Trades Platform
Your trades business. Built like it should be.
Quotes that get approved the same day. Mid-job change orders without phone tag. Stage payments that auto-collect. Snagging that doesn’t end in a dispute. One platform — built by a London renovation business — for the trades that take their work seriously.
Built by the team behind Step-Ahead Renovations. Used in our own working business. We’ll show you everything before you commit to anything.
Halberd & Sons
Built right, finished proper.
Change order approved
£258 — rotten joist
Beacontree bathroom · 11:23am
What’s quietly costing you money
The four leaks every renovation firm has.
The phone-tag dead time
Strip-out reveals rotten joists. Customer's at work. You can't reach them. Three lads sit in the van for an hour and a half. Multiply by every project — that's a full day a week you're losing without noticing.
The stage payments you forget to chase
40% deposit, 30% on first-fix complete, 30% on snagging sign-off. Easy in principle. In practice you forget to invoice on the right day, two weeks pass, your cash flow tightens just when the supplier needs paying for the next project.
The snagging that becomes a dispute
Customer walks around at handover. Says they'll send you a list. You agree to come back. Three months pass. They mention the gap in the silicone you forgot about. They withhold the final 10%. Nobody's clear what's outstanding. Familiar?
The customers you never re-contact
Every boiler you installed needs annual servicing. Every landlord needs gas safety certs. Most trades never re-contact these customers, so they Google 'boiler service near me' twelve months later and go to British Gas.
What we replace it with
One platform your whole firm runs on.
Quotes that get accepted
Send the quote during the site visit. Customer accepts on their phone. Deposit hits your Stripe account before you've driven home.
See it in the demoMid-job change order approvals
Find a problem, photograph it, send the quote in 60 seconds, customer one-tap-approves from work. The lads keep working.
See it in the demoCustomer project portal
Daily progress photos, project Gantt, payment schedule, next milestone. They stop phoning you.
See it in the demoMulti-crew Gantt scheduling
Every crew member, every project, every day, one screen. The view Tradify and ServiceM8 don't have.
See it in the demoStructured snagging with sign-off
Walk around, photograph each item, customer agrees digitally, final payment triggers when complete.
See it in the demoService reminder system
Every boiler service, gas safety cert and EICR you've ever issued, tracked. Automatic reminders. 35–45% rebook rate.
See it in the demoInside the platform
The actual screens. Not mockups.
These are real pages from the Halberd & Sons demo running at trades.stepaheadworks.com. Click through it yourself, or read the captions below.
The economic argument
What this is worth to a renovation firm.
A worked example for a typical 2-crew bathroom and kitchen specialist doing £600k turnover.
| Quote conversion lift (25% → 35%, on £600k pipeline) | +£24,000 |
| Phone-tag time recovered (10 hr/mo × £45/hr × 2 lads) | +£10,800 |
| Service reminders converted (80 historical × 35% × £150) | +£4,200 |
| Late-payment days recovered (10 days off DSO on £600k) | +£16,000 working capital |
| Snagging disputes avoided (4/yr × £1,500) | +£6,000 |
| Total annual upside | ~£45,000 + working capital |
Real numbers vary by firm size, project mix, and current systems. This is a typical example for a 2-crew operation in outer London. We’ll model your own numbers during the discovery call.
We’re not a tech company that interviewed a builder once.
The founder of STEP-AHEAD Works also runs Step-Ahead Renovations alongside this studio. Every feature in this platform exists because he needed it for his own bathroom and kitchen jobs in Walthamstow. When something breaks at 7am on a Saturday, you call the founder directly — same WhatsApp number, every time.
How it works
From first call to full switchover in about a month.
30-minute discovery call
We learn your trade mix, your average project value, your current pain points, your crew, your software stack. No pitch.
You see your firm on the new platform
Within 7 days we send a working preview at yourname.stepaheadworks.com — with a sample of your last 12 months of customers imported so the reminder system goes live with real data.
Launch alongside your existing systems
We point your domain at the new platform, train the crew in a 90-minute session, and run alongside your existing systems for two weeks. Most firms switch over fully within 30 days.
Productised tiers
Three ways to start.
Essentials
£320+ £30/mo
Static branded firm website — services, past work, reviews, contact form. Mobile-perfect, SEO-ready, hosted on our infrastructure. Launched in a few days.
Fixed-price build · monthly hosting & support
Start a conversationWorkshop
£640+ £60/mo
Everything in Essentials, plus online quote requests, customer project portal with photo timeline, Stripe direct payments, and the admin (leads, quotes, projects, snagging) — so the website actually runs the business.
Most chosen by 1–3 crew firms
Start a conversationMulti-crew Operation
£960+ £90/mo
Everything in Workshop, plus multi-crew Gantt scheduling, change-order approvals with photo evidence, service reminders, supplier integration, custom branding and advanced analytics.
Quoted after a scoping call
Start a conversationEvery project is preceded by a real conversation and a fixed-scope written proposal within five working days.
Honest answers
Questions trades owners actually ask.
Will we keep our existing customers, quotes and project records?
Yes. We import them from whatever you currently use — spreadsheets, paper, Tradify, Powered Now, anything — during onboarding. Nothing gets lost.
Will customers actually use the portal or just phone us anyway?
The customers who would have phoned still can. But about 70% prefer the portal once they have access — particularly the daily progress photos. You'll get fewer 'how's it going?' calls within 2 weeks.
Does this work for landlord and commercial clients, not just domestic?
Yes. Particularly strong for landlord clients because the gas safety cert and EICR reminders are legally required — and the platform tracks them for you.
Can my crew use this without training?
Customer-facing parts need no training (customers use it). The admin + site-board are designed for someone who's never used software like this — a 90-minute session covers it. Photos upload from any phone.
What about the trades that aren't on phones much — older guys who hate tech?
The platform doesn't replace them — it sits alongside. They can keep working how they do. The platform captures what the rest of the team is doing and shows it to the customer.
Do I own my data?
Yes. Every quote, every customer, every project record is yours. Export anytime. If you leave us, you take it all with you.
Stop losing days to phone tag. Start running your firm like the proper craftsman operation it already is.
- UK Limited company
- Response within 24 hours
- Fixed-scope proposals