No pipelines or dashboards
No CRM funnel, no reporting suite, no marketing tools. Four numbers on the home screen: what you’re owed, what’s overdue, what’s waiting on a reply and what came in this month.
In build
PaidLane
Quote · Invoice · Remind · Get paid
PaidLane is the first product out of this studio: quoting and invoicing for people who run a trade on their own. You build a quote on your phone between jobs, send it over WhatsApp, and the customer accepts it on their own screen. One tap turns it into an invoice. From there PaidLane chases the money until it lands, without you having to make the awkward phone call.
It exists because the admin around getting paid quietly eats an evening a week for someone who is already doing every other job in the business. That time is the product.
- Plumbers
- Electricians
- Builders
- Anyone working solo
The whole product, in one loop
Quote to cash
Every feature in the first version serves this loop. If it doesn’t, it isn’t in the first version.
-
Quote from the van
Pick the client, add lines from your own price list, and watch the total update as you go. Built to be finished on a phone in under two minutes, standing in someone’s kitchen.
-
Send it however they answer
WhatsApp, SMS or email — the quote opens as a branded page with your logo on it, no app and no login for the customer. You can see when they’ve looked at it.
-
They accept on their own screen
Accept or decline, with a name and a timestamp against it. No more “I never agreed to that”, and no more chasing a signature on a piece of paper.
-
One tap to invoice
The accepted quote becomes an invoice with the same lines, its own number and a due date. Your payment details are on it, so the customer knows exactly how to pay you.
-
It does the chasing
A reminder before the due date, one on the day, then firmer ones as it ages. They stop the moment the invoice is paid. This is the part you were never going to get around to, and it is the reason the product exists.
What it deliberately will not do
Simplicity is the feature
The competition sells a platform you have to be trained on. This is the opposite bet: if a screen needs explaining, the screen is wrong.
No inventory, payroll or GPS
All of it belongs to a business with staff. This one is built for a business of one, and adding those would make every screen worse for the person actually using it.
Not a calendar product
Jobs get a date and a slot — morning, afternoon, all day — and a “today and this week” view. No drag-and-drop scheduling grid to maintain.
Rules the build doesn’t break
A tool that handles someone’s money has to be boring in the right places. These are written into the specification, not left to judgement on the day.
- Your data is never held hostage
- If a subscription lapses, the app stops you creating new work. It never stops you reading or exporting the work you have already done.
- Sent documents don’t change behind someone’s back
- Once a quote or invoice has gone out it is fixed. Revising it duplicates it into a new version, and cancelling one is a void with a reason attached, never a quiet delete.
- The server does the arithmetic
- Money is stored in whole cents and every total is recalculated on the server. Nothing a browser says about what something costs is taken at face value.
- Offline is a state, not a failure
- With no signal, drafting keeps working and anything that genuinely needs the network is visibly disabled with a reason. A tap is never quietly dropped.
Price, and where it is
One plan, one price, everywhere. Priced in US dollars and aimed at solo trades in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
$39 per month
or $390 a year — two months on the house
- 14-day free trial
- Card required to start the trial
- No free tier, and no per-document caps
- Cancel from inside the app
Status
The software is built and in launch preparation — the last of it is infrastructure, paperwork and testing rather than features. I’m not putting a date on it here. When someone who is not me can sign up, pay, use it and cancel without me touching anything, it launches.
Questions
Straight answers
What is PaidLane?
PaidLane is quoting and invoicing software for one-person trade businesses. You build a quote on your phone, send it by WhatsApp, SMS or email, the customer accepts it online, it becomes an invoice in one tap, and PaidLane chases the payment for you until it arrives.
Who is it for?
Solo tradespeople — plumbers, electricians, builders and anyone else running the whole business themselves. It is built for someone working from a phone, on site, often with bad signal, who currently quotes over WhatsApp and chases payment by phone.
What does it cost?
One plan at $39 a month, or $390 a year. There is a 14-day free trial and it asks for a card up front. There is no free tier.
When does it launch?
The software is built and in launch preparation. I am not announcing a date until the last checks are done, because a date I have to move is worse than no date at all.
Does it work without signal?
Yes, for the part that matters. Quotes and invoices can be drafted with no connection at all — they are stored on the device and sync when you get signal back. Sending and recording payments need a connection, and the app says so plainly rather than failing silently.
Is it available in South Africa?
It works anywhere, but it is not aimed at the South African market. PaidLane is priced in US dollars and built for tradespeople in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. South African customers are welcome as ordinary customers.
What happens to my data if I stop paying?
You keep it. An expired subscription stops you creating new work — it never locks you out of work you have already done. Your quotes, invoices and clients stay readable and exportable to CSV.