Software for UK painters and decorators

Ten quotes a month. Two come back. Eight go silent.

You spent half a Sunday writing up a 9-room interior - Crown Trade Vinyl Matt two coats, oil-eggshell to the woodwork, full prep, dust-sheets, masking - and she went with someone £700 cheaper. In May she’ll ring back because his paint is peeling and you’ll be polite about it. The Georgian hallway in Long Melford last spring was the best work of your year and you forgot the after photo - drove halfway down the M11 before you noticed. The HMO landlord in Bury whose common parts you painted in June 2024 should have been a 24-month re-quote this March; he went with someone cheaper because you forgot to nudge.

We make custom software for decorators - sole-traders with a lad through five-van firms, domestic, commercial, kitchen-respray, period / conservation, intumescent specialists, landlord / HMO portfolio painters. Small apps and automations that sit on top of what already works for you - Tradify, ServiceM8, Powered Now, Painter’s Mate, the paper diary, whatever you run - and quietly do the bits that waste your Sunday evening. Not another generic field-service app written for sparkies and bolted onto your trade. The bit between quote sent and paid, photographed, posted, booked back in two years - ghosting eats your margin, a forgotten after photo eats your marketing, and the missed landlord nudge eats your future revenue - that’s the bit we take off your plate. Trade-chassis-wise, same shape we run for sparkies, plumbers and roofers; tuned for the decorator’s two distinct moments - the highest ghosting rate in the trade, and the before / after photo that should be doing your marketing for you.

What you spend your week on that you shouldn’t have to

• Ten quotes a month, eight ghosted by Wednesday - the highest ghosting rate in trades and the conversation you can’t seem to win on the phone.
• “Magnolia is magnolia” - the customer who price-checked you against the kid down the road painting at weekends, and a 9-room survey at Long Melford that took half a Sunday to write up.
• Prep time uncharged - two days of filling, sanding, caulking, masking, dust-sheeting, all priced as “prep included” and quietly absorbed when the schedule slipped a day.
• The Georgian hallway after photo you forgot to take - the customer’s got it on her phone and you haven’t, and the decorators-forum thread says photos are the only marketing that works.
• A kitchen-respray in an occupied house - masking out half a morning before the 2K lacquer flies, overspray on a sofa a Trustpilot one-star waiting to happen.
• Five-day interior in an occupied semi, wife working from home, dust and oil-eggshell smell and your radio in the dining room - relations are strained by Wednesday.
• Weather rained off three exterior days in July; the September diary’s already wet too, and the customer who pushed has gone elsewhere.
• An HMO landlord in Bury whose common parts you painted 22 months ago and should re-quote - he went with someone cheaper in March because you forgot to nudge.
• Crown Trade Centre out of stock on the Once primer, half a morning gone to Cambridge.
• An intumescent paint application record on a care-home contract - DFT readings, drum batch numbers, third-party witness, currently on the back of a Nullifire delivery note somewhere.
• A Sunday-evening conversation with the day-rate decorator who turned up at 9.45 instead of 7.30.
• Dulux Select / Johnstone’s Trade Network / Farrow & Ball trade-scheme renewal paperwork in three different folders.

These aren’t problems for a generic field-service app written around sparkies. They’re the bit between quote sent and paid, photographed, posted, on the books, booked back in two years. That’s the bit we build.

Example problems we could solve

Six things we hear most often from decorators - with what the solved version looks like in your week. Every build is sized to your firm: a sole-trader-with-a-lad probably needs the first two and the fifth; a five-van firm running landlord rounds and commercial contracts alongside domestic might want all six plus both spokes. None of it means binning what already works.

1. The on-the-ladder line that triages the brand-band before the survey

The lost-enquiry moment: web enquiry comes in for “two bedrooms painted”; you ring back twice, she’s at work, you leave a message, you never hear back. The next bloke on Facebook picked up live. Or - phone rings four times while you’re cutting in around a coving in Sudbury; the caller wanted a quote for a stairs-and-landing and has rung the next decorator on Google by the time you’re down the ladder. Decorating is the trade with the highest quote-ghosting rate in the country and most missed calls turn into a quote you never get to write.

