A booking system for tradesmen, not another quote tool
Most trade software starts after the phone call. You take the enquiry, you type it in, you chase the deposit. OptiTech Automation is a booking system for tradesmen in the plain sense of the words: the customer books a real slot on your page, the deposit is taken at that moment into your own Stripe account, and the job goes straight to the right worker. No phone tag. No retyping. Built in the UK for UK trades, from £599 a month.
What an online booking system for tradesmen actually does
Booking software for trades has mostly meant quote software with a calendar attached. The customer fills in a form, you ring them back, you quote, you invoice. The system only starts working after you have done the selling. Booking-first turns that on its head: the system takes the commitment itself, and everything else follows from it.
- 01
The customer books a real slot
Not a callback request. Not a contact form that goes into a pile. Your branded booking page shows genuine availability, and the customer picks an actual appointment on it. The commitment happens on the page, at the moment the customer is ready, whether that is lunchtime or half past ten at night.
- 02
The deposit lands at that moment
The deposit is taken automatically as part of the booking, through Stripe, straight into your own Stripe account. The money never touches OptiTech Automation. Nobody has to remember to add it, ask for it, or chase it. If the booking exists, the deposit happened.
- 03
The job goes to the right worker
The confirmed job goes straight to the right qualified engineer's app, matched by rota and qualifications. Gas work goes to the engineer who can sign it off. Subcontractors get an offer they can accept or decline; your employed team get the job in their day instantly. Either way you keep the final say: reassign in two taps if you know something the system does not.
- 04
Nobody rings anybody
The customer gets a confirmation and a job reference automatically. Your engineer sees the job in the worker app on their phone. You see it in your dashboard. The whole transaction completed without a single phone call, and without you stopping work to take one.
The missed-call maths, done honestly
We are not going to invent a statistic here. You do not need one. You already know your average job value, and you already know what your phone does while your hands are inside a boiler or up in a loft: it rings, and then it stops ringing.
Every missed call while you are on the tools is a job that may go to the next name on the list. Not every one. But a customer with a leak is rarely a patient customer, and the trade that answers, or the trade whose page takes the booking on the spot, is usually the trade that gets the work.
So do the sum with your own numbers. Take your average job value. Count the calls you could not answer last week. You only need a small share of those to have been real, winnable jobs for the loss to pass what this software costs in a month. If your numbers say otherwise, this is not for you, and we would rather you knew that now.
We built a calculator that walks through it with your own figures, not ours: work out what missed bookings cost your business. It takes a few minutes and it will tell you honestly if the maths does not stack up.
Choosing the best booking system for tradesmen: one test
The test is where work enters the business. A quote-and-invoice tool is a filing cabinet for decisions you already made on the phone. A booking-first system makes the decision happen without the phone. Same trade, same jobs, a different front door, and everything downstream changes with it.
Where the sale happens
Quote-first tools
On the phone, with you doing the selling, usually while you are on the tools.
OptiTech Automation
On the page, with the customer doing the booking, while you keep working.
When money changes hands
Quote-first tools
After the job, on an invoice, sometimes weeks later, often chased.
OptiTech Automation
At the moment of booking, as a deposit, into your own Stripe account.
Who types the job in
Quote-first tools
You do, from a phone note or a text thread, after the call.
OptiTech Automation
The customer does, once, with the details you asked the page to collect.
What a missed call costs
Quote-first tools
Possibly the job. The enquiry only exists if you answer.
OptiTech Automation
Nothing. There was no call. The booking page took the job while you worked.
What stays exactly the same
You still quote big jobs. A full bathroom, a rewire, a heat pump install: that work starts with a survey and a considered price, and it should. No booking page replaces your judgement on a complex job, and we will never claim it does.
What changes is the bread and butter. The boiler service, the fault find, the callout, the annual certificate: work you can price upfront gets booked, paid a deposit on, and dispatched without touching your phone. And the survey for the big job can itself be a bookable visit, so even quoted work starts with a committed customer rather than a maybe.
You also keep your customers. Bookings, contact details, job history: all of it is yours, exportable in full, any time. We hold ourselves to that in writing, with 30 days notice and no lock-in, on our pledge page.
Questions tradesmen actually ask
Yes. That is the whole design. Your branded booking page shows real availability, the customer picks a slot, pays the deposit through Stripe, and receives a confirmation with a job reference. No phone call is needed at any point, and the page takes bookings at any hour, including the ones you spend on the tools or asleep.
You stay in control of what can be booked. Put the straightforward, price-it-upfront work on the booking page and keep the jobs that need your judgement off it. And dispatch never locks you out: the job goes straight to the right qualified engineer, and you can reassign in two taps if you know something the system does not.
Yes, structurally. The deposit is taken automatically at the moment the customer books, through Stripe, into your own Stripe account. The funds never pass through OptiTech Automation. There is no line item to remember and no awkward follow-up call, because the deposit is part of the booking itself, not a task that comes after it.
You still quote them, exactly as you do now. A bathroom refit or a full rewire starts with a survey and a proper price, and no honest software should pretend otherwise. The booking page covers the work you can price upfront, and you can also offer the survey visit itself as a bookable slot with its own deposit.
Into your own Stripe account, directly. OptiTech Automation never holds your money and never takes a cut of it. Refunds and cancellations are handled under your own policy, through your own Stripe, on your own terms.
Both. The booking page is the front door, and behind it sits the full operation: dispatch by rota and qualifications, a worker app for every engineer, and two-way Xero sync so completed jobs flow into your accounts. It is booking software for trades that carries the job all the way through, not a widget bolted onto a diary.
Free booking tools exist, and for a sole trader managing their own diary one may be all you need. OptiTech Automation is not free and does not pretend to be: it is built for trade businesses with a team, and it is priced flat per plan, from £599 a month plus a £249 one-off setup on Standard, with deposits, dispatch, the worker app and Xero sync included. Whether it pays for itself is a sum, not a slogan: the calculator at /worth-it runs it with your own numbers.
Yes. OptiTech Automation operates under UK GDPR, is registered with the ICO, and hosts data on EU servers. Your customer data belongs to your business: you can export everything, and if you ever leave, you take it with you. That is written into our pledge, alongside 30 days notice and no lock-in.
Keep reading: how the system works end to end · the flat monthly price · the no lock-in pledge
See it take a real booking
Book a 15-minute call with the founder. Ask anything, including whether this is the wrong fit for your trade. A straight answer either way costs you nothing.