Selling time as a tradesperson — handymen, gardeners, dog walkers

Sign up as a merchant on /sell. Stripe Connect is the only must — it's how customer payments reach you.

Once you're in the merchant mobile app, tap Account → "Switch to Handyman" on the Business mode card. Your tab bar flips to:

• Today — handyman dashboard.
• Jobs — inbox of available jobs across every community you're a member of, plus your active engagements.
• Diary — your scheduled visits.
• Communities — the communities you're a member of.
• Account — profile, business mode toggle, sign-out.

You can switch back to Stall mode any time. One business is one mode — if you genuinely sell products *and* offer trade services, set up two separate merchants (one user can be linked to several) and switch between them via the merchant switcher.

Tradespeople surface for matching jobs via their directory listing. Make sure you have a public directory listing under "Services" with the right category — Handyman / Gardener / Plumber / Electrician / Painter / Cleaner / Roofer / Carpenter / Dog walker / Other.

Listings are community-scoped, so if you serve more than one parish or village, add yourself to each. The Communities tab in the merchant app shows the ones you're already a member of.

Open the Jobs tab. Available jobs show category, urgency, locality, response count and how long ago it was posted. Open one to read the full description.

Tap Respond. Write a short message — "Hi, I can take a look on Saturday morning" works fine — and optionally suggest a visit time.

The customer sees your response on their job detail screen. They may accept yours or someone else's. If they accept yours, the job moves to an Appointment with their full address.

Appointments appear in the Diary tab and the Today screen. Each card has a Navigate button that hands off to your phone's map app.

This first visit is just to assess the job — no money has changed hands. Walk through the work with the customer, take any measurements / photos you need, and head back.

From the job detail screen, tap Submit your quote. Fill in:

• Total (£) — your headline price for the job.
• Optional labour and materials breakdowns — helps the customer trust the number.
• Notes — what's included, what's not, any caveats.
• Optional estimated completion date.

Submit. The customer sees it on their detail screen. If they accept and pay, the funds land in our escrow account and you're ready to schedule.

If they reject (with an optional reason), you can submit a new quote — handy when the scope of the job changed between the visit and the quote, or when you misjudged the price.

Once escrow is paid, the engagement asks you to schedule. Open the engagement card → Schedule the work. Pick:

• Cadence — One-off (single visit), Weekly, or Fortnightly. Recurring work is great for dog walking, gardening, cleaning.
• First visit — date + time. If recurring, this is the first of N.
• Visits in this block — 1 for one-off, N for recurring. We auto-generate the rest at 7-day or 14-day intervals.
• Optional visit length in minutes.

The customer approves before any visit is booked. They may ask you to re-propose; you can iterate until they're happy.

When the block runs out, raise a fresh quote against the same job posting for the next block.

Each scheduled visit shows on the engagement detail with its own Start / Finish buttons.

• Tap Start when you arrive on site. We capture the time + your GPS (with your permission). The customer sees "Started at 09:14, GPS 51.21, -0.79".
• Tap Finish when the work's done. Same time + GPS stamping.

The GPS is optional — if you decline location permission we still record the timestamp. But the location proof is a really useful audit trail if there's ever a dispute about whether you turned up.

Each engagement has a comments thread shared with the customer. Post updates, ask questions, share progress photos. Three flag types live on the thread:

• General — anything that's not scope-creep.
• Needs more hours — the existing quote is light; you need the customer to cover an overrun.
• Needs another job — there's a related problem that deserves its own quote (and its own escrow).

These flags surface as a chip above the comment so nothing gets lost in a long thread. Keeps everyone's expectations aligned without awkward emails.

Tap Reschedule on any not-yet-started visit. Pick a new date / time + an optional reason. The customer gets Accept new time / Decline buttons.

The visit doesn't move until both sides agree, so nothing silently disappears. Same flow if the customer wants to move a visit — you get the Accept / Decline buttons.

Once every visit in the block is finished, the engagement detail shows the Mark complete form. Upload photos (up to 8) and a short note, then submit.

The customer reviews and either accepts (your payout transfers to your Stripe Connect account, minus our 10% platform fee) or raises a dispute (funds stay in escrow pending admin mediation).

On a £100 quote your payout is £90. Same maths whether it's a one-off job or a 12-visit block.