Why grafter.ly exists

It started with an electrician in the family

He set out on his own, and the work came — getting customers was never the problem. What wore him down was the rest of it: quotes typed up at night, invoices going out late, payments chased by text.

In the end he walked away from a business that had customers waiting. Not because he couldn't do the work, but because the admin around it was too much to carry alone.

The tools never fit

Small businesses are where growth and new ideas actually come from. Plenty of industries have had proper software built for them over the last twenty years.

Trades and small service businesses mostly haven't. They've been left choosing between tools built for bigger firms, a spreadsheet, or paper.

What we believe

A business should get to spend its time on what it's good at. The skill is the business — the wiring, the cooking, the photographs — not the paperwork that follows it.

Your customers come from your own work and word of mouth. The admin should never be the reason a good business doesn't make it.

What grafter.ly does about it

It takes a job from the first enquiry through to paid. An enquiry email becomes a job, you build the quote from your price list, your customer accepts it online, and the invoice comes off the quote with a card payment link.

All of it works from a phone, because that's where the day happens.

Where it's going

The next piece of the mess to tackle: enquiries scattered across Checkatrade, MyBuilder, WhatsApp and email. One inbox that brings them all into the same job list is on the way — not live yet.