Solved looks like: an answer-on-your-behalf line that picks up while you’re on the brush - across calls, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook DM, Instagram and the chat box on your website - in your voice, trained on your geographic patch and your last-sent quotes. The decorator-specific thing is the brand-band qualifier at the front: the agent asks rooms-and-sizes (4×3 bedroom, 5×4 lounge, 6×3 stairs-and-landing), substrate (new plaster, old plaster, woodwork, woodchip, anaglypta), brand band (Crown Trade vs Dulux Trade vs Farrow & Ball vs Wickes-own), and occupied-or-empty before you’ve driven forty minutes to a survey priced for the wrong customer. Photos on inbound are first-class - a customer sending three shots of a hallway gets a sensible same-channel reply and a survey window in the diary that night. The longer version lives at Trainable Inbound AI Agent; the decorator setup is shaped to qualify rooms-and-sizes + substrate + brand-band + occupied-or-empty before the survey is booked, and to pre-load the survey brief into the iPad before you’ve left the gantry.

2. The decorator quote that doesn’t go silent - prep on its own line, brand-alternates side-by-side, +90-day reactivation

The Sunday-evening moment: half a Sunday spent measuring up a 9-room interior at Long Melford - Crown Trade two coats throughout, oil-eggshell to the woodwork, full prep including fill-and-sand on the lounge plaster, dust-sheets and masking; three weeks later, silence; she went with someone £700 under because his quote was a one-page Tradify template with “prep included” in the footer and she couldn’t see what was different.

Solved looks like: the quote goes out as a structured PDF with prep as its own broken-out line - fill and sand: 6 hours; caulk and mask: 4 hours; dust-sheet and prep furniture: 1 hour; new-plaster mist coat: 2 hours - and the customer sees the day-and-a-half of prep that’s hiding inside “prep included” on the cheaper quote. Brand alternates render inline as a side-by-side: Crown Trade Vinyl Matt £X, Wickes own-label £Y - coverage, washability, finish all differ, here’s why. The customer reads on her phone, makes an informed choice on brand, and signs by tapping. The chase ladder runs in your voice in the channel she replied on - “are we doing this or shall I park it” on the morning she was actually going to decide, not three weeks too late. The decorator-distinct feature is the +90-day reactivation: in May she gets a polite “how’s it going with the other decorator’s paint?” nudge, because his work peels in six months and she’ll want a proper quote back. The longer version lives at Quote & Chase Ladder; the decorator version’s distinct features are the prep-broken-out line discipline, the brand-alternates side-by-side, and the +90-day reactivation cadence.

3. Booking + the daily 7am occupied-house SMS that turns disruption into a managed experience

The Wednesday-relations-strained moment: five-day interior in an occupied semi, wife working from home; by Wednesday - dust, oil-eggshell smell, your radio in the dining room - relations are strained. Customer goes quiet, then writes a three-star review on Friday saying “good work but didn’t communicate”. Occupied-house disruption is the source of half the one-star reviews in the trade.

Solved looks like: booking → reminder the night before → daily 7am SMS each working day in your voice (“Today: prep + first coat dining room and hall. ETA: 7-coat dry by 5. Bedroom door sheeted. Radio off after lunch.”) → finished-work SMS with the photo-evidence attached → 90-minute review prompt with one-tap links to Google, Checkatrade and the decorators-forum reviews you actually care about. Negative sentiment routes back to you privately before it lands as a public review; positive sentiment goes straight out. The weather-aware “push to next dry day” one-tap reschedule handles exterior work - the customer keeps her place in the diary, your week doesn’t slip, the September diary fills with the rained-off July customers automatically. The longer version lives at Booking & Review Loop; the decorator version’s distinct features are the daily 7am “today’s plan” SMS for occupied-house jobs and the weather-aware “push to next dry day” one-tap reschedule for exterior season.

