Forge AI · Prepared for Jordan Saathoff · Saat Plumbing
Blue helps you forge further.
You do the work. Blue runs the business. Blue is an AI back office that lives at your shop and works over
plain text messages. It watches your QuickBooks, your quotes, your schedule, and your
inbox — and it does the chasing, drafting, and bookkeeping legwork that eats your
evenings. No app to install. No login to remember. You text it like you'd
text your best office manager.
What it isAI office manager, on a box at your shopHow you use itText messages — works on any phoneYour booksConnects to QuickBooks OnlineWho's behind itForge AI · forgefurther.ai
01 · THE PROBLEM IT KILLS
The office work never stops — and it's always on you
Every plumbing shop past the one-truck stage hits the same wall:
the work is there, but quotes go out late, follow-ups don't happen, invoices lag
the job, receipts pile up in the truck, and nobody's watching cash until it's
tight. Hiring an office manager costs $45–60k. Blue does the same chasing for a
fraction of that — and it never takes a sick day, never forgets a follow-up, and
answers at 9pm when you're pricing tomorrow's repipe at the kitchen table.
Blue is not a chatbot bolted onto your website. It's a
worker with access to your actual systems — QuickBooks, your quote list, your
calendar — that texts you when something needs a decision, and handles the
rest quietly. Everything customer-facing gets your approval before it goes out.
That's not a limitation; it's the design.
02 · A WEEK WITH BLUE
What this looks like in a plumbing shop
Every scenario below is a workflow that exists today — running in the
field at our pilot customers — reframed for plumbing work. Nothing here is a mockup
of what we hope to build.
Monday 6:00 AM
The morning briefing built
Before the first coffee: today's jobs off the calendar, who's scheduled where,
the weather (a hard-freeze warning means a burst-pipe day — staff for it), what's
unpaid, and anything that needs your eyes.
Blue: "3 jobs today — Hendricks water heater 8am, Roman
Ave rough-in 10:30, Cedar Ct drain call 2pm. Freeze warning Wed night. 2 invoices
past 30 days, $4,180 total. Want the collection nudges drafted?"
Monday 9:40 AM
Quotes that chase themselves built
The water-heater quote you sent last Tuesday? The homeowner never answered.
Blue tracks every open quote and drafts the follow-up at the right interval —
you approve with one text, it sends.
Blue: "Quote #1042 (tankless swap, $4,850, the Kellers)
is 6 days quiet. Draft ready: friendly nudge + the rebate deadline. Send it?"
Tuesday 1:15 PM
Receipt in the truck → bill in the books built
Snap a photo of the Ferguson or Winsupply receipt from the front seat. Blue
reads it, matches the vendor, and drafts the bill into QuickBooks — flagging
anything that looks like a duplicate before it double-pays.
You: [photo of a supply-house receipt] Blue: "Winsupply, $612.40, 14 line items — drafted to QBO under Job:
Roman Ave rough-in. Heads up: invoice # matches one from 7/28. Same order or
a duplicate?"
Wednesday 4:50 PM
Job done → invoice out, same day built
Text "Cedar Ct is done" from the driveway. Blue drafts the invoice in
QuickBooks from the accepted estimate, you approve, it goes out before you're
home. No more Sunday-night invoicing pile.
Blue: "Invoice drafted from estimate #1038: drain
line replacement, $1,890. Send to the customer now?"
Thursday 7:00 AM
Cash flow you can see coming built
A weekly forecast from your real QuickBooks numbers: what's landing, what's
going out, where the pinch is. The week you'd have found out the hard way,
Blue tells you on Thursday instead.
Blue: "Next 3 weeks: $18.2k expected in, $11.4k
committed out. Tight spot week of the 9th if the Hendricks final doesn't land —
want me to draft the deposit reminder?"
Friday 11:20 AM
Dig jobs: 811 handled built
Sewer line replacement means excavation, and excavation means an 811 locate
ticket — filed early enough to be legal, tracked so it doesn't expire under you.
Blue drafts the ticket, tracks the response, and warns you before a crew breaks
ground on a dead ticket. This machinery runs daily at our utility-contractor
customer — plumbing digs are the easy case.
