Trades businesses doing $3M to $15M a year
Typing the same job into three systems. Quotes nobody chases. Job costing a week behind. Trades owners tell us the same three things. We automate them on the tools you already use.
We take on 3 new trades companies per month.
Companies we work with
“Sheldon and I were actually doing it yesterday, looking at things, and we're saying, this is what we've been waiting five years to be able to do. It's creating the job cost sheets in real time, which is wonderful. Knowing where we're at on a larger job, knowing the labor hours, knowing where we're hitting for GP, knowing if we're actually tanking a job and if we need to make a really quick change, as opposed to two months down the road. All of this information, making it easily accessible and real-time, really is a game-changer for us. And you guys have really gotten this to us quicker than we expected, to be honest. We are absolutely thrilled.”
We take on 3 new trades companies per month.
BeforeJob costing 90 days behind
AfterEvery job’s profit, every morning
BeforeFriday 4 PM form waits 63 hours
AfterAnswered tonight, estimate booked
BeforeChasing quotes that never follow up
AfterEvery quote chased until it’s won or lost
BeforeSame job typed into 3 to 5 systems
AfterTyped once, shows up everywhere
BeforeBills keyed by hand at month end
AfterBills and invoices land in QuickBooks on the right job
BeforeNumbers live in too many spots
AfterSales, jobs, cash and crews on one screen
2,030 jobs costed from Salesforce, Paychex, and QuickBooks
Labor hours from Salesforce timestamps, real pay rates from Paychex, bills from QuickBooks Online, revenue from the accepted quote. Job cost records, reports, and a dashboard live where the team already works, refreshed nightly.
250+ extra estimates booked without the team doing a thing
A website chatbot, an after-hours voice agent, and a direct booking form put estimates straight on the calendar, with confirmations, 24-hour and 1-hour reminders, and a review request after the job.
553 job cost sheets kept current automatically
Every night, hours from QuickBooks Time land on each job's cost sheet in Smartsheet, with revenue and materials tied out to QuickBooks. Supplier invoices are matched to jobs with zero false matches on the first real batch. The office stopped building job sheets by hand.
27 jobs, 232 attachments, and 20 hours reports moved on the first run
Completed jobs move from the master schedule into the month's close sheet with every attachment and comment thread. VeriClock hours PDFs are pulled onto each row. One digest goes to the office. Running on its own since September 14.
Sherwin-Williams and Dunn-Edwards bills, 3 companies, every weekday
Supplier invoices arrive by email and are posted as bills in the right QuickBooks Online file with vendor, account, class, and job. PDFs are filed in Dropbox and a noon summary goes to the bookkeeper. Anything it cannot match is flagged for a human instead of guessed.
Hear it from our clients
Real clients, in their own words. Results depend on your business and how it runs today.
Hours live in one system. Paint in another. Money in QuickBooks. Someone types 20 numbers per job into a spreadsheet, 5 to 10 hours a week, and the answer is still three months late. Crews give things away on jobs that are already losing money, because nobody can see it.
Customer info typed five times. Estimate dollars typed three times: estimating tool, CRM, accounting. One reschedule changed in "four to a dozen different locations."
One $10M+ painting company counted 112 hours a week of this. The owner said: "if we could cut that even by 20%, we could spend that 20% actually talking to our customers."
At one client we found 146 open quotes worth $2.2M with zero follow-up. Won jobs close in 7 days. After that the quote is cold, and nothing tells you.
A web form sent Friday at 4:01 PM waited 63 hours for a reply. Phones off at 4. 150 to 200 leads a month. Nothing fires on its own.
A hundred paint-store bills pile up at month end. Six hours in a chair, spilling into the weekend. One AR person spends 80% of her time typing jobs, estimates, and invoices into QuickBooks.
Get Your Free Real-Time Job Costing Blueprint
Two minutes and you get a plan built around your own QuickBooks, time clock, and estimating tool, plus the workbook we use with clients.
Automated Job Costing
Co-Owner
Zach spent five years in management consulting building AI and automation for Fortune 100 companies. He now builds the same kind of systems for trades companies. He lives in New York with his fiancé.
Co-Owner
Gereon has led projects for more than ten years, for companies from small painting businesses to logistics businesses doing billions a year. He speaks fluent Spanish, which helps when the crew does too. He lives in the Charlotte area with his family and is a dad to two girls.
Z&G Partners builds and runs automated job costing and office automation for painting, garage door and other trades companies doing $3M to $15M a year. It is owned by Zach Rigano and Gereon Hempel. We connect the tools you already use, like QuickBooks, your time clock, payroll and your estimating tool, so job costing, lead response, quote follow-up and bills run on their own. We are not ZRG Partners, the executive search firm.
No. Z&G Partners is not software you buy and learn. We connect the tools you already use, such as QuickBooks, QuickBooks Time, VeriClock, Paychex, PaintScout, Salesforce and Smartsheet, so job costing updates itself every night. You do not switch software, and your crews do not learn a new app. We build it, then we run it for you.
Thirty minutes. You walk us through how a job goes from estimate to invoice today, and which tools touch it. We tell you where the hours and margin leak, and what we would build first. No slides. No pitch.
A flat fee to build each automation, then a monthly fee to run it. We quote both on the call once we know your tools. No hourly bills. No surprise invoices.
Three to five hours in total: a kickoff walk-through, access to your tools, and a short review before go-live. We do the rest, including the parts that stall most projects, like QuickBooks access and data cleanup.
The clock starts the day we have access to your tools. If it is not running on its own and doing what we agreed by day 30, you get the build fee back. Days we wait on access or answers do not count.
No. We build on what you already run. Recent builds hooked into QuickBooks Desktop and Online, QuickBooks Time, VeriClock, Smartsheet, Salesforce, Paychex, PaintScout, CompanyCam, GoHighLevel, and plain email inboxes. If a tool has no way in, we tell you on the call.
We do. It runs on our systems on a schedule, with an alarm if a run is missed. Anything it cannot sort out gets flagged to a named person on your team, never guessed. You get a plain user guide and a daily summary email.
Your data stays in your systems. We connect through each vendor’s own door, with keys you control and can turn off any time. We never sell, share, or train on your data. We publish nothing about you without your written OK.
Zach works from New York and Gereon from the Charlotte, North Carolina area. We work with trades companies across the United States, remotely. Kickoff, reviews and support all happen on video calls and email, so your location does not matter.
Each build gets one lead engineer for the full 30 days. More than three at once is how projects slip, and the guarantee only works if we can keep it. If a month is full, you get the next one.
A free 30-minute call. We show you where the hours and money leak, and what we would build first.
We take on 3 new trades companies per month.