For property and maintenance businesses
Every report taken, triaged and turned into a job that gets done
Tenants report faults at all hours. Landlords and agents want them handled without being woken. We answer the report, establish how urgent it really is, route it to the right person, and track the job from authorisation to evidence to invoice.
From £39/moplus VAT. Start with the reports and connect the rest when it earns it.
Manchester based, UK wide. We ran a national three-party service operation before we sold systems for one.
The maintenance week, as it actually runs
Reactive work is called reactive for a reason. The reports arrive when they arrive, in whatever words the caller has, and every one of them believes theirs is the emergency.
- A tenant rings at 9pm about water coming through a light fitting. That one really is urgent.
- Another reports a "flood" that is a dripping trap under a sink. You find out which is which by driving there.
- The landlord has not approved the spend yet, the tenant thinks the job is booked, and both are ringing you.
- A job finished on Tuesday, but the photos are on somebody's phone and the invoice has not gone out.
- The gas safety renewals are in a spreadsheet somebody updates when they remember.
- And the agent wants a status update on eleven jobs, which means an afternoon of looking things up.
The trade work is the easy half. The hard half is the traffic: who reported what, who approved what, what state every job is in, and who has been told. That is the half a system can carry.
Why property maintenance is a particular case
It is not one customer with one job. It is three parties per fault, urgency that arrives mislabelled, and a duty trail that has to survive scrutiny months later.
The first peculiarity is the three-party job. The person who reports the fault is a tenant or site contact. The person who authorises the money is a landlord, agent or block manager. The person who does the work is you or a subcontractor. Every job has to keep all three informed of different things at different moments, and most disputes in this industry are really failures of that triangle: the tenant thought it was booked, the landlord never approved it, the contractor was never told the access arrangements.
The second is that urgency arrives mislabelled. Callers report symptoms in the language of alarm, and a triage that takes every "flood" at face value burns the diary, while one that under-reacts to the real emergency creates damage and liability. The questions that separate water-through-a-light-fitting from a dripping trap are simple, they just have to be asked every time, including at 9pm.
The third is that the paper trail is the product. Response times, authorisations, access attempts, completion evidence. When a deposit dispute or an insurance claim or an unhappy leaseholder surfaces months later, "we did it properly" is worth nothing without the dated record that shows it. A maintenance business with a clean trail wins arguments it never has to have.
Authorisation is a workflow, not an email
Most maintenance businesses chase approvals by text and email, and the job sits in limbo while the tenant assumes it is happening. Making authorisation an explicit step, with the quote attached, the spend limit known and the approval recorded in writing, removes the worst waiting state in the industry and the awkward conversations that follow it.
Planned work is the profitable half
Reactive work pays the bills and wrecks the diary. The recurring half, gas safety renewals, electrical inspections, gutter clears, void turnarounds, is calmer and more profitable, and it depends entirely on nothing falling out of the calendar. A system that surfaces what is due before it is overdue turns compliance dates from a liability into a revenue stream you already own.
The journey, from report to invoice
This is the connected path a fault takes when the pieces talk to each other. Three parties, one record, nobody chasing anybody for status.
- 01
The report arrives
Phone, website form or chat, day or night. The property, the caller, the fault and photos if they have them, all captured into one record.
AI receptionist - 02
Urgency triaged
The questions that separate an emergency from an annoyance, asked calmly every time. Genuine emergencies route straight to the on-call phone. Everything else is booked, not guessed.
- 03
The right people told
The landlord or agent sees the report and the recommendation. The tenant gets an acknowledgement that says what happens next, which is most of what tenants actually want.
- 04
Authorisation recorded
The quote or call-out goes for approval with the spend visible, and the yes arrives in writing against the job. Below an agreed limit, it can proceed automatically under rules the client set.
- 05
Scheduled with access sorted
The visit is booked with the tenant, access arrangements captured, and the operative has the history in their pocket rather than a postcode and a guess.
Quote and job management - 06
Done and evidenced
Photos before and after, notes, materials, signature if you want one. The evidence attaches to the job the day it happens, not from a phone gallery three weeks later.
- 07
Invoiced without retyping
The invoice raises from the job, to the right payer, with the evidence attached. Per property, per landlord or per contract, the way your clients actually pay.
- 08
The recurring work resurfaces
Renewals, inspections and planned visits come back around on schedule, with the reminder going out before the due date rather than after it.
Business automation
Why we can say this with a straight face
We have run three-party service work at national scale
Manchester PC is a repair and service business, and for years we also ran the UK service operation for a major European hardware manufacturer. Their customers reported the faults. The manufacturer authorised and paid. We did the work. If that triangle sounds familiar, it should: it is exactly the tenant, landlord, contractor shape, and it taught us the same lessons the hard way.
