Booking software for tradesmen UK — eight straight answers.
The fear of being trapped is the right question to ask — most software companies bank on migration being too painful. So here's what we built instead. Thirty days notice. No exit fee. Your data — bookings, customers, workers, jobs, invoices — exported in full the day you ask, as CSV or PDF. That's not a policy. It's Clause 1 of The Pledge, written into your contract. We made leaving easy on purpose. The businesses that stay, stay because it's working — not because they can't get out.
The worker app caches your day on the phone, so the schedule + customer details stay visible if signal drops. Photo upload + status changes queue and sync the moment connection is back.
You connect your own Xero account via a Custom Connection (one-time, 5 minutes). From then on, every completed job auto-creates a draft invoice in YOUR Xero with the customer contact + line items + UK VAT. You review and send from Xero. We never see your Xero data.
For the first 20 founding businesses, yes — your Onboarding Investment (a one-time cost at the standard tier rate) is waived in full, and your monthly founding rate is locked at the price you join on for as long as you keep your subscription active. After the 20 founding places are taken, standard onboarding applies. The live counter at the top of the site shows how many places remain.
Yes — £599 a month is real money, and you are right to challenge it. So run your own maths, not ours. What does one no-show call-out cost you in a lost van day? What does your accountant charge to reconcile invoices you could have synced to Xero automatically? What is one enquiry a week worth — the one that currently disappears into WhatsApp? The platform is not a cost; it is the question of whether your current system is capturing every job, protecting every time slot, and syncing every invoice. If it is — stay where you are. If it is not — bring 30 days of your real booking history to a call and we will run the numbers on your business before you decide.
OptiTech Automation is built and run by a named, accountable founder — Cristian Moise-Putanu — and that is a deliberate product decision, not a gap in the team. You get a direct line to the person who built the platform and knows every part of it, not a ticket queue and a rotating support team who have never seen a van or a toolbox. The platform itself runs on established enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure, with EU-region data storage. OptiTech Automation operates in full compliance with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and is ICO registered. For any business query: hello@optitechautomation.co.uk.
You are right to question this — the trades software space is full of promises that collapse under scrutiny. Checkatrade earns money when you fail to build direct customer relationships. That is the model. Jobber is built for North American companies and adapted for UK compliance afterwards. ServiceTitan is excellent — if you run a £20M-plus operation. OptiTech Automation is built by a Devon trade, for UK trades, with your customer data staying yours and a contract that lets you leave the day you decide to. It is not a cheaper version of the same product. It is a different product solving a different problem. The /vs pages have the line-by-line comparison if you want to check the specifics.
That is the most important thing you could say, and the honest answer is: OptiTech Automation will also fail to stick if you set it up wrong. Software built for a back-office manager rarely survives contact with someone on a van at 7am. This is why every signup goes through a personal review — the founder checks the configuration, confirms it is set up for your trade and your area, and only switches you live when it is ready to work. You can run your own jobs through the full workflow before your subscription is ever charged. And if it still does not work? Thirty days' notice. Your customers, your bookings, your data — all yours, in full.