Field notes from 24 years of automating back offices.
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April 15, 2026
ServiceTitan or Jobber runs the jobs, QuickBooks runs the money, and the hours leak in between. Where trades back offices actually lose time, what to automate first, and what each kind of fix costs, from 24 years of building these.
ReadSeptember 3, 2026
ERP to CRM integration without the fog: what each system actually holds at a trades shop, the three levels of connecting them, what bi-directional sync really means, the per-field source-of-truth rule that keeps it honest, and what a real sync costs.
ReadAugust 20, 2026
Automating PDF invoice data entry at an HVAC shop: 400+ hours a year of hand-keying, an OCR version that failed on vendor logos, the self-hosted extraction model that replaced it, and the wage math that made it worth it. Same pattern if your target is Excel or an ERP.
ReadAugust 6, 2026
A Louisiana utility spent two days a week printing, validating, stuffing, and chasing 400 envelopes. The verified numbers from the build that replaced it ($8,500/yr in stamps, 832 staff hours), and every other document type this pattern eats.
ReadJuly 23, 2026
The CFO's board pack, the dispatcher's daily sheet, the ops manager's WIP list: the same Monday ritual wearing three outfits. The anatomy of a distribution automation, what it replaces in hours, and the security questions to ask before you build one.
ReadJuly 9, 2026
Real numbers, published: custom business automation starts at $7,000, most projects land around $13,500, and large multi-month builds have reached $35,000. What moves the number up and down, and how to know your payback window before you commit a dollar.
ReadJune 24, 2026
The per-task pricing math at 100, 1,000, and 10,000 runs a month, the failure modes the feature pages leave out, and when Zapier is genuinely the right answer, from the guy who builds the alternative for a living.
ReadJune 11, 2026
The native export isn't an integration, manual re-entry is burning wages, middleware works until it doesn't, and a dedicated sync is boring forever after. Three fixes ranked, with what each actually costs.
ReadMay 27, 2026
What it actually costs when a person copies from one screen and pastes into another, every day, all year: the wages, the error tax, and the parts nobody prices. With the math shown and a calculator to run your own numbers.
ReadMay 14, 2026
Version chaos, formula rot, access collisions, silent corruption, one-person dependency: the five signs a trades shop's spreadsheets have become the system of record, and what moving to a real database actually takes.
ReadApril 29, 2026
A ladder, not a lecture: formulas, Power Query, a script, or a custom build, which rung your weekly report actually needs, the trades-shop version of each, and the signs Excel itself is the problem.
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