Electricians: the job is done. The paperwork should be too.
DB board this morning, a fault-find that took three hours instead of one, two plug points and a quote you promised by Friday. The work is the easy part. The part that costs you is everything that happens after you pack the ladder.
Orbit is in development. Join the waitlist and we WhatsApp you when it opens.
db board fault find bryanston 3 hrs at 650 plus 2 downlights 200
Tracking that now ✅
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
Where it goes
What costs an electrician money after the job.
Hourly work becomes a guess
Fault-finding does not fit a fixed price, so it gets billed on time — and the time gets reconstructed days later from a WhatsApp to the client and a rough memory of when you left. Under-billing an afternoon by an hour, twice a week, is a salary.
Quotes and jobs live in different places
You quoted the rewire on WhatsApp, agreed the change on a phone call, did the work, and now the invoice has to be built from three sources, none of which agree. The client remembers the first number.
Small extras never make the invoice
Two extra downlights, a length of trunking, the isolator you supplied because the wholesaler was closed. Each one is small enough to forget and, added across a month, large enough to notice.
What Orbit does about it
One message, at the end of the job.
Orbit is being built so an electrical job is recorded in the same place you already tell the client you are on your way. One message — what you did, at which address, for how much — and Orbit holds it as a job with a value, a date and a customer. Extras go in the same way, one line at a time, as they happen rather than as you try to remember them.
When the work is finished, the invoice is drafted from that record rather than from memory. Everything Orbit has for the job is on it: the labour, the extras, the materials you told it about. You check it, you change what is wrong, and you send it yourself. Nothing leaves your hands automatically.
It also keeps the answer to the question every electrician gets asked and nobody can answer quickly: what did we charge that client last time. Same address, same customer, same history, in a thread you can search — which is closer to how you already work than any job-management app you have been sold.
What it keeps for you
- Each job with its address, what was done and what it earned
- Extras added in the moment instead of remembered later
- Drafted invoices you read and send yourself
- A searchable history per customer and per address
Orbit drafts. You send.
Questions
Electricians ask us this.
Can Orbit price my hours automatically?
You tell it your rate once and then say the hours — "3 hrs" — and Orbit is being built to do the multiplication and show it on the invoice as labour. If your rate differs by job type, say the rate in the message and that wins.
Does Orbit issue certificates of compliance?
No, and it will not. A CoC is a legal document you issue as a registered person; Orbit has no part in that. It is being built to handle jobs, money and invoices, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
Can I use it for quotes as well as invoices?
Quotes are on the roadmap and not in the first release. Orbit is starting with the part that leaks most — the work you have already done and not yet billed. Join the waitlist and you will hear when quoting arrives.
What if I work for a contractor rather than direct clients?
It still helps, because the record is the same: what you did, on which site, for how much, and whether it has been paid. Where you invoice a main contractor rather than a homeowner, the customer on the job is simply the contractor.
Orbit for other trades
Orbit for electricians.
Orbit is being built now. The list is free, it commits you to nothing, and founding pricing is locked for the people on it.