4. Invoice, dunning, and the prep-vs-paint time-on-tools log that learns

The margin-gone moment: estimated 1 day prep on the Long Melford job, took 2.5; customer paid the same week; the bookkeeping isn’t broken, the estimating is. Three jobs a year like this and the year’s margin is gone.

Solved looks like: invoices that go out on completion with the photo-set already attached; chase emails that go politer on the easy customers and firmer on the chronic late payers; a small portal where a landlord or letting agent can find any invoice they’ve lost without ringing you. The decorator-distinct piece is the time-on-tools log running alongside the invoice loop - the foreman taps the phase as he moves (prep, cut-in, roll, dry, finish) and the estimator from problem 2 calibrates against your real time-by-phase-per-substrate numbers. Twelve old-plaster prep jobs later you find out your prep line on the quote is consistently under by a day-and-a-half on Victorian-era walls; whether you re-price is your call, the data is yours. The longer version lives at Invoice & Dunning Ladder; depth on commercial CIS reverse-charge + retention release lives on the commercial-contract spoke, and depth on landlord / agent batch invoicing lives on the property-maintenance spoke.

5. The Before / After Engine - the photo that does your marketing

The drove-halfway-down-the-M11 moment: “Best job of the year - Georgian hallway in Long Melford. Took the before. Forgot the after. Drove halfway down the M11 before I noticed. The decorators-forum thread says photos are the only marketing that works and I never post them.”

Solved looks like: every job has a before / after photo pair as a first-class object. At quote-signed, the engine prompts the foreman for the before photo set - room by room, from a standard angle for each. At job-complete, the engine prompts again for the after set from the same angles. The pair assembles automatically into a single before/after image (slider format for the website, side-by-side for social) with the room name, the paint brand and colour code, and your branding. The set drops into the scheduling queue for Google Business Profile + Instagram + Facebook + Pinterest, one job per week, on the rhythm that works for your local SEO catchment. The colour-code log carries through to “touch-up later” reference when the customer rings two years on - “Crown Trade Vinyl Matt, Magnolia, drum batch 4471, two coats, woodwork Crown Fastflow Quick Dry Satin” one tap from her record. Decorating is the most visual trade in the country and the before/after pair is the entire marketing surface - the build is shaped around making it impossible to forget the after photo, and impossible to not post it. The longer version lives at Content & Portfolio Cadence; the platform behind the post queue is our own PlanPost and the decorator-shaped queue layers straight onto it.

6. The landlord-round manager - the 24-month re-paint anniversary that rings him for you

The forgot-to-nudge moment: “Painted a 4-bed HMO common-parts for a Bury landlord in June 2024. Should have been a 24-month re-quote in May. Went with someone cheaper this March because I forgot to ring.”

Solved looks like: every landlord / HMO / property-portfolio repaint enters the system with a recurring-round anniversary. 24-month default for HMO common parts, 36-month for AST rental interiors, 60-month for AST exteriors, between-tenancy on demand - tuned per property + landlord preference. Twelve weeks before the next anniversary, an SMS / email goes to the landlord or letting agent in your voice - “Riki here from Painter’s. The communal hallway and stairs at the HMO are coming up to the 24-month re-paint window in August; can pop over Saturday for a 30-minute walk-through and a re-quote off last year’s scope plus the inflation update - pencilled in for two weeks in early August.” The re-quote auto-drafts from the previous job’s scope; the new bits (paint brand change, colour change, additional rooms) get captured in the walk-through and the quote re-prices on the tablet. Multi-property landlords + agents get a portfolio dashboard - every property, every paint state, every next-due date, every previous spend, in one view the agent can also access through a portal. The decorator-specific moment: the 24-month re-paint anniversary is the under-monetised recurring-revenue layer in the trade, the round is the entire business in volume, and the build is shaped around making it inevitable, not optional. The longer version lives at Recurring Service Recall; depth on agent-portfolio batch invoicing and the HMO maintenance trail lives on the property-maintenance spoke.

