Auteur
Notes, guides and updates from the people building TradeYoke.
TradeYoke's message templates — every quote, invoice, receipt and text — now ship in English, Spanish, Welsh, German, Portuguese and French. Here's why that matters for a Welsh-speaking customer base, and exactly how the language your business posts in is chosen.
TradeYoke can now raise and send a window cleaning, gardening or scaffolding invoice the moment the job's marked done, and every invoice carries a Pay now button — on the email, the PDF and the customer's own account page.
"It's in here somewhere" is not a filing system. Here's what actually makes trade paperwork findable — and how TradeYoke searches inside the file, not just its name, to find the certificate that mentions a serial number or a customer's name.
A practical walkthrough: import customers, set frequencies, order the day, and send the first 'we're coming tomorrow' texts — without retyping a single address.
The fear of moving is worse than the move. Import the spreadsheet, let the app find the duplicates and geocode the addresses, book next week, and keep the notebook in the glovebox for a fortnight.
Price by time and access, not by the number of windows. The 2026 bands for UK homes, the rule for hard-access work, and how to raise prices without losing the street.
Around 1% on a £12 clean, no Friday-evening collections, and money that arrives whether the customer was in or not. How Direct Debit changes a window cleaning round, and how to move customers onto it.
One text at 6 pm the day before, sent from tomorrow's plan, and the side gate is open, the car is off the drive and the money is ready. How reminder texts work and what to put in them.
A wet Tuesday is not a lost day if every visit has its own record. Carry the undone stops forward in one go, replan Wednesday nearest-first, and the round is back on cycle by Friday.
A fixed price against a written task list, month to month with 30 days' notice, and every extra quoted first. The contract structure that stops scope creep and keeps gardens on the books for years.
A garden does not grow at the same speed all year, so the visit pattern should not stay the same either. How to set a seasonal schedule per property and let the diary follow the seasons.
Two photos taken on the visit do more for a garden maintenance business than any leaflet. Here is how to take them, file them and send them so the next visit sells itself.
