For UK trades & service businesses
CRM built for trades — not sales teams
Track customers, quote history, recurring work, site notes, and payment status in one place. No sales pipeline. No lead scoring. Just the customer information a trades business actually needs.
From £19.99/month · No contracts · Works on mobile
What CRM actually means for a trades business
Most CRM software is designed for sales teams chasing deals. That's not how trades work. Your customers don't sit in a pipeline — they call up, you do the job, you invoice them, and if you do good work, they come back. Customer management for trades is about keeping track of that repeat relationship, not closing a sales stage.
Customer records
Name, address, contact details, site access notes, and any preferences or flags (dog in garden, invoice to landlord, prefers WhatsApp). The information you currently keep in your head or your phone notes.
Quote history
Every quote you've sent — what it covered, what it cost, whether it was accepted. When a customer calls back for similar work, you're not quoting from scratch.
Recurring work tracking
Annual boiler services, monthly cleaning contracts, seasonal garden maintenance. Know who's due a revisit and when, without maintaining a separate spreadsheet.
Site and job notes
What was done last time, what parts were used, what was flagged for next visit. Particularly important when you do work across a landlord's multiple properties.
Payment status
Outstanding invoices visible against the customer record. Know at a glance whether Mrs Thompson's December invoice has been paid before you take on her next job.
Full job lifecycle
Customer → quote → booking → job → invoice → payment. The complete history of the relationship in one view, not spread across your inbox, a notepad, and a spreadsheet.
Why generic CRM software doesn't work for trades
Tools like HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Salesforce are built for office-based sales teams. They're powerful for the right use case. But for a sole trader or small trades business, they create friction at every step.
- ✕Built around sales pipelines: Generic CRM assumes your customers are leads moving through stages. A plumber doesn't have a 'pipeline' — they have a phone call, a quote, a job, and an invoice. The pipeline metaphor adds steps you don't need.
- ✕No invoicing connection: Standard CRM closes the loop at 'deal won'. It doesn't know anything about the invoice, whether it was paid, or when the customer next needs work. You end up maintaining two separate systems.
- ✕Designed for office teams: Most CRM tools assume someone at a desk is managing the software. For a tradesman who's on site all day, the admin overhead of keeping a CRM updated is a job in itself.
- ✕Monthly cost that doesn't make sense: Enterprise CRM tools charge per user and often start at £30–£80/month per seat. For a sole trader, that's more than the job management software and invoicing tool combined.
- ✕No understanding of site-based work: Trades businesses often have one customer with multiple properties — a landlord with five flats, or a facilities manager across three sites. Generic CRM treats addresses as contact fields, not as distinct job locations.
Real customer management workflows for UK trades
These are the patterns that actually repeat in a service business — the ones a spreadsheet or a paper book struggles to handle at scale.
Landlord portfolio management
A landlord calls about one of six properties. You need to know which property has which boiler, what was serviced last year, when the next CP12 is due, and whether their last invoice was paid. WrkGenie lets you manage multiple addresses under one customer with per-property job history.
Annual service reminders
Gas engineers doing annual boiler services, electricians doing periodic inspections, chimney sweeps, and HVAC businesses all need to know who's due for renewal. Customer records with last-job dates make it easy to run a 'due this month' view without maintaining a separate calendar.
Recurring maintenance contracts
Cleaners, window cleaners, and gardeners often work on rolling weekly, fortnightly, or monthly contracts. The customer record needs to show the contract terms, whether recurring invoices have been sent, and what's outstanding — not just a name and phone number.
Repeat domestic customers
A good reputation means the same customers call back. When Mrs Bennett calls about her boiler for the third time, you want to see the job history before you pick up the phone — what you found last time, what you charged, and whether she prefers a text or a call.
Quote follow-ups
You quoted a loft conversion three weeks ago. Nothing came back. A CRM view of outstanding quotes shows you who to follow up, what the quote covered, and the original price — so you're not searching through emails to find the conversation.
Unpaid invoice tracking
Some customers are reliable payers. Some aren't. A customer record that shows outstanding invoice balances means you can check before you take on more work — and you know who to chase without running an aged debtors report.
Site access and on-site notes
Key safe codes, gate codes, parking instructions, alarm codes, dog in the garden. Information that lives in WhatsApp messages or your memory. Site notes on the customer record mean anyone in your business can turn up prepared.
How CRM, scheduling, and invoicing fit together
The problem with managing customers in one app, scheduling in another, and invoicing in a third is that nothing talks to each other. You win the job in your CRM and then manually recreate the details in your diary. You finish the job and recreate it again in your invoicing app. Every duplicate step is a chance to lose information or make an error.
The WrkGenie workflow
This is the same workflow covered in more detail in our how WrkGenie works page — with real operational examples from a normal working week. Also see: field service management and job management.
Which trades benefit most from CRM software
Any trade doing repeat work — or managing multiple customers at once — will get value from structured customer records.
Gas Engineers →
Annual boiler services, landlord portfolios, CP12 renewals
Electricians →
Periodic inspections, repeat domestic clients, landlord callouts
Cleaners →
Recurring contracts, client property access details, payment tracking
Gardeners →
Seasonal rounds, regular clients, annual landscaping quotes
Builders →
Phased projects, repeat commercial clients, quote follow-ups
Window Cleaners →
Route management, recurring payment tracking, client round notes
See all trades we support on the trades hub or the tradesman software page.
Related guides and tools
Guides
CRM for trades — common questions
How do UK trades businesses track repeat customers?
Most trades start with a contacts list in their phone or a spreadsheet. The problem is there's no link between the customer and their job history, outstanding quotes, or unpaid invoices. A CRM designed for trades keeps all of that together — when a customer calls back, you can see every job you've done for them, what you charged, and whether they've paid.
Do I need a CRM as a sole trader?
If you do repeat work — annual boiler services, regular garden maintenance, recurring cleaning contracts, or ongoing building projects — then yes. Even a one-person operation benefits from a customer record that holds site notes, access details, quote history, and payment status. It's the difference between remembering everything yourself and having it in a system.
Can CRM software track invoices for a trade business?
Standard CRM tools track leads and deals — not invoices. WrkGenie links the full job lifecycle: customer → quote → booking → job → invoice → payment. Every customer record shows what's been quoted, what's been invoiced, and what's still outstanding. That's different from a sales CRM which tracks pipeline stages.
How do I manage a landlord portfolio as a tradesman?
Landlords typically have multiple properties and expect you to track which property needs what work, what was done last time, and whether each invoice has been paid. WrkGenie lets you log separate addresses against the same customer, attach job notes to specific properties, and see invoice history per site — without building a spreadsheet to manage it.
What's the difference between CRM and job management software for trades?
Traditional CRM is built around sales pipelines — leads, follow-ups, deal stages. Job management software for trades is built around operational workflow — scheduling, quoting, invoicing, and getting paid. WrkGenie blends both: customer records with full history, plus the scheduling and invoicing tools to actually manage the work.
Is WrkGenie CRM software or job management software?
It's both — designed as a single system rather than two separate tools bolted together. You manage your customers, their job history, quotes, bookings, and invoices all from one place. There's no need to have a CRM in one app and invoicing in another.