Your quote is out. Keep the next conversation moving.
A customer has the estimate, but the office cannot tell who is making the next call.
Explore the workflow and its current limitations.
The Forge for home services
Keep the next service call moving. All the way to the invoice.
The phone rings while you are on another job. Give the request, estimate, visit and billing record a clearer handoff between the office and the field.
Start with the people who need to be there.
Workflow illustration · not a product screen.
Who is working, what needs coverage and who confirms the change. Review the scheduling handoff for your team.
- Review the team’s availability.
- Identify a gap in coverage.
- Confirm the assignment with the responsible manager.
Shared business coordination, not a specialised industry application. No industry-specific product screen is shown.
The customer should not have to chase the next update.
A service request becomes a quote, a scheduled job and work for someone to carry out. Keep the customer history and job status in view before promising the next visit.
One job record to follow
Native jobs track status, assignment and schedule. Confirm the setup and provider needed for customer messages; do not assume an update has been sent.
Follow the service call through its working handoffs.
A workflow to review for your business. Expand a step for its purpose and current availability.
Review the estimate
Keep the quote tied to the lead or job and follow its status.
Native estimates & quotesAvailable
Plan the visit
Track the job’s assignment, status and schedule in its own record.
Native jobs & work ordersAvailable
Check employee coverage
Build the weekly shift schedule around roles and availability; verify how it fits your service assignments.
Native shift schedulingAvailable
Keep the invoice with the job
Follow the customer invoice through draft, issued and paid states. Payment links require your own connected processor.
Native job/customer invoicingAvailable
Keep · Replace · Connect
Keep the systems that earn their place.
Bring your accounting, payment and specialist service systems. Keep what is useful and review the exact connections before changing the office-to-field handoff.
Keep what works. Replace what does not. Connect the rest through The Forge.
Check current connector availability ↗- QuickBooks and accounting software
- Payroll providers
- Business phone and call-tracking systems
- Payment processors
- Estimating and takeoff tools
- Advertising and lead-generation platforms
These are systems to discuss in your Fit Review, not a list of verified ready-to-connect integrations. Setup and provider support vary.
Start with the work you need to connect.
Bring one job, customer question or repeated admin task. We’ll review who handles it, which tools you use and what The Forge can help you keep, replace or connect.
Review plans and current pricing before choosing. Features depend on plan, configuration, permissions and current availability.
Forge Core
$349/moYour whole day-to-day in one place — every core area connected, launched with our guidance, and kept healthy as you grow.
A starting point for your Fit Review. Check the plan’s current features, provider requirements and rollout status against the work you need to do; an industry recommendation does not guarantee that every described workflow is available.
- One business, one location, ten operator users
- Unlimited view-only users
- All six core operating areas
- Full customer and lead management
- Jobs, work orders, scheduling, and delivery
- Employee and contractor management with time visibility
- Basic payroll and wage-summary visibility
- Ten automated workflows and three included integration slots
- Tracked links with click counts for campaigns and texts
- 10 complimentary social posts, then 1 Forge Credit per post
- Standard dashboards, reporting, and Marketplace access
- Guided Launch and standard support
Commonly added
- Additional location
- Advanced reporting
- Priority support
Every plan launches Guided or Managed — see plan and launch-path details for the full comparison.
Can we keep the systems we already use?
Keep what works. Replace what does not. Connect the rest through The Forge. Review current connector availability and your industry requirements in a Forge Fit Review.
What does this product example demonstrate?
Local demo capture · independent sample shifts. An illustrative employee schedule, not a live dispatch map. The recorded publish-window discrepancy is unresolved; this capture does not establish successful schedule publication or POS forecasting.
How do we choose the right starting plan?
Bring a real business handoff and the systems your team uses to a free Forge Fit Review. Check current pricing, plan features and availability before choosing a configuration.
For the owner and office team
Check the fit for your trade and your crews.
Review the detailed requirements, configuration and roadmap with your team. Not every described workflow is available today. Plan, provider and rollout limits apply; check current availability before relying on a feature.
Optional deep diveDetailed industry requirements
Roles, workflows, requirements and launch considerations for your team to review.
