Do the work. Let the books keep themselves.
Tailgate Books is the estimate, the invoice, the receipts, the mileage and the taxes for a one-person crew, kept in about twenty seconds a day, from your phone, in English or Spanish.
You didn’t get into this to do paperwork.
But the shoebox fills up. The quote never gets sent. The receipt fades in the truck door. And every April, the same knot in your stomach.
Tailgate Books ends that. Not with more software to learn, but with a habit that takes twenty seconds and a set of books that are already done by the time you’re home.
The last estimate you will ever type
Measure it once. Then skip the rest. No typing, no doing the math in your head, no second-guessing the number. Walk the room, say the work out loud, and the estimate prices itself as you go. Your customer approves and signs from a text, in their language. You are done before you pull out of the driveway.
Find out which jobs are quietly robbing you, by the hour
You can run flat out all year and still come up short and never know which jobs did it to you. Every bid, every job, every finished one shows its profit, per dollar and per hour. Now you price the next job from facts instead of hope.
There is money in your account that is not yours to spend
Every invoice, paid and unpaid, in one place, so you stop chasing checks you forgot about. And it tells you, to the dollar, how much of the balance sitting in your account is sales tax you are only holding for the state. Keep that exact amount parked and you will never come up short at filing time.
An invoice that looks like a million-dollar company sent it
Send a clean, branded invoice with before-and-after photos and a Pay-by-card button. You get paid faster, you look like the big outfit, and your customer’s card never touches your phone. Stripe handles it and the money lands in your account.
The same books, open on your phone at the jobsite and on the computer when it is time to sit down and hand your accountant the year. Fast in the truck. Thorough at the desk. You never enter anything twice.
It knows a painter quotes rooms and a groomer quotes pets
It should talk the way you do. Pick your trade when you sign up and the whole app does, from the first screen. More than fifty trades, and if yours is not on the list, you type it and it still fits.
Type what you do and it still fits. It even reads your own word for the work, so if you call them bays, the app says bays.
And every trade, in English or Spanish, on every screen and every paper your customer signs.
Everybody else built half of this. You have been the glue.
| Tailgate Books | QuickBooks Solopreneur | Joist | Jobber | Xero | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $24.95, one plan | $20 | $10 to $32 | $49 to $599 per user | $25 to $90 |
| Snap a receipt and it reads itself into your books | ✓ | extraa | – | – | extrab |
| Estimates built room by room, with photos | ✓ | – | extrac | extrad | extrae |
| Your customer approves and signs from a text, no app, in their language | ✓ | – | extraf | extraf | – |
| Change orders as their own numbered paper | ✓ | – | – | – | – |
| What every job made, per dollar and per hour | ✓ | – | – | extrag | extrag |
| A target for your tax set-aside, against the IRS safe harbor | ✓ | extrah | – | – | – |
| Works with no signal at the jobsite | ✓ | –i | –i | –i | –i |
| English and Spanish, every screen and every customer paper | ✓ | – | – | – | – |
| One plan, everything included, no tiers | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – |
| Built for one person in the trades | ✓ | extraj | extrak | – | – |
✓ Included extra Partial, add-on, or a higher tier – Not offered
a saves the photo; sorting the expense is on you b through paid add-on apps c basic estimates, without room grouping d quotes included; photos commonly need a separate paid app e quotes on paid plans, without rooms or photos f signature or approval offered, in English g only on the highest tiers, roughly $90 to $199 per month h a projection of this year’s income, not the prior-year safe harbor i not a published capability j solo, yes; built for the trades, no k trades, yes; but no books behind the paper
Comparison drawn from each company’s published plans and independent reviews as of September 8, 2026. Their details change; check their sites for current terms.
And here’s who we’re NOT for.
Need bank-feed accounting with a CPA in the loop? That’s Xero, with our blessing. Need to dispatch a crew and take online bookings? That’s Jobber. Tailgate Books is for the person who works alone, quotes real jobs, and wants the books to keep themselves. Saying so out loud is how you know we’ll tell you the truth about the rest.
Stop wasting your night in a photo editor. That is time you could be at your kid’s soccer game.
Snap the before. Snap the after. The app pairs them into a clean card with your name and your colors on it, ready to text the customer or post to win the next one. The same photos ride on the invoice, so the work you already did doubles as your marketing. No design app, no editing, done by the time you are off the ladder.
Your customer list is one leak away from your competitor. Not here.
This is your customer list, your prices, and photos from inside people’s homes. Here is exactly how it is guarded.
- Card numbers never touch your phone or our servers. Card payments run through Stripe, the same company that handles cards for millions of businesses.
- One account can never see another’s books. Every contractor’s data is walled off at the database itself, not just hidden on the screen.
- The estimate you text has no login. It opens over an encrypted link that search engines cannot find and that says nothing to anyone who does not already have it.
- Photos and receipts stay private. The links to them are signed and they expire, so an old link is a dead link.
- We do not sell your data, and we run no ads. You are the customer here, not the product.
- You are never locked in. One tap emails you every record and photo, any time. And if you ever leave, we do not keep your books forever.
En español de verdad.
Every screen, and every paper your customer gets, in real Spanish, not an English app with a setting buried in a menu. It was built in both languages from the first day, because the person doing the work reads one or the other, and so does the homeowner signing the estimate.
Ver esta página en español →$24.95, one plan, and a price that will not creep up on you every February
- No tiers. No “that feature’s on the higher plan.” No per-user pricing.
- 14 days free. No card charged until the trial ends. Cancel in two taps.
- Take your books with you any time. One tap emails you everything: spreadsheets and a full-history PDF.
- And a promise the others won’t make: we’re not going to hike the price out from under you. (Xero and Jobber both raised theirs in 2026.)
This April, be the one who isn’t sweating it.
P.S. The shoebox isn’t getting any emptier on its own. Twenty seconds a day, starting today, and this is the last April you spend digging through the truck.