Do the two things that grow your business.
The system does the rest.
Two things grow a trades business more than anything else: getting customers in, and getting good workers on the tools. OptiTech Automation runs everything in between — the booking, sending the right worker, taking payment, the follow-up — so you can focus on those two things and lift your profit per hour. This page is everything to have ready before you start, and why each piece matters more than you'd think.
The two things that grow your business
Get this, and everything else on this page makes sense.
Two things grow a trades business more than anything else: customers coming in the front, and good workers on the tools. That's where your time is worth the most.
Everything in between is just moving parts. The booking. Matching each job to the right available worker. Sending them out. Taking the payment. The follow-up. It's real work, but it pays you nothing and it eats your evenings.
So OptiTech Automation runs that middle for you. Your job gets simple: keep customers coming in, and keep good workers on your bench. Saturate both ends and let the system handle the rest. That's how you stop trading hours for scraps and start lifting your profit per hour worked.
Feed the two ends. The system runs the middle. Before it can switch on for you, it needs a few things from you — and that's what the rest of this page is for.
What to have ready
Good news first: if you're already trading, you already own almost everything on this list. Nothing here is stuff to go and get. It's stuff to go and find. Most owners get through it in one sitting.
This is the last afternoon you'll ever spend being your own receptionist, dispatcher and credit controller. You gather it once. The system does it every day after. Here's what to have to hand (Standard tier):
Your business identity
- ·Your legal or trading name.
- ·Limited company? Just your Companies House number — give us that and we auto-fill the rest. Sole trader? Your 10-digit HMRC UTR.
- ·Your trading address, phone number, and the email you want bookings to land in.
Confirming you're the owner
- ·Accept the Terms. That's your own legal act, made by you.
- ·Confirm you're the legal owner of the business, or that you're authorised to act for it.
Your Public Liability insurance
- ·We require minimum £1,000,000 Public Liability cover for every trade on the platform.
- ·You upload your certificate, we scan it to read the key details for you, and you e-sign a short declaration. Exactly what that scan does — and doesn't do — is set out at the bottom of this list.
Your trade registration, where it applies
- ·Gas Safe for gas, Part P or NICEIC for electrical, FENSA or CERTASS for windows, MCS for solar, OFTEC for oil, a Waste Carrier Licence, NPTC or ARB for tree work, UKAS for asbestos.
- ·If it applies to what you do, have it ready.
Your first service and first worker
- ·At least one service: name, price, duration.
- ·At least one worker: name, type, skills. Already got a full team? Import the lot by CSV.
Your opening hours + your Stripe
- ·Your opening hours, so bookings only land when you can take them.
- ·Your own Stripe account — the one hard money dependency. You connect it and it takes minutes. No Stripe, no money, no go-live. Why it matters so much is the next section.
Already running on another system? You're the fastest of all.
If your customers, services or certificates already live in Jobber, ServiceM8, Tradify, Commusoft, Housecall Pro, Fergus or any spreadsheet, export them as a CSV and bring the files. Once your account exists, the importer takes them in one go — your customer list, price list and qualifications land in minutes instead of being retyped.
Before you start — the honest bit.
The details, documents and credentials you give us — including your insurance and any trade registration — need to be genuine, current, accurate, and yours to provide. When you e-sign your insurance declaration, your electronic signature has legal effect under the Electronic Communications Act 2000. That declaration is you confirming the document is genuine, current, relates to this business, and that you'll keep the cover valid and tell us if it lapses. Scanning it simply helps us read the details for you — it is not a check that your cover is valid, current or adequate, and keeping it valid is your responsibility. Your full agreement is at optitechautomation.co.uk/terms and applies when you sign up.
Why each account matters
Most owners treat this list like paperwork. Tick the box, move on. But every account here is a lever — and once you see what it actually unlocks, the whole thing looks different. Let's walk up the ladder.
Twilio: your voice
The obvious version: it's so the system can send reminders and arrival codes.
What it actually is: every text your customer gets shows your business name, not ours. The reminder, the ‘your engineer's about ten minutes away’ — all of it lands under your brand. Your customer never sees a platform. They see you. You own the relationship, top to bottom.
Public Liability insurance: your armour
The obvious version: you need it because we ask for it (we do — minimum £1,000,000, every trade on the platform).
What it actually is: the thing that lets a total stranger hand you the keys to their home. It's the line between ‘some bloke with a van’ and a serious, covered operator they trust on sight. In most businesses that certificate sits in a drawer doing nothing. Upload it here and it works for you — showing a customer you're the real thing before you've said a word.
Your Google Business Profile: your gravity
The obvious version: it helps you show up on Google.
What it actually is: the biggest free lever you own. Claimed and filled out — your categories, hours, photos and reviews — it's how customers can find you at 11pm on a Saturday with a dead boiler, without you spending a penny on ads. It helps you show up because you're real and local, not because you paid to be there.
Your worker list: your engine
The obvious version: it's so there's someone to send to the job.
What it actually is: the capacity the system can actually sell. Every worker you add is another job the platform can take, match, and send the right person to — so you're not on the phone arranging it. You stop scheduling and start building a bench the system deploys for you.