The closest things we’ve already built

• PlanPostour own social-media scheduling SaaS, the platform behind the Before / After Engine in problem 5. The decorator-shaped queue layers on top with the colour-code log and the per-job photo pair as the canonical assets; one job-per-week posting cadence to Google Business Profile + Instagram + Facebook + Pinterest. Own-brand case study, ships full-fat - see Planpost.
• HC Electricala domestic and commercial electrician in Haverhill, Suffolk. Different trade, same Suffolk trade-chassis with the customer-comms cascade pattern on the EICR + EV-install side. The closest live reference for how a daily-SMS occupied-house cadence and a recurring-round nudge run in a Suffolk trade business. (Named pull-quote and final outcome figures hold until the permission checklist clears - see Hc Electrical.)
• mendbuddyour own multi-channel AI agent for inbound conversations across voice, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook DM, Instagram and web chat. The on-the-ladder line in problem 1 and the +90-day reactivation in problem 2 are decorator-shaped versions of this. Trained on your brand bands, your scope questions, your supplier names and your customer voice. See Mendbuddy.
• Allways Roofing Haverhilladjacent trade in the same Suffolk catchment with the weather-aware-rescheduling pattern that mirrors the decorator’s exterior-season cadence in problem 3. (Named pull-quote and final outcome figures hold until the permission checklist clears - see Allways Roofing.)

If your week’s narrower than the whole of the above

The week looks different enough for two sub-audiences that they have their own pages:

• Commercial / contract painter →if your week is mostly commercial fit-out painting, intumescent fire-rated work on structural steels, or specifier-led contracts with CDM 2015 + RAMS + COSHH + retention + reverse-charge VAT + 30-60 day terms, the BS EN 13381 audit pack and the retention-release tracker are the build. CHAS / SafeContractor / Constructionline accredited, FIRAS / IFC witness booked, the audit trail is the deliverable.
• Property-maintenance / landlord-portfolio decorator →if your business is mostly HMO common-parts rounds and landlord rentals with 24-month / 36-month recurring repaints, the recurring-round + agent-portfolio batch invoice + HMO maintenance-trail evidence build is the focus. Three-way comms (tenant / agent / landlord), 28th-of-the-month cash cycle, EHO-ready maintenance trail.

Adjacent trades and verticals

• Buildersthe multi-trade you’re often working alongside on extensions and refurbs; the builder hub covers the project-side scheduling that pulls you in.
• Roofersadjacent trade sharing the weather-aware-rescheduling pattern; sibling Suffolk-catchment trade with the same weather-disrupted exterior season.
• Electriciansthe trade-chassis reference; HC Electrical is the named-build proof of how this shape runs in a Suffolk trade business.
• Plumbersthe second-fix trade you’re scheduling alongside on occupied-house refurbs; the plumbers/lettings spoke is the closest mirror of the decorator property-maintenance spoke on the plumbing side.
• Gas Safe engineersthe boiler / heat-pump engineer you’re scheduling around on extensions; the landlord-CP12 spoke is the gas-side mirror of the decorator landlord-round.
• Lettings agents and landlord portfoliosthe agent side of every property-maintenance conversation; if you work for two or three letting agents alongside your domestic book, the agent-side hub is worth a read.

FAQ

Tell us what your week looks like

Send an enquiry - what’s your van count, what mix (domestic interior / exterior / commercial / kitchen-respray / period / intumescent / landlord-round), how many landlords on the book, what brand bands you tend to specify, where the ghost rate sits and where the after photo goes missing. We’ll come back with a sketch of what we’d build and what it would cost. No calendar, no demo to sit through. Email reply, scoped sketch, you decide.