AI for Handymen

It quotes the way you would on the phone — by asking questions until it knows enough. You load your standard rates once: hourly rate, minimum call-out, half-day and full-day rates, and fixed prices for the jobs you do over and over (rehanging a door, patching plaster, mounting a TV, replacing a screen door). The AI works out which bucket the job falls into and asks the follow-ups that actually change the price — single storey or double, brick or plaster, is the fitting already there, do you need to supply materials. Straightforward jobs get a quote sent on the spot. Anything vague, multi-day or unusual gets captured in full and flagged for you to price yourself, so you’re never locked into a number the AI invented.

Yes, and for handyman work it’s the single biggest time-saver. The AI asks the caller to text through photos of the job — the rotten deck board, the sagging gate, the crack in the cornice — and attaches them to the enquiry along with the address and their notes. Those photos land in your job management software with the rest of the details, so you can price a dozen small jobs from the ute at smoko instead of driving to twelve addresses to look at them. Photos also settle arguments later: if the job on site is bigger than the job in the picture, you’ve got a timestamped record of what you quoted on. It works with any phone — no app for the customer to download.

It tells them your minimum up front, politely, before anyone wastes a morning. You set the number — say a one-hour minimum plus travel — and the AI quotes it as the floor on every job. Some callers will hear that and hang up, which is fine: a fifteen-minute tap washer job forty minutes away was never going to pay. Plenty of others will say “well, while you’re here, can you also…” and start listing things, which is exactly what you want. The AI is set up to prompt for that — asking whether there’s anything else on the list — so a $120 minimum turns into a $400 half-day. You can also set it to batch under-minimum jobs into a nearby run rather than knocking them back outright.

That’s the point of it. Handyman work lives or dies on travel time — five jobs across five suburbs is a day of driving, five jobs in one suburb is a good day’s earning. The AI knows your service area, your typical duration by job type, and what’s already in your calendar, so when a Frankston caller wants a Tuesday it offers the Tuesday you’re already in Frankston. When you’ve got a half-empty Thursday around Ringwood, it steers new Ringwood enquiries into the gaps rather than scattering them across the week. It won’t overbook you either — it factors travel between bookings instead of stacking jobs back to back and leaving you to explain why you’re two hours late.

For most solo operators, yes. Solo Tradie is $199 a month (AUD, GST included) and covers one phone line, up to 100 calls a month, message taking, basic job scheduling, after-hours call capture and SMS notifications to your mobile. If you’re a one-person business taking a few calls a day, 100 a month is comfortable headroom — and if you do go over, calls still get answered, billed at $2.50 each rather than dropping to voicemail. Step up to Growing Team ($449/mo) when you want instant quote generation, calendar sync, ServiceM8 and Tradify integration and automatic quote follow-up. There’s no lock-in contract, so the honest answer is start on Solo Tradie and move up only if the call volume makes you. Full breakdown on the pricing page.

Yes, and it’s worth configuring properly on day one. Electrical installation work and most plumbing and gasfitting work require a licensed tradesperson in every Australian state and territory, with no dollar threshold that makes it legal for an unlicensed handyman — that’s Energy Safe Victoria and the VBA in Victoria, NSW Fair Trading in New South Wales, and the QBCC in Queensland. The AI is configured with your own list of what you do and don’t take on, so when someone calls about a new powerpoint or a hot water service it says plainly that it’s licensed work, and either refers them to the sparkie or plumber you normally work with or takes their details for you to pass on. You keep the goodwill and the referral relationship, and you don’t end up quoting work you can’t legally touch.