The Friday night lead gets answered on Friday night
A lead form or marketplace email lands, and within minutes there's a reply drafted — asking the two questions that tell you whether it's worth your Saturday, and offering slots pulled off your real calendar.
Leads in, nobody at a desk
Fri 18:04 – Mon 07:30
- Website61h
Elena Boyd
Kitchen + powder room, 1930s semi
- Marketplace58h
Ryan Okafor
Garage conversion, wants it started spring
- Referral40h
The Sandovals
Rear extension — architect drawings ready
- Website17h
Tom Brennan
Repoint chimney — small job
By Monday morning two of these have already had someone out to quote.
Works with
- Gmail
- Outlook
- Google Sheets
- Google Calendar
Marketplace leads arrive in your inbox as notification emails, so it reads those directly — there's no Angi, Houzz or Thumbtack connector involved, and nothing to set up on their side.
The chore
How this goes right now
The enquiry comes in at ten past six on a Friday, which is roughly when every enquiry comes in. You're loading the truck, or you're at your kid's game, or you're doing the thing where you sit in the driveway for ten minutes before going inside. You see the notification. You think: Monday.
By Monday the homeowner has messaged four contractors. Two got back to them Friday evening. One of those two has already been round with a tape measure. You are now the third-best option for a job you'd have been good at, and the conversation starts with you apologising for the delay.
The frustrating part is that the reply doesn't need to be clever. It needs to exist, on Friday, and it needs to ask the one or two things that tell you whether the job is real — budget range, timeline, whether they own the place.
The difference
The whole game is what happens in the first hour
Try it
Walk through it yourself
This is the actual shape of the workflow — the same trigger, the same steps, the same draft waiting for your say-so. Click through it.
Respond to new leads fast
Lead email arrives — 18:04 Friday
Website form enquiry from Elena Boyd. Kitchen and powder room in a 1930s semi. Picked up the moment it hit the inbox.
What it does
Read the enquiry and work out what's actually being asked
Kitchen plus powder room, 1930s semi, mentions 'sometime this year' and a wall she wants taken out. No budget given.
GmailCheck whether this is someone you already know
No match on the tracker, and no prior thread on the address. New enquiry, not a re-quote.
Google SheetsFind site-visit slots you genuinely have
Tuesday 8–10am and Wednesday after 3pm are clear. Saturday is not — you have the Brennan handover.
Google CalendarDraft a reply that qualifies and books in one go
Asks about budget range and whether the wall is structural, offers the two real slots, sets expectations on timing.
Gmail
Draft email — nothing has been sent
- To
- Elena Boyd
- Subject
- Re: Kitchen and powder room — happy to come and look
Hi Elena — thanks for getting in touch, and sorry for the quick reply on a Friday evening. Your kitchen and powder room job is exactly the sort of thing we do.
Two things that would help me before I come out. First, do you have a rough budget range in mind? I ask because a 1930s kitchen can go from a straightforward refit to something involving steels, and knowing the range stops me designing something that isn't useful to you. Second — the wall you mentioned taking out, do you know whether it's load-bearing? If nobody's checked, that's fine, it just means we'd want a structural engineer to look before I can price it properly.
I could come and look Tuesday between 8 and 10, or Wednesday any time after 3. Either works — just say which suits and I'll put it in.
It's usually about a week from the visit to a written proposal.
Send this to Elena, and hold Tuesday 8am provisionally?
Change the questions, offer different times, or soften the budget ask if you'd rather raise it in person. It waits in drafts until you send it.
The reply goes out and the slot gets held
It sends from your inbox, a provisional hold goes on your calendar for whichever slot she picks, and Elena lands on the tracker as a website lead with the date and job type filled in.
That's the whole workflow.
It drafts, you approve, nothing sends on its own.
How it works
What it's actually doing
Four steps, starting the moment the email arrives — this one is genuinely event-driven, not a scheduled check.
- 1
- Gmail
- OuOutlook
It watches for enquiries, not for everything
New mail in Gmail or Outlook triggers it straight away. It works out which messages are actually leads — a website form notification, a marketplace enquiry, a referral email — and ignores the supplier invoices and the newsletters sitting alongside them.
- 2
- Gmail
It reads the enquiry properly
What the job is, where it is, what they said about timing and budget, and what they left out. The gaps are the important part, because those become the questions your reply asks.
- 3
- Google Calendar
It only offers slots you have
Before proposing a site visit it checks your calendar for genuinely free time. You don't end up offering Saturday morning to a new lead while you're committed to somebody else's handover.
- 4
- Gmail
- Google Sheets
- WhWhatsApp
It drafts, and logs either way
The reply waits for you. The lead goes onto your tracker regardless — source, date, job type, status — so you can see at the end of the month where work actually came from rather than guessing.
It drafts fast. You still decide what goes out.
Speed is the point of this one, which makes it the page where you should most want to know it can't send on its own. It can't. A reply drafted at 18:05 sits in your drafts until you read it — which on a Friday evening takes about fifteen seconds on your phone.
Step one
It drafts
Step two — you
You read it and approve
Step three
Only then does it send
Fast to draft, never auto-send
The draft is ready within minutes. Sending is a tap from you. If you'd rather it waited until you'd seen the enquiry yourself, that's the default and most people leave it there.
Calendar holds are provisional
It puts a tentative hold on a slot rather than a confirmed appointment, so nothing in your week changes shape without you accepting it.
It won't quote
No prices, no ballparks, no 'jobs like this usually run about'. It asks questions and books a look. Pricing over email before you've seen the job is how you end up honouring a number you regret.