The business and its requirements
The phone rings while you are on another job. An estimate needs a callback, tomorrow’s visits need crews, and yesterday’s work still needs an invoice. The Forge connects the customer, estimate, scheduled job and billing record so the next handoff has somewhere to land. Keep requests, estimates, dispatch and invoices connected to the customer’s service history. Your office can see the next step without chasing the technician for the whole story.
How can software improve contractor operations and estimate follow-up?
The Forge gives contractors one record per job that carries the lead, estimate, schedule, crew, field documentation, change orders, and invoice. Estimates follow up automatically, technician time ties to the job, and owners can see response time, crew profitability, and labor cost before payroll runs.
See it work for a home-services business
The same connected loop from /how-it-works, walked through with a home-services business's own vocabulary — a booked call, a dispatched crew, and the invoice that follows.
Illustrative walkthrough with sample information. It does not execute a live workflow or show customer results.
Workflow illustration · not a product screen. Fictional data.
No fictional records supplied for this illustration.
Workflow illustration · fictional records, not a product screen.
Step 1 of 3
Management questions to review
What management can see
Lead response time
How fast inbound calls and forms are worked, broken down by person, source, and time of day — so you know whether after-hours leads are dying overnight.
Open estimates and value
Every outstanding estimate, its age, the revenue attached, and whether follow-up is active or stalled.
Crew profitability
Revenue against labor and materials by crew, job type, and location — calculated from actual hours, not what was quoted.
Overtime exposure
Scheduled versus recorded hours and overtime accumulating in real time, by employee, crew, and location — visible during the week, not after payroll.
Completion rate
Jobs scheduled versus completed on time, by crew and location. First-visit completion versus callbacks is broken out separately.
Labor cost by location
Outgoing wages measured against completed work per location, so you can tell which shop is earning its overhead and which is carrying dead weight.
Focused operating guides
The full detail behind each of these lives on its own page — what breaks today, exactly how The Forge addresses it, what the field and office see day to day, and what an owner controls.
- Scheduling and dispatch
Every job on one board — crews assigned, conflicts visible, and same-day changes reaching the field without phone chains.
- Estimate follow-up
No estimate dies in a notebook — every quote tracked from site visit to signed approval with follow-up owned by name.
- Job costing
Labor, materials, and change orders against the quote while the job is still running — not a surprise at month end.
Plan requirements to discuss
Forge Core
$349/moYour whole day-to-day in one place — every core area connected, launched with our guidance, and kept healthy as you grow.
Most home-service businesses running a single location start on Forge Core, which covers scheduling, dispatch, job costing, estimate follow-up, and basic payroll-cost visibility out of the box. Move to Forge Pro once the business runs multiple locations, needs advanced capacity planning or approval workflows, or wants deeper role-specific reporting — the two-location contractor described above is a Pro-stage business.
- One business, one location, ten operator users
- Unlimited view-only users
- All six core operating areas
- Full customer and lead management
- Jobs, work orders, scheduling, and delivery
- Employee and contractor management with time visibility
- Basic payroll and wage-summary visibility
- Ten automated workflows and three included integration slots
- Tracked links with click counts for campaigns and texts
- 10 complimentary social posts, then 1 Forge Credit per post
- Standard dashboards, reporting, and Marketplace access
- Guided Launch and standard support
Commonly added
- Additional location
- Advanced reporting
- Priority support
Every plan launches Guided or Managed — see plan and launch-path details for the full comparison.
Signs you're outgrowing your current setup
- You have no idea how many calls you missed last week, or whether anyone returned them.
- Your estimate close rate is a gut feeling, not a number.
- When a tech finishes a job, the office finds out because the customer calls to ask about the invoice.
- You learn about overtime when payroll runs, not when it happens.
- Missed calls pile up and get returned days later, if at all.
- Estimates sit open with no idea which are still alive and which the customer already hired someone else for.
- The office calls the tech to find out what happened on a job.
- Overtime is a surprise every pay period.
Other places this industry loses time and margin
Missed and after-hours calls never become booked jobs
Every call is captured to a customer record and routed into an immediate follow-up sequence, so after-hours inquiries are worked the next morning instead of forgotten.
See how The Forge fixes lead follow up →Estimates go out and are never followed up on
Open estimates get automatic follow-up on a schedule you set, with time limits. When an estimate passes its follow-up window, the estimator and the office both see it — not just whoever remembers to check.