Stripe: your spine
The obvious version: it's so you can take card payments.
What it actually is: the piece that ties everything into one system. Stripe is what connects your booking page to the matchmaking engine, to the right worker, to the payment, to the follow-up — all one unbroken line. Without it you've got separate tools. With it you've got a machine. And the money runs the honest way: your customers pay you, it lands in your own account, and OptiTech Automation takes 0% of it. Stripe charges its own standard card fee, paid to Stripe like anywhere else. That was never our cut to take.
Now stand back and look at what those five build. Booking, matching, the right worker, payment, follow-up — all running between your accounts, without you jammed in the middle. Which frees you to do the two things that grow the business: pour in customers, and pour in workers. That's what a real operator runs on.
You're in charge here
OptiTech Automation is the facilitator — the engine under your business, never the face of it and never the owner of it. Your customers, your data, your accounts.
You own your customer relationships and your data, and you can export your data whenever you want. We connect the tools that make it run — and most of them are yours, brought with you.
Stripe — your must-have
Stripe Connect Express, in your name. Your customers pay you, the money lands in your own account, and it settles to your own bank on Stripe’s normal payout schedule. OptiTech Automation takes 0%, and we never hold your money. We earn from your subscription, nothing else, never a cut of your jobs.
Twilio — bring your own
Connect your own Twilio and every text goes out from your business name. It powers arrival codes and reminders. Don’t want to run it? Those go by email instead. There’s deliberately no shared platform number, so your customer only ever sees you.
Resend — email
Works out of the box, nothing to set up — your emails send reliably from day one. Sending from your own domain comes with a custom domain (Growth tier and up).
Xero — optional, any time
Connect it and your bookings flow through to draft invoices in your own Xero.
Google Analytics — optional
Drop your GA4 tag on your public site whenever you like.
Custom domain — Growth tier and up
Bring your own domain on Growth tier or above. It also unlocks sending email from your own domain and full Search Console verification.
Companies House
We provide the lookup. You bring your company.
Everything connects under your integrations settings. Your credentials are encrypted, and we don't hold credentials we don't need. Most of this you'll do yourself in a few minutes — and if you get stuck on any of it, we're right there to help you through it.
Your Build Day
Here's the deal we'll make — and the half that's in your hands.
The readier you are, the sooner you're taking bookings. Once we've confirmed every required item is present and correct, we build your platform ready for you to review and Publish within 24 hours. We book that with you as your Build Day.
Going live is your call: you review what we've built, and you press Publish. Your billing starts from that moment, not before.
Our Build-Day Guarantee: your platform is built and ready for you to review and Publish on the Build Day we book, or your first month's subscription is on us. (Your first month is the first month you're charged, which starts when you Publish.)
The clock only runs while the work is with us. If we're waiting on you for a missing or corrected detail — or on a third party like Stripe's identity checks or your insurer — that time doesn't count against the 24 hours.
So the only thing standing between you and a system that books, matches and gets you paid is the afternoon it takes to gather what's on this page. The list isn't the wall. It's the starting gun.
Getting found on Google
The honest version, with no smoke. Here's how customers actually find you — and where the free subdomain has an honest limit.
Your sitemap builds itself
Every site we publish gets an auto-generated sitemap at your-site/sitemap.xml. You don’t build it or maintain it. It’s just there.
To nudge Google along
You paste that sitemap URL into Google Search Console, under Indexing then Sitemaps. That’s the whole job.
The honest limit
Full Search Console verification needs a domain you control — which means a custom domain (Growth tier and up). On the free subdomain you don’t need it: Google discovers your pages on its own through the platform sitemap.
Your biggest lever isn’t any of that
It’s your Google Business Profile, and it’s your own asset. Claim it, set your categories, hours, photos and reviews. That’s what puts you on the map when someone nearby searches for what you do.
Built to help you get found organically
No paying for ads. Your owner hub for the whole lot lives under Get Found in your dashboard once you’re live.
Your plan grows with you
Let's be straight about the money, because a frozen price would be a lie — and a worse deal than what's actually true.
We'll never freeze your price, because a frozen price would mean a frozen product while your business outgrows it. As you add workers, services and locations, you move up tiers. More of the platform unlocks, and your monthly re-bases to match the tier you've grown into. That part moves with your business, the way it should.
Here's what's locked, for life, if you join as one of our Founding 10:
- ✓ You never pay to onboard again. Your onboarding investment is waived for life, on every tier you ever move up to.
- ✓ Your rate locks for life, on every tier. Whatever tier you're on, your monthly locks at that tier's price and can never rise on you — and your founding seat is yours by name, forever.
So the plan scales with you, and the founding edge doesn't. Your plan grows with your business. Your founding edge is locked for life.
One more honest line, because it's the best part: OptiTech Automation takes 0% of the work you do. We earn from one thing — your subscription, which you can cancel. That means we only win when the platform is genuinely worth paying for. We never take a slice of your jobs.
Not a form to fill in. A machine to switch on.
You've seen what it is and why each piece matters. Gather your bits from the checklist above, then start. You're not doing it alone — stuck on any step, we're right there with you. Get your two ends ready, customers and workers, and let the system run everything in between.