The lesson that stuck deepest is that the reporter and the payer need different things. The person with the broken item wants acknowledgement and a date. The person paying wants visibility and control of the spend. Serve one and not the other and the phone rings constantly; serve both from the same record and it goes quiet. We learned to run every case with a full trail of who said what and when, because when a national brand hands you their customers, a dropped case is a contract conversation.
The condition-and-evidence habit comes from the same place, and from our own bench, where we hold other people's property every day. What arrived, what state it was in, who has it, what was done, with dates against everything. That discipline has settled arguments for us before they started, which is precisely what completion photos and dated access attempts do for a maintenance business in a deposit dispute.
So when we set this up for a maintenance firm, the workflow is not imagined. It is the operational shape we ran for years, pointed at properties instead of hardware, and the receptionist taking the 9pm call is the same product answering our own line today.
The reporter and the payer need different things. Serve both from the same record and the phone goes quiet.
Read the whole storyThe five things that fix the most
In the order we would do them for a maintenance business starting from nothing.
Answer the reports, day and night
Every report taken properly with the property, fault and access details captured, and real emergencies routed to the on-call phone. The 9pm call stops being a voicemail lottery.
AI receptionistTriage before you drive
The flood that is a drip, and the drip that is a flood, sorted by calm questions instead of a wasted visit. The diary stops being spent on mislabelled urgency.
Put authorisation in writing
Quotes to the payer, approvals recorded against the job, agreed spend limits that let small work proceed. The limbo between report and yes disappears.
Quote and job managementEvidence every job as it happens
Before and after photos, notes and dates attached to the job on the day. Disputes get settled by the record instead of by memory.
Let the recurring work drive itself
Renewals, inspections and planned visits resurfacing on schedule, with reminders out before due dates. Compliance stops living in a spreadsheet.
Business automationKeep every party informed automatically
The tenant knows what happens next, the landlord sees status without ringing, the agent's eleven-job update takes no afternoon. Most of your inbound traffic is people asking for status, and it stops.
Lead capture and follow-upWhat this looks like across the sector
The triangle is the same everywhere. What changes is who sits at each corner and which corner generates the noise.
Maintenance contractors working for agents
The agent is the client and the agent's reputation rides on your responsiveness, so response times and status visibility are what win and keep the contract. An agent who can see job status without ringing you is an agent with no reason to try the other contractor on their list. The invoicing also has to match how agents pay: per property, per landlord, consolidated, and never retyped.
Landlords and portfolio owners
Direct landlords want the spend controlled and the properties protected without becoming a maintenance dispatcher themselves. Spend limits with automatic approval underneath, proper records above, and compliance dates surfaced on time do most of that. The value here is fewer decisions, not more data.
Block and facilities management
More stakeholders, more compliance, more recurring work. Leaseholders report, the managing agent coordinates, contractors deliver, and the service-charge accounts want everything evidenced. The planned maintenance calendar carries more weight here than anywhere else, and the audit trail is not optional, it is the job.
Handyman and multi-trade services
Higher volume, smaller jobs, and profitability decided by how tightly the day books together. The wins are capture and scheduling: every small job taken properly on the first call, routed sensibly, done and invoiced the same day. Ten small jobs a week rescued from voicemail is a serious number by December.
The numbers a maintenance business should actually watch
Four figures that decide contracts, collected automatically once the jobs live in one place.
Report to first response
The number agents quote when they defend keeping you, and the one tenants remember when they complain. It improves the moment reports stop landing in voicemail, because the response starts at the report rather than at the callback.
Jobs waiting, and on whom
Waiting on authorisation, on parts, on access, on you. Four different problems wearing the same "open" status. Splitting them shows you where the week actually goes, and it is usually authorisation, which is the cheapest one to fix.
First-visit completion rate
How often the job is done on the first attendance. Every failed first visit is a triage or access failure upstream: the wrong information taken, the wrong part assumed, the tenant not home. This number is where capture quality becomes visible in money.
Compliance items due in the next sixty days
If this list lives in a spreadsheet, it is a liability. If it surfaces itself with reminders already going out, it is recurring revenue and a reason clients stay. The difference is the system, not the diligence of whoever keeps the spreadsheet.
Where a maintenance business usually starts
All prices plus VAT, month to month. Start where the noise is worst. We will tell you honestly where that is.