You can kill a lead outright
Bin the draft and it stops. The lead stays on the tracker marked as not pursued, so you keep the record without keeping the chase.
Setup
What setting this up involves
- 1
Connect
- Gmail or Outlook — the address your enquiries land in
- Your calendar, so it can offer real slots
- A leads tracker in Google Sheets or Excel
- WhatsApp Business, only if you want a short nudge as well as the email
- 2
Tell it how you work
- What a lead looks like in your inbox — which senders and subject patterns count
- The two or three qualifying questions you always wish you'd asked
- Which hours you'll do site visits, and how far you'll travel
- The jobs you don't want — so it can flag them rather than book them
- 3
Then it runs
About 25 minutes, once
Most of the time goes on the qualifying questions. Getting those right is what turns this from a fast reply into a filter.
Edge cases
Where it's careful, and what it won't do
What it handles
The same person enquiring twice
People fill the form, hear nothing, and fill it again from a different address. It checks the tracker and the address before treating an enquiry as new, so nobody gets two different replies from you an hour apart.
Enquiries that aren't your work
A request to service a boiler when you do kitchens gets flagged rather than answered with a site visit offer. The draft becomes a short, polite decline you can send or ignore.
Out-of-area jobs
If the address is outside the radius you set, the draft says so plainly rather than booking you a two-hour drive. Some of those are worth doing, so it asks rather than declining for you.
Marketplace formats that change
Lead notification emails get reformatted by the platforms fairly often. If the layout changes and it can't confidently read a field, it leaves that field blank on the tracker and says so in the draft, instead of guessing at a phone number.
What it does not do
It doesn't connect to Angi, Houzz or Thumbtack
There's no integration with any of them, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. It reads the notification emails those platforms send you, which works — but it means it sees what the email contains, not what's in your account there.
It doesn't text or call
There's no SMS in this. WhatsApp is available for a follow-up nudge, but it needs an approved template and the lead's consent — fine for someone who just filled in your form, not for a list you bought.
It doesn't price the job
It qualifies and books. Every number still comes from you after you've stood in the room.
It doesn't chase a lead forever
One reply, and one nudge if they go quiet. After that it's marked cold. Chasing someone who has clearly gone with somebody else isn't persistence.
Time back
Two to four hours a month, and the leads you were losing
- Time back
- Two to four hours a month, and the leads you were losing
- Spent on
- The work that bills
- What it costs
- $19 / monthStarterplan — see what’s included
How that’s worked out: Based on 20–40 enquiries a month at roughly five minutes each to read, reply and log properly. The hours are the small part — the real number is the share of weekend enquiries that currently go unanswered until Monday, which for most small contractors is nearly all of them.
Fair questions
The things contractors ask first
I don't want a robot talking to my customers.
Nor do we. It writes a draft in your voice, using what the person actually said, and you read it before it goes. What arrives on their end is an email from you at 18:09 on a Friday. The alternative isn't a more personal reply — it's no reply until Monday.
Won't asking about budget in the first email put people off?
Some, and that's mostly the point. The ones who won't say a range are usually the ones who were never going to book. You can soften or remove the question — plenty of contractors ask about timeline and structure only, and raise budget at the visit.
My leads come through a marketplace app, not email.
Then check whether that platform emails you a notification, because most do, and that's what this reads. If yours genuinely doesn't, this won't work for those leads and we'd rather say so than sell you something that half-works.
More construction chores
Other things that keep falling off the list
Chase unanswered estimates
Three days of silence on a proposal, and a follow-up is waiting in your drafts with the scope and price already in it.
Triage bid invitations
Every ITB read and scored on scope, location, value and fit — logged, with the bid date held in your calendar before you forget it.
Request reviews after handover
The ask goes out a few days after final payment clears — mentioning their actual job, with the direct review link, while they still like you.
Compare supplier quotes
One RFQ to every supplier, and the replies read into a single table so you can see who's actually cheapest line by line.
Triage warranty callbacks
Post-handover complaints acknowledged same day, sorted into warranty or chargeable, logged against the job and put in the diary.
Chase unpaid invoices
Reminders that escalate with the age of the debt, the invoice attached, and a Monday aging summary that includes unbilled retainage.
The same job in other trades and industries
FAQ
Questions worth answering properly
How fast does the reply actually get drafted?
Within a few minutes of the email arriving. This is one of the workflows with a genuine real-time trigger rather than a scheduled check, so it starts as soon as the message lands rather than waiting for a morning run.
Does it reply automatically outside work hours?
Only if you tell it to. By default it drafts and waits, which means a Friday evening enquiry has a reply sitting ready for you to send with one tap. Some contractors do turn on auto-send for a short acknowledgement and keep the real reply manual.
Can it handle leads from Angi, Houzz or Thumbtack?
It reads the notification emails those platforms send to your inbox, which covers most of what you need — name, job description, and usually contact details. There is no direct connection to any of those platforms, so it can't see anything that stays inside their app.
Will it double-book my site visits?
No. It checks your calendar for free time before offering anything, and what it puts in afterwards is a provisional hold rather than a confirmed appointment, so you get the final say on your own week.
What if the enquiry is for work I don't do?
It flags it instead of booking a visit, and drafts a short decline you can send or delete. You set what counts as your work during setup, including a travel radius.
Does the lead get logged even if I don't reply?
Yes. Every enquiry goes onto the tracker with its source and date regardless of what you do with the draft, so at the end of a quarter you can see where work genuinely came from rather than relying on memory.
Stop losing Friday's leads to Monday
Connect the inbox your enquiries land in and your calendar. The next lead that arrives gets a reply drafted before you've put the truck away.
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