Coat to Close puts your leads, estimates, crews, invoices and reviews in one system built for painters, and shows you exactly where jobs stall. We set it up and run it for you.
Every lead you answer late, every estimate you forget to chase and every invoice you send a week after the walkthrough costs you money. Among Texas small businesses, 43% report uneven cash flow and 30% say they struggle to use technology.
Quotes are common painter complaints from industry research. Texas figures: Federal Reserve 2026 Texas small-business chartbook, all industries.
Ask Claude about your business and it answers from your own numbers. You spend less time guessing and more time fixing what's actually costing you jobs.
When a client opens your estimate, you get an alert. If a job you'd written off as lost gets opened again, you hear about that too.
When a client declines, you get a "call now to save it" alert, and three days later they get a short why-not survey. A counter offer starts the follow-up again.
Clients who aren't ready go to a holding pipeline and hear from you at 30, 60 and 90 days. If they accept later, the job comes back on its own.
Every open estimate shows its stage and dollar value. Estimates that go quiet are closed out as No Response, so you know what's really in play.
Win and reply rates are from a live residential painting account, May to August 2026.
Your marketing, sales, crews and billing share one customer record. Here's what happens at each stage.
Most painters find out what a job made when the bank statement comes. You'll see it at three points on every job.
Every estimate breaks the price into labor, materials, overhead and profit. You see the labor-days at your day rate, a warning when the crew payout won't split evenly, and a flag when the job is under your minimum.
Snap a photo of a Sherwin-Williams or Home Depot receipt. It reads the vendor, the lines and the tax, checks the total, matches paint to your catalog and catches duplicates. Nothing saves until you tap Save.
Profit against the bid, broken out by paint, sundries and other materials, with sales tax counted as the real cost it is. Across jobs, you see what keeps running over.
| Bid | Actual | Diff | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $8,400 | $8,400 | |
| Labor | $2,730 | $2,940 | +$210 |
| Paint | $1,216 | $1,312 | +$96 |
| Sundries | $410 | $352 | −$58 |
| Overhead | $1,260 | $1,260 | $0 |
| Sales tax | n/a | $137 | +$137 |
| Profit | $2,784 | $2,399 | −$385 |
Example job, for illustration. Margin went from 33% bid to 29% actual.
CTC IQ is one app on your phone, installed from the browser. No app store. It holds the tools a general field-service app never gets right.
In most setups you keep the quote, the calendar, the invoice and the marketing in sync by hand. Here, every step sets off the next one.
| When this happens | This follows automatically |
|---|---|
| A lead comes in | The lead gets an instant reply and you get a "call now" alert. |
| You send the estimate | Follow-up emails, texts and call reminders start. |
| The client signs | The job moves forward and the follow-up stops, so nobody gets chased after saying yes. |
| The scope changes | You send a change order from the app. Once it's signed, you get a reminder to invoice it. |
| You book the crew | The crew lead gets a text, the client gets a confirmation, and both get a reminder before day one. On the start date the job moves to In Progress. |
| The job finishes | The job moves to Send Invoice and you get a reminder to bill it. |
| You send the invoice | The job moves to Invoiced. If it runs past due, the client gets a friendly reminder, then a firmer one, then you get a call task. |
| The client pays | QuickBooks updates, and the check-in, review request and referral ask go out. |
| You snap a photo of a receipt | The lines, tax and total fill in for you, and you see profit against the bid. |
Don't overpay others for AI. Bring your own Claude account and connect it right into the system as your field assistant. We provide the Knetix IQ instruction kit that connects it and sets it up for your business, so Claude reads your live jobs, costs, crews and pipeline.
We build your account around how you work, put the CTC IQ app on your phone, and keep watching it after you go live.
of automations built and running for you from day one.
If the apps hit a problem, we're alerted within 15 minutes and fix it.
We get an all-clear report every day, so a quiet day never hides a problem.
Other systems hand you software and a setup checklist. You get a running business system built for painters, with marketing in the same account.
| Jobber | Housecall Pro | PaintScout | Coat to Close | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Home service trades | Home service trades | Painters | Painters, residential and commercial |
| Marketing: reviews, campaigns, social | Marketing Suite add-on, $99/mo | On higher plans and paid add-ons | Not a focus | In the same account: website and funnels, lead ads, social posting, review requests and replies, campaigns |
| Speed to lead | Request forms and online booking | Online booking; AI answering as add-on | Not a focus | Instant reply to the lead, a "call now" alert to you, one inbox for every channel |
| Estimate follow-up | Up to two automated reminders | Automated reminders | Estimating focus | About five weeks of emails, texts and call reminders, plus a holding pipeline for "not yet" |
| Painting estimates | Line items | Line items | Yes | Room by room, pooled gallons, takeoff from plans, margin before you send |
| Job costing | On the Grow plan | Yes | Estimate side | Profit against the bid from receipt photos, and paint bought against paint estimated |
| AI | Copilot, in the app | AI Team, in the app | Not a focus | Claude on your own account, reading your live business; books crews after you confirm |
| Setup | You do it | You do it | You do it | We build it, watch it and keep it running |
Competitor details from vendor and review pages, September 2026: Jobber automations, Jobber job costing, Jobber marketing tools, Housecall Pro AI Team, Housecall Pro automated marketing. Features change; check before quoting.
No. We build your pipeline, automations, website pages and app, load your prices, and keep it all running.
No. When you book a job, the crew lead gets a text with the details.
Yes. Payments run through Stripe, and invoices and payments sync to QuickBooks Online, so your bookkeeper sees everything without double entry.
Your estimate stays on your phone as you work. Save or send it once you're back online.
You do. You get your own app, your own web address and your own account. No other company sees your jobs.
Yes, for your field assistant. Bring your own Claude account and we connect it right into the system, so it can answer questions about your jobs, costs and pipeline, draft emails and book crews. The rest of the system runs without it.
If the apps hit a problem, we're alerted within 15 minutes and fix it. We also get an all-clear every day, so a quiet day never hides a problem.
No. It's built for painting contractors with one to five people, where the owner does the selling, estimating and scheduling.
We'll show you a lead coming in and getting answered, an estimate going out, a crew getting booked and an invoice getting paid, then what the job made.
See it on a real account