Your business snapshot

How the work flows

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Job Name Customer Stage Job Type Market Estimate Last Purchase Purchases Materials Tools & Equipment Hired Subcontractors Labor Total Cost Billed Owed Hours Profit Last Modified Actions
Estimate Job Customer Scope Items Materials Status Price Changed

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What you've billed, what's paid and what's owed. Make a bill from its job: open the job, then its Billing tab.

Bill # Customer Job Issued Due Date Description Amount Paid Owed Status

Starting points for the jobs you do over and over: scope items, materials and labor, with no prices. Start an estimate from one with New Estimate, and it's priced from your latest purchases. Save any estimate as a template with Save as Template.

Template Job Types When to Use It Scope Items Materials Labor Hours Used Changed
Type Customer Phone Email Town Open Jobs All Jobs
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Date Supplier Job Invoice # Subtotal Freight Tax Total Review Actions

Upload Supplier Invoices

Upload PDF invoices from any supported supplier. Each one is read and added automatically, usually in under a minute; invoices already added and documents that aren't invoices (quotes, statements) are skipped.

Drag & drop PDFs here, or

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Date Supplier Job Invoice # Item Code Description Product Category Cost Type Manufacturer Catalog # Qty UOM Unit Price Price / ft Ext. Price

Suppliers

The suppliers whose invoices are read automatically. Only an admin can change these. Email domains are the part of the supplier's email address after the @ (for example cooper-electric.com): the email agent picks up invoices sent from them. Job name field is the label next to your job or PO name on their invoices; it helps read the right one. Hired subcontractor marks a company you hire for part of a job (an excavator, a concrete cutter): its bills count as Hired subcontractors on the job's costs, not Materials. To change a supplier, use its Edit button; separate several domains with commas.

Name Email Domains Job Name Field Hired Subcontractor Purchases Actions

Each supplier's most recent price for the things you've bought from more than one, in the same unit (per foot for cable, wire and conduit, otherwise each), with the lowest highlighted. Older prices are dimmed: prices change, especially for copper wire. Click a row for its price history.

Everything you buy or might buy, materials and tools, one row per item: the same item from several suppliers is one row. It starts on what you've bought; choose Everything to see the whole catalog, including items you haven't bought yet. Click a row for its details and your purchases.

Item Category Manufacturer Catalog # Suppliers Times Bought Last Bought Last Price Spend Status Actions

Your services: the kinds of jobs you do. Each job on the Jobs page can have a job type; from them, this page shows what a typical job of each type costs in materials, from your own supplier invoices. Click a job type for what its jobs usually use, and its jobs.

Job Type Jobs Typical Materials Cost Templates Last Job

Buying Units

How your crews buy each kind of cable, wire and conduit. Only the office can change these. Line Items shows quantities and prices in these units (for example "4 coils" at a price per coil) whenever a line is a whole number of them; anything else stays in feet. Needs review marks our guesses that lines already use: Looks right if that's how you buy it, or Edit to change it.

Product Sizes Bought by Lines Spend Status Actions

Items to Review

New items

Each supplier item code is identified once, the first time it's bought: its manufacturer, catalog number and category. These are the ones we weren't sure of. Check each one: Looks right if the suggestion is correct, Edit to fix it, or Not a material for freight, fees and the like. Every line with that item code, past and future, follows your choice. The office can confirm or correct them.

Supplier Item Code Description Spend Manufacturer Catalog # Category Sure? Actions

Items we couldn't match to a product

These look like cable, wire or conduit, but aren't one of the cable, wire and conduit products we know (the kinds on Buying Units). If one is (just described oddly), pick it; otherwise choose "None of these" to stop listing it. Every line with that item code, past and future, follows your choice. The office can match them to a product.

Supplier Item Code Description Lines Spend Product Actions

Product categories follow the ETIM classification (ETIM International, US English translation by ETIM North America), used under the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence.

Lines per Page

How many lines each list shows at a time (Jobs, Supplier Invoices, Line Items, Materials & Tools and the other long lists). This applies only to you.

Jobs List Filter

Which jobs the Jobs list shows when you open it: All jobs unless you choose another. You can still pick another stage above the list at any time. This applies only to you.

Jobs List Columns

Which columns the Jobs list shows. Job Name always shows. Saving applies to you only.

Home Page Cards

Which cards your Home page shows, up to 5, in this order. Saving applies to you only.

Alerts

Choose what the bell tells you about. Turning one off only quiets the bell: the work still shows on its page, and emails about problems still go out. This applies only to you.

Dismissed from Your Bell

What you've dismissed with the ✕ on a line in the bell's Needs you list. The work still shows on its page. Anything new still shows in the bell, and so does something dismissed that needs attention again for a new reason.

Sample Data

This demo site runs on a made-up company. Reset it before a demo to start again from fresh sample data that ends today. The people who sign in stay.

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About Trade Mechanics

Trade Mechanics is one system to run a trade business, from first call to final payment: new work, estimates and proposals, scheduling and timesheets, purchasing, what each job costs, and billing your customers. It reads your supplier invoices automatically and keeps track of the materials and tools you buy and the services you sell.