Catch the reports
£99 setup£99/mo
Reports going to voicemail while everybody is on site
- AI receptionist, 100 minutes a month
- Property, fault and access captured
- Urgency triaged with calm questions
- Emergencies routed to on-call
- Email summary of every report
Catch and coordinate
£699 setup£149/mo
The three-party traffic: reports, approvals and updates
- Everything above, plus the job pipeline
- Website reporting into the same list
- Authorisations recorded in writing
- Tenant and landlord kept informed
- Status visible without phone calls
- Five users
The full maintenance workflow
From £1,500 setup£249/mo
Report to evidence to invoice to renewal in one system
- Scheduling with access arrangements
- Photo evidence against every job
- Invoicing per property or per client
- Recurring and compliance calendar
- Subcontractor job sharing
- Reporting across the contract
Running a mixed week of reactive and planned work? The £99 AI Opportunity Assessment maps where yours actually leaks before you buy anything.
Frequently asked questions
Can it really take reports overnight?
Yes. The receptionist answers around the clock, captures the property and fault, asks the triage questions and routes genuine emergencies to whoever is on call under rules you set. Everything else is waiting, acknowledged and booked, when you start in the morning.
How does it know what counts as an emergency?
You decide, and we encode it. Uncontained water, no heating in winter, no power, security. The triage questions are yours, asked consistently, and the borderline cases err on the side you choose. It is your judgement running at 3am without waking you.
Can landlords and agents see job status themselves?
Yes, to whatever depth you choose. Most businesses show stage and expected dates; some show notes and evidence too. Status visibility is the single biggest reducer of inbound calls we see, because most calls are really the question "has anything happened".
How do spend limits and approvals work?
Each client can have an agreed limit under which work proceeds automatically, with everything above it going for written approval with the quote attached. The approval sits against the job for ever, which is exactly where you want it when someone queries an invoice.
We use subcontractors. Does that fit?
Yes. Jobs can be shared with a subcontractor with the details and access arrangements attached, and their completion evidence comes back against the same record. The client sees one accountable business, which is the point.
Can tenants report faults through a website or QR code?
Yes. A reporting form that asks the same triage questions as the phone, with photo upload, feeding the same job list. Some businesses put it behind a QR code in communal areas, which tenants genuinely use.
What about gas certificates and electrical inspections?
The system tracks the dates and drives the reminders and bookings; the certificates themselves come from your qualified engineers as they always did. What changes is that renewals surface on schedule and the evidence files against the property, instead of a spreadsheet and a good memory.
We already have job software from an agent portal. Does this replace it?
Not necessarily. If work arrives through a portal, we look at whether it can feed in automatically rather than being retyped, and put the capture and coordination around it. We will say honestly if what you have covers enough.
How long does setup take?
Report handling in days. The coordination workflow in a few weeks, most of which is agreeing your triage rules, spend limits and who sees what. That conversation is the real setup, and it is usually worth having whether or not you buy anything.
Is tenant data handled properly?
Yes. Contact details and access notes are personal data and are treated that way: your data sits in its own space, nothing goes into public AI tools, and what any AI step sees is governed by rules agreed at setup, in line with ICO guidance.
What we would tell you over a brew
A few things that are true about maintenance work and rarely appear on a software website, because none of them sell anything.
Most complaints in this industry are not about the repair. They are about silence. A tenant who hears "we have logged it, an engineer will contact you by Thursday" waits happily. A tenant who hears nothing rings the agent, the agent rings you, and now three people are spending time on a job that was never in trouble. Acknowledgement is almost free and it buys more goodwill than speed does.
The second truth is that the contractor who documents everything wins the disputes without having them. Deposit arguments, insurance queries, leaseholder challenges: they are all decided by whoever has dated records, and the side with photographs and timestamps rarely has to argue at all. The habit costs seconds per job and pays out for years.
And the quiet money is in the calendar, not the emergencies. Reactive work feels like the business because it makes the noise, but the renewals, inspections and planned visits are the revenue you already own and merely have to not drop. A maintenance business that never misses a renewal has a recurring income most trades would envy, and the only skill involved is remembering, which is precisely the thing worth delegating to a machine.
None of this needs software either. A free systems review usually surfaces one habit worth changing before anything is built, and when that is the honest answer we say so.
Read the detail
The services behind everything on this page.
- AI receptionistThe reports answered day and night, triaged calmly.
- Quote and job managementAuthorisations, scheduling, evidence and invoicing.
- Lead capture and follow-upEvery report captured with an owner and a next step.
- Business automationThe recurring calendar and the paperwork that types itself.
- For trades and home servicesThe sister page for the tools side of the same week.
- How the platform fits togetherWhere the jobs, evidence and reporting actually live.
Tell us what last week looked like
Book a free systems review and walk us through it: what happened to the overnight reports, how long approvals took, and how many calls were really just someone asking for status. We will tell you the one change that returns the most.
All prices plus VAT. Month to month, no minimum term.