A deposit to build it, then a monthly minimum that your bookings are billed against rather than added on top. A month where it books you nothing costs you the minimum. A month where it books you plenty costs you the bookings — and there is a ceiling on that.
$55
A month, minimum
Every missed call gets a text back, the conversation works out what the job is, and the job goes in your calendar.
$79
A month, minimum
Everything in Basic, and it keeps working on the quotes that go quiet instead of letting them go cold.
$109
A month, minimum
Everything in Plus, delivered through an automated callback instead of a text conversation.
Setup shown is the founding-client rate on Basic, Plus and Advanced; from client four it is the list rate for their crew size, in the table below.
The monthly minimum and the per-booking fee are the same whatever size you are. These two are not, because a bigger crew is more to set up and books more work.
| Crew | Setup, founding | Setup, list | The bill stops at |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–2 crew | $299 | $599 | $750 |
| 3–4 crew | $599 | $1,199 | $1,500 |
| 5+ crew | $899 | $1,799 | $2,500 |
Founding rates are for the first three clients and are traded for a written case study, a referral introduction and a twelve-month commitment. List rates apply from the fourth.
Booking fees are billed against the monthly minimum, not added on top of it. All prices CAD. All three tiers are open for sale.
The bill never exceeds $2,500 a month, and less than that for a smaller crew. That is less than half what a receptionist in New Brunswick earns at full-time hours, and this one does not go home at five.
Source: Government of Canada Job Bank (opens in a new tab), Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey, 2023–2024, updated 19 November 2025
The fee depends on the trade you are in, and that is the only number on this page that is different from one client to the next. So here is the whole table, not just the line that applies to you.
| Your trade | Per confirmed booking | Books a |
|---|---|---|
| Cleaning, lawn care, handyman, junk removal, window cleaning, auto detailing, moving, pest control, snow removal | $29 | job |
| Electrical service work, tree service and arborists | $59 | job |
| Plumbing | $69 | job |
| HVAC | $99 | job |
| Roofing, flooring, general contracting and renovations, excavation, installations, remodels | $149 | estimate |
A confirmed booking is one written to your calendar. A no-show reported within 7 days is fully credited, a job you cancel is not billed, and a reschedule still counts as one booking.
The $149 band pays for a booked estimate rather than a completed job. Roofing, flooring, excavation and general contracting work often starts with a site visit, and not every estimate becomes a job.
A booking is worth more in some trades than in others, and the fee follows that. It is the same system doing the same work either way. What changes is the size of the job it has just put in your calendar.
After 60 days I check your band against what it actually booked you, and move you if I put you on the wrong line. It moves down as readily as up: if the work coming through is smaller than the band I started you on, you pay the lower fee from then on, and I do not wait for you to notice and ask.
Why I print the whole table
Because sooner or later you will be standing next to somebody else who has this, and one of you will be paying a different fee per booking. If the rule is on the page, that conversation ends with the two of you working out which line you are each on. If it is not on the page, it looks like I gave one of you a better deal. So there is no special number for anybody, and nothing here I would not read out to both of you.
I am not going to tell you what a job is worth in your trade — you know that and I do not. Put your own numbers into the sum below, then compare that to the prices above.
Multiply the calls you miss in a week by 52 weeks, then by what an average job is worth to you.
These boxes add up on their own, which needs JavaScript. If nothing appears when you fill them both in, do the sum above on your own calculator.
No, and you would not want to. If you bought it, you would then own a thing that has to be kept running.
It runs on my infrastructure. There is no server of yours, no software of yours, nothing on your side to update or pay attention to. It gets fixed when it breaks and it gets better every month, and that is what the monthly covers.
If the monthly is the part you do not like, look again at what it is. It is a floor, not a subscription sitting on top of the bookings. In a quiet month you pay the minimum. In a busy month you pay for the jobs it booked you and the minimum drops out of it. I do not get paid twice for the same month.
A receptionist in New Brunswick earns a median of $22.00 an hour — about $45,760 a year at full-time hours, before CPP, EI and vacation pay. The range runs from $16.00 to $28.00 an hour.
Source: Government of Canada Job Bank (opens in a new tab), Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey, 2023–2024, updated 19 November 2025
I am not going to pretend this replaces a person. A receptionist does a dozen things this does not. But a receptionist also goes home at five, and the calls that hurt most are the ones at ten past six and half seven on a Saturday. This catches the calls nobody was there for.
Cancel the monthly service within 30 days and I refund the monthly minimum, every dollar of it. The setup deposit covers build work and isn’t refundable once I start, and neither are the fees on jobs it has already booked you.
