter, via Figure.NZ (secondary). figure.nz
- 23IBGE PNAD Contínua annual 2025, as reported by Jornal do Brasil, 30 January 2026 (secondary); SindusCon-SP profile of the construction workforce, 2023. www.jb.com.br
- 24GASTAT register-based labour market statistics, Q1 2025, as reproduced by GLMM. gulfmigration.grc.net
- 25E-invoicing dates: VAT IT (Germany); Fonoa and impots.gouv.fr (France); Orden HAC/1028/2026 via Remote Work Europe and KPMG (Spain); KPMG, 22 July 2026 (UAE). Vendor and adviser pages; confirm against official texts before relying on them. kpmg.com
- 26Competitor prices and AI features: Tradify (Sage UK marketplace), ServiceM8, Powered Now, Jobber, Fergus, YourTradebase, Checkatrade, Xero, FreeAgent and Mucka pricing pages, all read 30 October 2026; QuickBooks UK via Expert Market, 16 July 2026 (secondary). www.powerednow.com
- 27Powered Now PN Receptionist: Powered Now blog, 3 July 2026; Electrical Contracting News, 26 August 2026. electricalcontractingnews.com
- 28Trustpilot UK review pages for Tradify, ServiceM8, Jobber, Powered Now, Fergus, Joist and Checkatrade, read 30 October 2026. Vendor platform; samples skew to the delighted and the angry. uk.trustpilot.com
- 29Mumsnet property forum, how much chasing would you do for a quote, 31 July 2024. www.mumsnet.com
- 30Federation of Master Builders, Should you charge a fee for quotes, 1 March 2021 (older than three years); Master Builder magazine, Spring 2026, p.35. www.fmb.org.uk
- 31HMRC, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax end-to-end service guide, updated 15 September 2026 (production credential requests closed for new 2026 to 27 products); HMRC find software page, updated 13 July 2026 (HMRC does not recommend any product). developer.service.hmrc.gov.uk
- 32ICO, Guide to PECR, electronic mail marketing; ICO, How do we comply with the PECR electronic mail marketing rules. ico.org.uk
- 33Anthropic Commercial Terms, 17 June 2025 (no training on customer content); Anthropic Data Processing Addendum, 24 February 2025. www.anthropic.com
- 34CostBench, Software Pricing Findings 2026 Q3, 3,297 products tracked, 26 July 2026. costbench.com
- 35CITB Construction Workforce Outlook 2026 to 2030, with Oxford Economics, data file 11 June 2026. www.citb.co.uk
- 36FMB and CIOB, State of Trade Survey H2 2025, 493 responses, published 31 March 2026. www.fmb.org.uk
- 37Site robotics: eWeek, 11 March 2026 (quadruped prices, secondary); Scottish Construction Now, 28 July 2025 (Monumental UK trial); Fortune, 15 July 2026 (Monumental funding). www.scottishconstructionnow.com
Small trade businesses have never been able to afford an office. Now one app gives them the whole team, and it never closes. The tradesperson keeps the trade. The app takes everything else.
The office that never sleeps
Your whole office team, in one app.
You do the trade. The app does the rest.
See the office at work
Start free. Describe your first job in your own words and the app writes it up.