For specialty contractors · 21 trades
Estimating, jobs, crews, billing and fleet in one system. And TRai, the assistant that reads your plans, drafts your bids, clears your inbox and talks your day through with you on the drive in. You say yes. TRai does the work.
Built inside a working plumbing contractor that runs on it every day.
RFPs in the inbox. Plans in Drive. Bids in spreadsheets. Crews on text. Invoices by hand. And no one can answer the owner's one question: how much work is in contract for the next 24 months?
How it works
The backlog number is a by-product of the work, not a separate report.
An RFP lands in your intake address. TRai opens the estimate with the due date, plan-room link and the builder's estimator filled in.
Drop the plans. Sheets indexed in order, your items pinned and counted, scope and pricing worksheet drafted at your rates.
Everything moves to the job exactly as it stood. The final bid becomes the scope of work.
Crews get schedule, plans and specs on the phone. A new revision replaces only the pages that changed.
Invoices and pay apps written from the contract and the work done, on your letterhead, with the state's lien waiver.
Replies from the GC's AP become dated follow-ups. One check closes every invoice it covers.
TRai
Talk through the morning like you would with your office manager. When you say go, TRai works the list on the platform, one item at a time, and logs every word and every change on the record it touched.
Ears and voice
Phone on the dash or headphones at the desk. TRai reads the morning brief, asks what needs an answer and takes your corrections mid-sentence. English or Spanish.
The brain
Crews out, stops planned, money in and out, bids due, what is waiting on you. Ordered by your role: owners hear money first, PMs hear crews first.
Hands
Move a walk, draft a change order, close a Mailroom item, approve a ticket. TRai uses the same buttons you do, with the same permissions your role has.
Each starts in Propose and waits for your tap. Switch it to Auto once you trust it. You set the nightly spending cap.
Mailroom
Every company gets its own intake address. Plan revisions, supplier invoices, builder replies and RFPs land as rows, each with what TRai read, what it found and one proposal. Apply it, or tell TRai what it got wrong.
Boxes route by role, so estimating sees bids, the office sees money and the owner sees what only the owner can decide.
Backlog
Awarded contracts plus approved change orders, minus what is billed, spread across the months from the builder's own schedule. Open bids are added in, weighted by your real win rate. TRai emails it every Monday.
Months come from the builder's construction schedule read on each project, your booked crew days, or a typed start month — best source first.
Your crew capacity drawn as a line, so you can see the month you need to hire, or the month you need to sell.
The headline shows on Estimating and the Billing sheet, and the Monday report lands in your inbox without anyone building it.
Field app
Crews see only the jobs they are scheduled on, with plans, specs and clock in on the job card. Material requests can be typed, spoken or a photo of a note; TRai reads them back and asks only what it can't tell.
The crew reads and writes in Spanish while the office reads English, both ways. Installs from the browser with a text sign-in code. No app store.
Trade packs
Scopes, clarifications and exclusions, takeoff tags, alternates and the equipment list for your fleet. Packs carry hours and materials, never dollars. Your rates and markup set every price, and your zip code suggests local labor rates.
Lien and notice deadlines, license boards, public-works rules and statutory waiver forms for all 50 states and DC.
TradeRail grew inside Villa Plumbing, a high-end residential plumbing contractor in the Bay Area. Every screen was used on live jobs before it shipped. If it slowed down the office or confused a tech, it was rebuilt.
AJ Moreno, founder · owner, Villa Plumbing Inc.
Book a demo
Bring one plan set and one contract. We'll show TRai read them, draft the scope and put the job on your 24-month picture, on your letterhead, at your rates.
Or write to alonso@traderail.com.
Your request is in the Mailroom. We'll reply from alonso@traderail.com to set a time.