Who Is Holding the Shop’s Cash?

Across the shops on ApplianceOps there is roughly twenty thousand dollars a month of cash and checks moving from a tech’s pocket to the office with nothing recording the handoff. That is the one place where “the app says one number, the drawer says another” ends with somebody accused of something. Nobody wants that conversation, least of all with a good tech.

💵
Cash & check turn-inNew
Your tech turns in what they collected, it is recorded against the actual payments, and both of you can see it. It is off unless you turn it on — a one-man shop has nobody to turn cash in to, and we are not adding a step that means nothing. Settings → Payments → Cash & checks.
💳
Card charges now say who paidNew
Every card payment used to land in your Stripe dashboard as “Service payment”, so a row of them told you nothing. They now carry the customer and the invoice number.
💰
Your shop page deposit is yours to setFixed
It was stuck at $100 whatever your settings said. It follows your settings now.

A Text That Didn’t Land Now Tells You

Here is the awkward part: most text failures are not instant. The send looks fine on your screen, and the carrier comes back a minute later to say it never arrived. No on-screen message could ever have caught that — which is why, until now, it just quietly didn’t reach the customer.

📵
You get told the moment it failsNew
Naming the customer, and linking straight to the job it belongs to. So you can pick up the phone instead of finding out three days later that they never heard from you.

Four Looks, Not Just a Colour

Your public shop page used to give you a colour picker and that was it.

🎨
Classic, Bold, Warm and MonoNew
Four whole layouts, so the page a customer lands on looks like your shop instead of a slightly recoloured version of everyone else’s. Pick one, set your accent, add a promo band if you have something to push. Change it as often as you like.
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Every photo you took, not just the firstNew
A machine you are selling shows the whole set now.

Matt’s List

Matt went through the app and wrote down what annoyed him. Most of it is now done. Keep doing that — it is where nearly everything in these updates comes from.

📝
A box to type your machine notes intoFixed
Your storefront had two paragraphs it could never show, because there was nowhere to write them. The listing description and the condition note both have real inputs now, and the public page shows them.
📞
Phone numbers format themselvesFixed
On customer records, not just your own cell in Settings. It tidies up when you leave the field rather than while you are typing, so deleting a digit does not fight you.
🪖
A fresh Windows build is outNew
The one you have will update itself. If you have not installed it yet, everything is on one screen under Settings → Downloads, or go to applianceops.pro/download.

Should the AI Actually Answer It?

Right now, when a call comes in that you cannot take, ApplianceOps picks up, takes a message, and then texts that person back — and the AI does the rest of the conversation over text. That works, and it has booked real jobs. But it only works on people who will read a text.

A few of you have asked the obvious next question: can it just talk to them?

It can. The technology is there, we are already on the phone network that does it, and I have read the settings that make one of these sound like a person instead of a robot. Before I build it, I want to know who would actually use it.

💲
What everyone else charges
A flat monthly fee, anywhere from $49 to $789 a month depending on who you ask. Housecall Pro will not publish a number at all. A human answering service runs $135 to $400 a month and still does not know your brands or your calendar.
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What it actually costs to run
About fifty to sixty-five cents a call — a phone line, a transcriber, a voice, and the AI itself, four meters all running by the minute. I would sell it to you just above that, not at a flat rate I would have to pad.
🏷️
You would pre-buy credits and top up
I would build you a dashboard showing exactly what you have used and what is left, and you would add to it when it runs low. Not a subscription, and no surprise bill at the end of the month — you would never spend a dollar you had not already decided to spend.

Everything You Can Buy From Us, In One Place

There is a screen for this now — owner menu → Extras. Bookkeeping and monthly reconciliation, answering cover for the days you cannot take calls, and a website with local SEO built and hosted for you. One place to ask for any of it.

🌐
A real website, $99 one timeOne time
Twelve pages, built and hosted for you, with local SEO, pointing at the booking page you already have. And a blog we keep going — a fresh post every month, written for your shop and your area. It is a one-time $99 — not a subscription. The only thing that renews is your domain, and you pay that to the registrar, not to us. Changes we make for you later are $20 for up to three pages.
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Someone else does the books
Two levels, depending on how much you want off your plate. Monthly reconciliation, $49 a month — we match your ApplianceOps money against the bank and tell you what does not line up. Full bookkeeping, $99 a month — we keep the whole set of books, not just the check.
☎️
Answering cover, for the days you cannotMembers
A real person on your line for the days you cannot take calls — a funeral, a holiday, a day you are under a machine and cannot come out. $75 for a half day, $150 for a full day, or a standing $375 a week for the full five days. Book the days you need; there is nothing monthly to sign up for.
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We will handle the domain too
Register a new one, move one you already own, or let us deal with the renewals. Our handling is $4.99 each time. The name itself is whatever the registrar charges — a .com and a .plumbing are not the same money, and we do not mark it up or pretend it is a fixed number.

See Something, Say Something

Matt’s list is most of the fixes above. That is how this works.

$20 for Every Shop That Signs On

$20
Once they pay month one
Know another shop owner who’d like this? Have them put your shop’s name or email in the “Were you referred?” box when they sign up. Once they pay their first month, you get $20 — no cap, no limit on how many. They get a full month free instead of two weeks, and we waive the Business Line setup fee if they want a phone (they still cover the number itself).

Help the Next Shop Find Us

If ApplianceOps has made your week easier, a quick review is the single biggest thing you can do for us — it is how other repair shops find it. One honest line is plenty. Review us on Google, or pick whichever you already have an account on at applianceops.pro/reviews. And if something is not right, please tell me first instead.