Deckhand builds systems that run the admin on the software you already use: quoting, invoicing, scheduling, records, follow-up. Your day goes back to the part that needs you in the room.
Nothing to migrate. Your crew keeps using the tools they already know. The work just stops piling up on your desk.
hours a month back
at your own rate
Assumes a system takes over roughly 70% of the work that follows the same steps every time: the retyping, the chasing, the copying between systems. It leaves the judgement calls with you. The free hour replaces this guess with your actual numbers.
You already bought the software. The problem isn't that you're missing a tool. It's that moving work between the ones you have is a person's job, and that person is you, at night.
Not seeing yours? There are hundreds of these and no list is complete. If your software has a way in, and almost all of them do, it can be plugged into. And when there is nothing to plug into at all: plenty of good businesses run on email, a whiteboard and one long-suffering spreadsheet. That works too. The system reads what is actually there rather than making you buy something first.
Handing your admin to software is only frightening if it acts before you trust it. A deckhand doesn't take the helm on day one: this starts by asking permission for everything, proves itself against work you have already done, and only then gets to act on its own.
Jobs, quotes, invoices, forms, email, bookings. One loop across every system work moves through, with a record for each job and where it has got to.
Anything customer-facing or irreversible reaches your phone as a one-tap decision first. It confirms where it had to guess, never where you already told it.
I backtest it against months of your real jobs and invoices, then run it live with you confirming everything, until it hits a bar we agree on in advance.
Only then does it act unsupervised, and it goes back to asking automatically the moment it slips. You get a short daily digest, not another dashboard to babysit.
Each of these is a chain of small jobs that currently needs a human to carry it from one system to the next. That carrying is the part that goes.
The quote goes out, the job gets scheduled, the invoice follows the moment it's done, and the reminders go out on their own. Nobody re-enters the same job three times, and nothing sits unbilled for a fortnight because the week got away.
Bookings, confirmations, reminders, reschedules and the phone tag around them, handled against your real calendar and crew availability, in your job software, not a new one.
Intake forms, notes, files and job details moved between systems without anyone retyping them. Where the data can't leave the building, as in clinics and firms, it runs on hardware in your building instead of the cloud.
Cold quotes, service recalls, review requests, the customer you meant to ring back in March. All of it on a schedule, in your voice, and it stops the moment they reply.
Calls, forms, emails and messages turned into a real job record with the details already filled in, so it lands in your system as work, not as a voicemail you have to transcribe later.
The screening, the compliance check, the dispatch logic nobody sells off the shelf because only fourteen businesses in the country need it. That's the work I like most, and it's where the real hours usually are.
Nobody hands their whole operation to a system they have never seen work. So you don't. You start with the task you complain about most, and the rest follows once it has earned it.
Usually invoicing or chasing quotes, whichever one you were complaining about when we met. Small enough that you find out quickly whether this works on your business, and cheap enough that finding out is not a risk.
The connections into your job software and your books already exist, so the second system is mostly logic rather than plumbing. Most owners choose it themselves by this point. Once one thing is running unsupervised, it becomes obvious which task is next.
Quote, job, schedule, invoice and follow-up start behaving like one operation instead of five errands. Work moves the whole way through without anybody carrying it between systems, which is the point at which owners tell me they stopped opening the laptop after dinner.
The screening, the compliance check, the dispatch logic that exists only in your head and your business. This is where the biggest hours are usually hiding, and it is the work I like most, but it is the last thing to build, not the first.
There is no cap on how much of the operation this ends up running, and no per-seat cost as you grow. The monthly plan scales with what there is to look after. You move up a tier when the system is doing more, not when you hire someone.
What it costs to build the system, and what it costs to keep it running. Nothing is metered, nothing is per-seat, and a first system starts at fifteen hundred dollars, so you can find out whether this works on your business before committing to more.
That is where almost everyone starts: one job taken off your desk, scoped tight, running in a fortnight. Each system after it is quoted against a written scope, and costs less to build than the first, because the hard plumbing is already done.
The scope is written down before anything starts, and anything added later is a change order you approve first.
You will do this arithmetic anyway, so here it is done properly: a first system plus twelve months on a plan.
Prepay the year and it is eleven months for twelve, so those become $6,725 and $10,300. Year two is the plan only. The build does not repeat. Move up or down a plan as the business changes, and if you ever want to take the system in-house there is a buyout figure in the contract from day one.
The systems are running in vet practices, livestock operations and trades shops. The owners are the ones worth listening to.
I was doing invoices at ten at night after a day of house calls. Now the invoice goes out before I'm even at the site, the schedule looks after itself, and the local vet clinics get their follow-up without me having to remember. I didn't have to change any of the tools I use currently. Neil built the whole thing remotely. I never stopped taking appointments for it. I get almost a full day back a week, and I spend it with families instead of a laptop.
We were live in under two weeks, which is the part I tell people about. And the time it gave back went into the HR and admin work that had been sliding for months because nobody had the hours for it. Same team, same length of day. We just stopped spending it on document reviews and email responses.
Not a sales call with a demo at the end. I ask how the work actually moves through your business, and then I give you a straight answer about whether there is anything here worth automating.
I take on a limited number of clients at a time. So this hour is as much me working out whether I can genuinely help you as it is you working out whether you want me anywhere near your business.
No deck. No proposal to chase. No follow-up sequence. If the answer is no, you will not hear from me again unless you get in touch.
Nothing prepared. Just be near whatever you use to run jobs and invoices, so we can look at the real thing rather than your memory of it. In person anywhere from Sooke to Nanaimo, otherwise a call and a shared screen works just as well.
I'll come back within one business day with a couple of times that might suit. Nothing to prepare. Just be near whatever you run jobs on.