Handymen: six small jobs a day, none of them worth an evening of admin.
A gate motor, a leaking tap, two curtain rails and a door that will not close. Individually none of them justifies opening a laptop. Collectively they are your entire month, and the admin is why you do the work at cost.
Orbit is in development. Join the waitlist and we WhatsApp you when it opens.
gate motor at 14 acacia 850 paid cash
Logged and closed ✅
what did i charge them last time
March, same address: R700 for a garage door sensor.
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
Where it goes
What costs a handyman money after the job.
The invoice costs more effort than the job earns
Nobody sits down at nine at night to write an invoice for R450. So the customer pays cash if they remember, or later if they do not, and there is no record either way.
Repeat customers, no history
You have been to the same complex eleven times. What you charged the first time is the price you should be charging now, and you cannot remember it, so you guess low.
Everything is already on WhatsApp except the money
The customer messages you, sends a photo, agrees a time and confirms it is fixed — all in WhatsApp. Then the money moves to a different universe of notebooks and bank apps.
What Orbit does about it
One message, at the end of the job.
Orbit is being built to close that last gap. The job is booked on WhatsApp; the record of the job should be made on WhatsApp too. One line — what you did, where, and what you charged — and it exists. That is a two-second cost against a job you might otherwise never bill.
For small jobs the invoice matters less than the record, and Orbit is designed for both. If the customer paid cash, say so and it closes. If they did not, ask Orbit to invoice it and check the draft before it goes. Either way, next month you can see what you actually earned rather than what passed through your account.
The history is the quiet benefit. Every address you have been to, what you did there and what you charged, searchable in a thread. Handymen undercharge repeat customers more than any other trade, and the reason is almost always that nobody wrote the first price down.
What it keeps for you
- Every small job recorded in one line, in seconds
- Cash jobs closed without an invoice, still on the record
- A price history per address and per customer
- Draft invoices for the ones that need paper
Orbit drafts. You send.
Questions
Handymen ask us this.
Is it worth it for jobs under R1,000?
Those are the jobs it exists for. The reason small work goes unbilled is that the admin costs more than the job earns; a one-line message does not.
Can I record cash jobs without making an invoice?
Yes. Say "paid cash" and Orbit is being built to close the job without drafting anything. The record stays so your month adds up, and no document is produced you did not ask for.
How do I find what I charged someone before?
Ask in the same thread — "what did I charge 14 Acacia last time". Orbit is being built to answer from your own history, not from an average of other people's prices.
Do I need email?
Not for Orbit itself, which runs on WhatsApp. Email is optional on the waitlist form for the same reason — a WhatsApp number is enough for us to reach you.
Orbit for other trades
Orbit for handymen.
Orbit is being built now. The list is free, it commits you to nothing, and founding pricing is locked for the people on it.