We built the tool we wished we had. Now we're letting a few firms in.

If you've run a drawing office, you'll know how most of them run. Enquiries in one inbox, drawings on the server, prices in a spreadsheet only one person really understood, the programme on a whiteboard, and the question "which revision did we send them?" asked at least once a week.

We've lived that, so we built something better. It's called Redpen. It has run quotes, clients, projects and programme on real, live jobs before anyone outside the team saw it.

What Redpen does today

• Estimate: start a new job with the enquiry and its drawings, and Redpen drafts the scope and price from your own rates. A person reviews every quote before it goes anywhere.
• Quotes that tell you what happened: see which quotes a client has opened, and how often, so you know when to pick up the phone.
• Clients and CRM: every firm, contact and past quote in one place.
• Projects: every job on one board, and every detailer's workload at a glance.
• Client portal: clients open their quote online and accept it there.
• Calendar: who's in, who's off, and what's due.

Quotes go through to Xero, so nobody types the same numbers twice.

Why early access, and why slowly

We'd rather have five firms who tell us exactly what's wrong than fifty who quietly stop logging in. So we're opening Redpen to a few firms at a time. We set each workspace up with you and run it on your real jobs.

It suits steel detailing and fabrication firms from one person to about twenty-five, who are happy to tell us when something isn't right.

And the robots?

Yes, Redpen uses AI. No, it isn't going to take over your office. It reads drawings and does the typing. You make the decisions.

Next week we'll introduce you to GAIL, the superintelligence that was supposed to replace us all, and explain why it's still stuck on Revision C.

Want in? Request early access and tell us a bit about your firm.