Custom management software for tradespeople: generic SaaS or your own tool?

Obat and similar software cover construction quotes and invoices well. The question arises when your way of working outgrows their boxes. Here is the tipping point, and what each side costs.

A tradesperson can decide with one question: does your off-the-shelf software serve you, or do you work around it? As long as Obat or an equivalent covers your quotes and invoices, stay with it. When evenings are spent working around it, custom software, previously €30,000 from an agency, costs a subscription of a few dozen euros, plus your direction.

What construction SaaS does well

Management software for tradespeople has matured: quotes and invoices with up-to-date statutory wording, work-item libraries, site tracking, deposits and progress billing. For a business that fits the usual pattern, one trade, conventional jobs, standard billing, it provides a real service immediately, with support behind it. A custom tool will never beat its first day. Many tradespeople will never need anything else, and that is good.

Three signs you have outgrown it

First sign: the satellite spreadsheet. Workshop tracking, equipment hire or subcontracted installations live in an Excel file beside the software, because the tool has no place for them. Second sign: duplicate entry. Every job is copied from notebook to software, then from software to spreadsheet. Third sign: the ignored in-house rule. Your loyalty discount, quantity calculation or two-team schedule does not exist in settings, so you calculate it manually and paste the result. One of these signs is bearable; all three indicate a tool working against you, with business figures scattered across three places.

What custom software used to cost, and what it costs now

Previously, a tool shaped around you required an agency: a median of around €30,000 for development in France, out of reach for a tradesperson's internal tool. In 2026, an AI agent team builds the same tool under your direction: you describe your jobs and rules, the agents write requirements in French, you correct and approve, and they build and check. The cost falls to an assistant subscription of around €20 per month and a few euros in tokens, plus your hours of approval. Maestro, free during beta, organises this work without a terminal.

The honest calculation

Custom software gives you a tool that speaks your language, your work items, teams and rules, and belongs to you: the approved requirements stay with you, as does the code. In exchange, it asks for something SaaS does not: decisions. Who sees what, what happens to a rejected quote, how a deposit is rounded. Allow a few evenings of direction for the first version. If your processes are standard, that time yields nothing: keep the SaaS.

Decide in one evening

List what you do outside the software: every satellite spreadsheet, duplicate entry and manual calculation. If the list exceeds three lines and grows every year, describe those three lines to an agent team and read the requirements it proposes: reading them will tell you whether your own tool deserves to exist. The document takes a quarter of an hour to read and commits you to nothing.