See how The Forge fixes estimate follow up →The wrong technician is sent, or dispatch is inefficient
Scheduling and dispatch see skills, certifications, location, and availability against the job requirements, so the right crew is assigned the first time instead of whoever answered the radio.
Job-to-invoice work outpaces what the office can see
Change orders raised in the field flow to billing automatically, and technician hours tie to the job — so crew profitability and labor cost are visible before payroll runs, not caught after the invoice goes out.
See how The Forge fixes labor cost visibility →Workflow and automation details
Example workflows
- 1
Call to booked job
A missed call creates a lead, queues a follow-up on the schedule you set, books the appointment, and lands on the dispatch board with the customer record, service history, and property details attached — one thread from ring to schedule. (Outbound email/SMS is logged and queued today; it goes out once your email or SMS provider is connected.)
- 2
Estimate to scheduled work
An estimate is built from the site visit, logged to the customer's record, queued for follow-up on a schedule you set, and — on approval — converted to a scheduled job with the crew, materials, and equipment already assigned.
- 3
Field to invoice
The crew documents the site with photos and forms, logs hours against the job, raises any change order with updated pricing, and completion flows straight into invoicing — no re-entry, no lost paperwork.
What this industry measures
- Lead-response time
- Estimate close rate
- Job gross margin
- Overtime exposure
- Technician utilization
- Customer review rate
What may be replaced, and what stays
What The Forge may replace
Tools and manual processes that may no longer be necessary.
- Standalone scheduling and dispatch apps
- A separate CRM used only for leads
- Lead- and estimate-tracking spreadsheets
- Text-message threads used as dispatch communication
What The Forge may integrate with
Systems you keep — The Forge becomes the layer above them.
- Your accounting platform
- Your payroll provider
- Your phone system or call-tracking service
- Estimating and takeoff tools you already use
Illustrative week — not customer results
A two-location HVAC and plumbing contractor
Illustrative example, not a demonstrated automatic workflow or customer result. It is 8:47 PM on a Wednesday. A homeowner calls about a leaking water heater, gets the after-hours message, and hangs up. The Forge captures the missed call, creates a lead, and queues it for 7 AM follow-up. Thursday morning the office calls back, qualifies the job, and books a site visit. The estimator scopes the replacement and sends a $4,200 estimate from the truck. The estimate goes unanswered Friday morning, so automated follow-up sends a check-in — the customer approves that afternoon. The job converts to a scheduled installation with the right plumber assigned based on licensing and proximity. On-site, the crew logs hours, uploads photos, and submits a $380 change order for a failed shutoff valve; the office and customer both see it before the crew leaves. The invoice — $4,580, change order included — generates automatically, and a review request goes out. Meanwhile the owner's dashboard shows: 14-minute average lead response, one location's estimate close rate running 14 points ahead of the other, and $1,100 in overtime exposure across both shops this week. No spreadsheet was built.
Configured further for how you specialize
Explore by the problem you feel most
We are losing leads
Inquiries arrive, then scatter across an inbox, a phone, and someone's memory. The follow-up that would have closed the job never happens.
ExploreEstimates go out and disappear
A proposal is sent, and from that moment forward nobody tracks whether the customer opened it, has questions, or went with a competitor. The estimate ages silently until someone finally asks what happened.
ExploreWe cannot see labor cost until payday
Overtime, unapproved hours, and weak-margin jobs are invisible until the payroll run closes. By then the money is already spent and the only option is to absorb it.
ExploreEach location runs differently
Every office, branch, or practice has its own way of doing things — different processes, different tools, different reporting. Nobody at the top can compare them or enforce a standard.
ExploreCustomer communication is fragmented
One customer texts the owner, emails the office, and calls the tech — and none of those threads sit in the same place. The next person to pick up the conversation has no idea what was already said.
ExploreHome Services & Contractors — questions
Bring the service call that keeps getting passed around.
Ask about home services & contractors
Ask The Forge is an AI assistant. Answers are generated from published Forge information and may be incomplete. Do not submit confidential, regulated, or customer-specific information.
Start with the work that is slowing you down
The job is done. Give billing the details it needs.
The crew finished the work. The office is still collecting the information needed to prepare the invoice.
Explore the workflow and its current limitations.
The customer is waiting. Who owns the reply?
A new message sits unanswered because the office and field team each assume the other is responding.
Explore the workflow and its current limitations.