Blue Collar Trade Manager helps electricians turn a panel-upgrade estimate into an invoice without re-keying line items, then collect payment by card or ACH through a click-to-pay link. License numbers, permit references, job notes, site details, and crew assignments stay connected to the work record and its invoices.
Create an estimate for the job from scratch or pull line items straight from your electrical price book, then send it for approval by text or email.
The customer reviews and approves the estimate online or by replying to a text — no printing, no in-person signature required.
Turn the approved estimate into an invoice in one step, so line items, pricing, and job details carry over without retyping anything.
The invoice goes out with a public click-to-pay link so the customer can pay by card or ACH from their phone, without creating an account.
If the invoice sits unpaid, automated payment reminders go out on a schedule you set, instead of you having to remember to chase it.
Paid, unpaid, and overdue invoices roll up into reports so you can see outstanding balances across every customer at a glance.
Panel upgrades, service changes, and other permit work benefit from a clear paper trail. You can add your license number and a permit reference as custom fields on the invoice, and attach photos or documents to the customer record — though the permit application and inspection itself happen with your local building department, not in BCTM.
An electrician called for a tripped breaker often finds bigger issues once the panel's open. Rather than rewriting the whole estimate, add the newly discovered work as additional line items or a change order on the existing job, so the customer sees exactly what changed and why the price moved.
Rough-in, trim-out, and final inspection often each trigger a payment. Progress/milestone invoicing lets you bill each stage separately instead of waiting until the whole job wraps to send one invoice for a job that might span weeks.
A lot of electrical troubleshooting happens exactly where cell service doesn't reach. The offline PWA lets you draft the estimate or invoice while you're in the crawlspace, and it syncs and sends once you're back in range — actual card and ACH payment capture still requires a live connection.
You can add your license number, permit reference, and job notes as custom fields on the invoice, but BCTM doesn't file permits or handle inspections.
For jobs like panel upgrades or service changes that require a pulled permit, keeping the license number and permit reference visible on the invoice gives the customer (and any inspector) a clear record tied to the work performed. The permit application itself is filed with your local building department outside the software.
Add the newly discovered work as new line items or a change order tied to the existing job, rather than starting a brand-new invoice from scratch.
It's common to open a panel expecting one repair and find another. Adding a change order keeps the full job history — original scope plus the extra work — in one place, which helps if the customer later asks why the final bill differs from the original estimate.
Yes — license number is a supported custom field on BCTM invoices.
Many states and municipalities expect a license number to appear on invoices for licensed electrical work. You can set this once on your business profile so it shows automatically on every invoice and estimate you send.
Set up milestone or progress invoices tied to the same job so each stage — rough-in, trim-out, final — gets billed and paid on its own timeline.
New construction and larger remodels rarely get paid in one lump sum at the end. Structuring the job as staged invoices means you're getting paid as work is completed rather than carrying the full cost of the job until final inspection.
Broadly, yes — 82% of contractors report waiting 30+ days past the expected payment date, up from 49% two years earlier, and electrical work is billed within the same construction payment chain as other trades.
Trade contractors specifically (the category that includes electrical, HVAC, and plumbing) average 57 days Days Sales Outstanding, somewhat faster than the 83-day construction-wide average but still well past standard 30-day terms (Level — Construction Cash Flow Crisis in Numbers; Rabbet 2024 data cited in the same report and in Yahoo Finance).
You need the customer's consent to text them under TCPA rules — BCTM captures that consent at intake before enabling SMS for that customer.
Consent capture happens once, when you add the customer, and covers invoice delivery, estimate approval requests, and payment reminders sent by text. This is general information, not legal or tax advice — check with a licensed attorney or CPA in your state before relying on it.
No — BCTM doesn't currently sync with QuickBooks. You can export invoices and payment records so your bookkeeper or CPA can bring them into whatever accounting system you use.
BCTM focuses on invoicing, estimating, and payment collection rather than full double-entry accounting. Data export/portability gives you a way to hand off clean records without a live integration.
$0/mo — no subscription and no per-user seats. Card payments: 3.9% + $0.30 (1% BCTM platform fee + 2.9% + $0.30 Stripe). ACH bank payments: 1.8% (1% BCTM platform fee + 0.8% Stripe, Stripe portion capped at $5.00). Cash and check: no fees. Full fee breakdown.
No subscription. You pay a per-transaction fee only when a customer pays you.
Start free