Trade Mechanics is a product of Innovation Mechanics, LLC.

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Privacy policy

Users

Everyone at the company. Click a name or the edit button to change how they sign in, their work and their cost rate, or to deactivate them.

Name Email Mobile Role Apps Trade Level Last Signed In Actions

Sign-in History

Who signed in, or tried to, in either app. Kept for 12 months.

Ways to Sign In

How users sign in. Google sign-in is always enabled: the business app signs in with each person's Google account. The Trade Mechanics Field app also supports sign-in with a 6-digit code texted to the mobile number above, for crew with no Google account. With a password, people sign in to either app with their email and a password they set from an invite on their page, and they're asked for a code on a new device and every 30 days. With Microsoft, people sign in to either app with their Microsoft work, school or personal account; the first time, they're asked for a code to link it. Ticking or unticking a box saves it at once.

Trade Levels

The company's levels for crew, lowest paid first, each with a default cost per hour: what an hour of work at that level costs the company (wages, taxes, benefits and the like). A person's own rate, above, takes the place of their level's. Each change keeps the date it starts, so a raise doesn't change what earlier work cost. Admins only.

Level Cost Rate Crew Actions

Clock Times

How the crew's clock times in Trade Mechanics Field become hours. The exact times are always kept; these settings only change the hours worked out from them.

Rounding each one is simpler to explain; every Switch can add up to the rounding. Driving to the shop always goes to overhead. Mark who takes a company vehicle home on Settings → Users. Without it, they clock in when they get to the shop or the job.

Only when the person's phone allows it. A missing location never stops anyone clocking in or out.

Lunch

The Break button is always there.

A Missed Clock-Out

minutes past the day's end hours on the clock

Then the field app asks the person if they're still working, and an hour later the office gets a line in the bell. If nobody clocks them out by midnight, the System clocks them out at the day's end (or when the hours were reached) and marks it to check before the week can be approved.

Crew Leads

What a job's crew lead can do for the rest of the crew on that job, in Trade Mechanics Field. Only for the people scheduled on their job that day. The crew lead is set on each job, or when scheduling work. Untick these to keep it all with the office.

Clocking the crew in, fixing a time and checking the day all work from the crew lead's view of their crew, so they're only on when See their crew is. Untick it and crew leads use TM Field like everyone else on the crew. Who can mark overtime is set under Clock Times.

Job Reminders

When a job in progress has had no purchases for this long, the alerts bell asks whether to mark it Complete. Nothing changes until someone does. Long commercial jobs can wait weeks on inspections and other trades; service call jobs finish in a day.

Scheduling

Whether work can go on the Schedule before the customer signs the proposal. An urgent job may need to start on the customer's yes, with the proposal signed on site. Whoever schedules it sees a warning, and a reason, when one's asked for, is kept in the job's history.

Admins are alerted when work starts on a job whose proposal isn't signed, or whose deposit isn't paid.

Billing

Where you bill your customers. Trade Mechanics can make the bill itself: a Customer Invoice from the job's payment schedule, with your logo and its own number, and the payments you record against it. Billing from your accounting system hides Billing here.

days after the bill (0 = on receipt) % per month

Estimating

What a new estimate starts with, and how its prices are filled in from your purchases. Each estimate can change its markup, sales tax and labor rate.

Proposals

Where your proposals are made. Trade Mechanics can make the proposal itself: a PDF with your logo, its own number, the scope of work and prices, your notes and a place to sign. With another system, Copy for Proposal gives you the text to paste.

Your logo, address, phone, email and registration or license number come from Settings → Company.

Standard Paragraphs

Paragraphs you write again and again: put in a scope item's description, the proposal's notes or its terms, then edited like any text. A note can start in every new estimate; terms start in new estimates for residential work, commercial work or both.

TitleForTextActions

Run the Email Agent

Manually scan Gmail for new supplier invoices right now, instead of waiting for the next scheduled run.

Email Agent Schedule

When the email agent automatically scans Gmail for new supplier invoices, once per day. Times are shown in your local timezone.

Email Agent Lookback

Controls how far back the email agent searches Gmail for new supplier invoices.

Trusted Forwarders

Staff who forward supplier invoices from their own email address. The email agent scans their emails for PDF attachments the same way it scans supplier emails directly. To change one, use its Edit button.

Name Email Actions

Duplicate Check

Finds names that may be the same item spelled differently. Use the Settings card below to select which items to check.

Duplicate Check Settings

Changes apply to the next check.

Comma-separated, e.g. STOCK, SHOP: categories, not real jobs.
Advanced

For Trade Mechanics support. Most companies never need to change these.

Duplicate Check Schedule

Checks for duplicates automatically once a week, and emails the people below when it finds new ones. Times are shown in your local timezone.

Separate addresses with commas. Leave blank to email no one; new duplicates still show on the Jobs tab.

Company

The company using this software. Admins can update company information.