Automation for service shops
Duluth, Minnesota
The Other Tools of the Trade
The ones that take the office off your hands: invoicing, lead follow-up, dispatch, reporting. Automation for service shops across Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, built by someone who ran service operations inside a real shop, not a software salesman.
No pitch deck. I look at one thing eating your week and figure out if it can run itself.
The office work is eating the day
You're booked solid and still behind. Invoices go out late because somebody has to sit down and make them. Leads from the trade show sit in a notebook for a week. Somebody re-types the same info into three different screens. The schedule lives in one person's head, and when they're out, the day falls apart.
You don't need another full-time hire to handle the busywork. You need the busywork to handle itself.
Most shops your size are stuck in the middle: too small to have someone whose whole job is systems and automation, too big to keep running it all by hand. That gap is exactly what I close.
Paperwork piling up after hours, so the owner is doing invoices at 9 PM instead of being home.
The same number typed into the same three screens, every job, by hand.
Leads and follow-ups slipping through the cracks because nobody had time to chase them.
What I actually build
The busywork that can actually be automated is the repetitive kind: invoicing, lead follow-up, scheduling, reporting, data entry. I don't sell you software. I connect the tools you already pay for and make that work run on its own. Plain English, working systems, no jargon.
Day to day I work in ServiceTitan, Zapier, and Google Workspace. If your tool has an API, I can probably wire it in. And everything I build ships with a watchdog: scheduled health checks, an alert to a real phone when something breaks, and a morning note on what ran. You never have to wonder whether the robot quietly quit.
Some of that busywork lives inside a web page with no API to hook into. For those, I build a Chrome extension that does the same clicking and typing right in the browser your staff already use, so the data stays on their machine and never leaves the building.
Invoicing, Billing, and the Paper Trail
Jobs close, invoices go out, payments get tracked. The repeatable part runs on its own, so the weekly catch-up on billing mostly disappears.
For example
- Supply-house receipt emails matched line by line to the right purchase order in your CRM, for every vendor you buy from.
- Yesterday's financials pulled into one morning summary instead of five screens.
Lead Capture and Follow-Up
Every lead, from the trade show, the website, the phone, lands in one place, gets routed to the right person, and gets followed up on automatically. Nothing sits in a notebook.
For example
- Hang-ups and abandoned calls classified automatically in your phone system, so your booking rate reflects what actually happened.
- Open estimates that follow themselves up until they get an answer.
Scheduling, Dispatch, and Job Chatter
The coordination around a job, not just the calendar entry, kept together instead of scattered across texts, sticky notes, and inboxes.
For example
- A dedicated channel per job in your team chat, the right people added automatically, and the photos and messages in it archived back onto the job record when it closes.
- Digital install and truck load sheets the crew fills from a phone, saving field time and still printing clean for the shop.
Reporting You Don't Have to Build
Daily numbers on what got done, what got sold, and what got missed, put together for you instead of you stitching it from five screens.
For example
- Install-quality scorecards per technician: recalls, go-backs, and the hours spent fixing them, built from your CRM and payroll.
- A dispatch-board dashboard on the office TV that refreshes itself.
Warranty and Equipment Records
The equipment paper trail keeps itself, so nobody finds out at the service call that the unit was never registered.
For example
- Every unit you install logged with model and serial, and registered with the manufacturer automatically, portal or not.
- A master equipment sheet that fills itself in as the trucks roll.
Forms, Portals, and the Clicks Between
The fifty-times-a-week stuff that lives outside your main system: web portals, agency forms, the same six clicks to do one small thing.
For example
- Portal forms pre-filled from saved presets, with your staff reviewing and clicking submit.
- One-keystroke shortcuts for the actions your office repeats all day inside the tools you already use.
If the task draining your office hours isn't on this list, ask anyway. The whole job is figuring out what can run itself.
The Owner Dashboard
Your whole shop on one page at 6 AM: yesterday's numbers, the next 30 days of booked work, and the red flags your crew mentioned in Slack overnight. Refreshed hourly from ServiceTitan, read-only.
Don't take the screenshot's word for it: click through the live demo, a fully working dashboard for a fictional company, every number synthetic.