That is narrower than it sounds. Booking fees are billed against the monthly minimum, not on top of it — so if it booked you nothing, the fees were nothing, the minimum was everything the service charged you that month, and all of it comes back. If it did book you jobs, then it worked, and you are keeping those.
That is the whole guarantee, and it is written the same way in the agreement you would sign. I would rather put the awkward half of it on the page than have you find it later.
And separately from any of that, at any point: cancel with 30 days’ notice, the forwarding comes off your phone, and your line goes back to exactly what it did before.
Call it, hang up, and you get exactly what your customer would get — about 90 seconds, start to booked job. It is live all the time. Give the number to your wife or your lead hand and let them try to break it.
The line answers as Cedar Bay Plumbing & Heating — a stand-in business I run the demo on. Ring it and hang up after a couple of rings. The automated demo calls you back from this number.
If the callback fails, the demo may send an automated text instead. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to end texts.
Booking the install starts here: in person or over video, whichever is easier. I show you it working on your own phone, you ask whatever you want, and I do not try to close you on that call. There is nothing to sign in fifteen minutes.
3 business days, and about half an hour of your time in total.
A one-page agreement and the deposit. There is no procurement process here and there is nothing else to read.
I take down your services, your hours, your price ranges, your service area, and the ten questions your customers ask you over and over.
That is my day, not yours. You go back to work.
You dial the forwarding code while I am on the line, we ring your number from another phone, and we both watch the text come back.
For the first 7 days I read every conversation it has, by hand, and fix anything that reads wrong.
No. It texts. It never answers your phone with a robot voice.
When you do not pick up, the caller gets a text message back within seconds, and the whole thing happens over text from there — it asks what the job is, replies out of your own services, hours, price ranges and service area, and puts the booking in your calendar. Calls you do answer never touch it at all.
It is what happens instead of voicemail. A call to your business goes unanswered, and rather than the caller hearing a beep and hanging up, they get a text message straight away.
Client Retainer is that, plus the part that actually matters: the text is a conversation, not a notice. It asks what they need, answers the questions your customers ask you over and over, offers real times out of your calendar, and writes the job into it while they are still standing in the flooded basement.
No. You dial one conditional call-forwarding code on your own phone, which takes about two minutes. It tells your carrier: if this call is not answered, or the line is busy, send it to this other number.
Calls you answer never touch my system. Your number does not change and you do not publish a new one. Undo the code and everything is back where it started.
An answering service takes a message. Somebody still has to ring that person back, and by the time they do, that customer has usually called somebody else. This one answers their questions and puts the job in your calendar.
Two questions worth asking yours: what does it cost you a month, and does it book jobs or just take messages?
It is loaded with your services, your hours, your price ranges, your service area, and the ten questions you get asked most — so it is answering out of your business, not making things up about it.
You can read every conversation it has, start to finish. For the first 7 days after you go live I read them all myself. And anything you have flagged as an emergency stops the conversation and alerts you at once — a push to your phone, or a text.
No. Your number stays your number. Nothing goes on the truck, the van magnets, the website or the invoices.
Give me 30 days’ notice. The forwarding code comes off your phone and your line goes back to doing exactly what it did before — voicemail, the lot. Nothing of yours is held hostage, and there is nothing left running on your side to uninstall.
A setup deposit once, up front, which pays for the build — $299 at 1–2 crew, $599 at 3–4 crew, $899 at 5+ crew for a founding client. Then a monthly minimum starting at $55 that your per-booking fees are billed against rather than added to, and a monthly ceiling set by the size of your crew — $750 at 1–2 crew, $1,500 at 3–4 crew, $2,500 at 5+ crew — however much work it books you.
The per-booking fee runs from $29 to $149 depending on the trade, and the whole table is printed further up this page rather than quoted per client. All prices CAD.
Based in Fredericton. Serving New Brunswick.
Client Retainer is for service businesses that run on booked jobs — home services, trades, cleaning, transport, anyone with a calendar at the centre of the work. I take on a maximum of five clients, so that every one of them gets built properly.
3 business days from signing. One page to sign, thirty minutes on the phone while I take down how your business actually works, a day of my time building it, and then we go live together — you dial the forwarding code while I am on the line and we both watch the text come back.
No. This is the one thing I sell. I set it up around your services, your hours and your prices, and doing one thing properly is why it works.
Ring the demo line and hang up, or book the install — it starts with fifteen minutes on a call. Either way, nothing happens to your phone until you say so.
The line answers as Cedar Bay Plumbing & Heating — a stand-in business I run the demo on. Ring it and hang up after a couple of rings. The automated demo calls you back from this number.
If the callback fails, the demo may send an automated text instead. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to end texts.