Built by someone who ran service operations
Mango Catalyst is one person who ran service operations inside a real service business and builds automation the way an operator would, not the way a salesman would. I'm not a software company. I ran the scheduling, the dispatch, the phones, the customer messes, and the daily numbers. Same problems you have: too many small tasks, not enough people, owners doing paperwork at night. So I started building my way out of it, and the building stuck.
I'm Bryan. Mango Catalyst is one person, and that person is me. You talk to me, you work with me, and I build and watch everything myself.
What that looks like in practice:
A real build I shipped:
I built a browser extension that automates medical claim data entry into Minnesota's provider billing portal. It's privacy-first by design: everything runs on the user's own machine, so sensitive data never leaves the building. Different industry, same problem: repeated portal work, sensitive data, and staff losing hours to typing. The same pattern fits dispatch boards, supply-house receipts, warranty registration, and job closeout.
A method, not a pitch.
Discovery, plan, build. I find the one task that keeps stealing hours, I write down exactly what will change, and I build the smallest version that proves it.
Platforms I work in every day:
ServiceTitan, Zapier, Google Workspace. If your tool has an API, I can probably connect it.
The honest part: Mango Catalyst is new, so I'm not going to show you a wall of five-star reviews I don't have yet. What I can do is walk you through, on the call, exactly how I'd scope the busywork burning your evenings: what the work looks like now, which part can run itself, and what stays human. You'll see how I think before you spend a dollar.
Who you're working withHow it works
After you book, three things happen: we talk, we pick one task, I build it. No giant project. No six-month rollout. We start small, prove it works, then build from there.
We talk (15 minutes).
You tell me what's slowing the office down. I ask the questions a software salesman wouldn't know to ask, because I've run service operations myself instead of selling the tool.
We pick one thing.
We find the single most annoying, most repeated task and start there. One clear win beats a giant plan that never ships.
I build it and set it up.
Setup is a one-time $795. I build your first automation, wired into the tools you already use, and get it running. You don't manage anything.
It runs, and keeping it running is my job.
$1,000 a month; the first 3 months are a commitment, month to month after that. Small tweaks come out of a monthly queue, bigger builds get scoped first, and when a tool you use changes and something breaks, fixing it is my job.
You keep doing the work you're good at. The office work just stops being your problem.
Simple pricing, no surprises
It costs $795 one-time for the first build, then $1,000 a month. No long contracts. No per-seat fees. No "call for a quote" runaround.
First workflow setup
$795one-time
I build your first automation and get it running, wired into the tools you already use.
Ongoing automation partner
$1,000a month
First 3 months, then month to month, cancel anytime after. Your data lives in the tools you own and leaves with you. The automations run while the retainer runs; if you cancel, they stop and you keep every piece of data they produced.
What the monthly actually includes (so there are no surprises):
- Keeping everything I've built for you working. When a tool updates or an integration breaks, fixing it is included: I reply within 1 business day, and fixes land within 2 to 3 business days.
- A monthly queue of tweaks and improvements. Small changes (under about 2 hours of work) come out of the queue, no extra charge per tweak.
- Bigger new builds (a whole new workflow from scratch) get scoped and agreed first, so you always know what you're getting. No surprise bills, and no "unlimited" promise I can't keep.
The break-even, in plain numbers: count the office hours your team spends on the task each month, multiply by what an hour actually costs you, and set that next to $1,000. That's the whole math, and you can run it before we ever talk.
Why it's a retainer, not a project: Automation isn't a thing you buy once. Tools change, your shop changes, and the systems need someone keeping them alive. That's what the monthly covers.
Why the 3-month start: the build work is front-loaded. Most of my hours land in the first weeks, and the 3-month start is what makes the $795 setup possible instead of charging the whole build cost up front.
The questions owners ask first
- Is this going to replace my people?
No. It replaces the busywork they hate, so they can do the work you hired them for.
- Is my data safe?
It's yours. I never sell it, and I only wire it into the systems we agree to automate.
- What happens if something breaks?
You message the person who built it. I reply within 1 business day, and fixes land within 2 to 3 business days.
All nine answers, no runaround: Straight answers
Let's find the thing that's eating your week
One 15-minute call. You tell me what's driving you nuts, I tell you straight whether it can be automated and roughly what that looks like. No pitch deck, no pressure. If I don't think I can save you real time, I'll say so on the call.