Blue: "The Maplewood sewer dig is Monday. 811 needs 2
full working days — ticket has to go in TODAY to be legal. Draft's ready."
Friday 5:30 PM
Reviews while the glow is warm built
Job closed, customer happy — that's the moment. Blue drafts the review
request so it actually goes out, instead of living on the someday list.
Five-star reviews are the cheapest marketing a plumber can buy.
Blue: "The Kellers paid same-day and said thanks —
good sign. Review request drafted. Send?"
Any night, 11:48 PM
Ask your paperwork anything built
Load your docs — manufacturer install manuals, warranty terms, spec sheets,
your price book — and any tech on the roster can text a question and get the
answer with the actual page attached. At our current pilot, field crews
query safety manuals and a 90-page labor contract this way, cited to the page.
Tech: "whats the venting clearance on the Navien 240A" Blue: "2" from combustibles per the install manual §4.2 — page attached."
Android note, since it matters to you: Blue works over
standard text messaging. iPhone, Android, flip phone — if it can text, it can talk
to Blue. Your techs don't install anything either.
03 · SEE IT ON A PHONE
Three real conversations, start to finish
This is the whole interface. No dashboard to learn, no app to
update — the same thread you’d use to text a friend.
Quote follow-up · Jordan
7:38
Blue
Quote #1042 — tankless swap, $4,850 (the Kellers) — is 6 days quiet. Follow-up drafted with the rebate deadline:
📄 Follow-up draft · Keller · Quote #1042
send it
Sent. I’ll flag you the moment they answer.
They’re in — Keller just accepted. Deposit invoice drafted in QuickBooks ($1,455) and a Thursday 8am hold on the calendar. Approve both?
yes. nice work
Invoice sent, job on the books for Thursday. ✅
Receipt → QuickBooks · From the truck
1:15
Blue
📷 Photo · Winsupply receipt
Winsupply, $612.40, 14 line items — read it, matched the vendor, drafted the bill to QuickBooks under Job: Roman Ave rough-in.
Heads up — that invoice # matches one entered 7/28. Same order, or did they double-bill you?
dup. they sent it twice
Dropped the draft and noted it on the vendor. That’s $612 that didn’t go out twice. ✅
Job done → invoice + 811 · Driveway
4:52
Blue
Cedar Ct is done
Invoice drafted from estimate #1038 — drain line replacement, $1,890:
📄 Invoice draft · QuickBooks
send it
Sent. One more thing — the Maplewood sewer dig is Monday. Indiana 811 needs 2 full working days: the locate ticket has to go in today to be legal. Draft’s ready.
file it
Filed. I’ll track the utility responses and warn you if anything isn’t marked before Monday. ✅
DEMO CONTENT IS ILLUSTRATIVE · A REAL DEPLOYMENT ANSWERS FROM SAAT’S ACTUAL QUICKBOOKS, QUOTES & SCHEDULE
04 · YOUR BOOKS
QuickBooks, connected properly
Blue connects to QuickBooks Online through Intuit's official
channel — the same way your accountant's tools do. It reads invoices, estimates,
payments, and bills to answer questions and watch cash; it drafts new
entries for your approval.
Blue does on its own
Blue drafts, you approve
Blue never does
Reads your books to answer questions and forecast cash · watches for unbilled
finished jobs · flags likely duplicate vendor bills before they're paid
Every invoice, estimate, bill, customer email, and review request —
one text from you releases it
Send money, sign anything, delete records, or talk to your customers without
an approved draft
The trust window: for the first 30 days everything is
draft-first, no exceptions, while you watch it work. After that, you choose
what it's earned the right to do on its own — job by job, permission by permission.
Most owners loosen a few things and keep approval on anything customer-facing.
05 · WHERE IT LIVES
A box at your shop — not your data in someone's cloud
Blue runs on a Mac mini we install at your shop. Your customer
list, your pricing, your books access — it stays on hardware you can point at.
We maintain it remotely; encrypted off-site backup protects you from theft, fire,
or a dead drive.
Why this matters in practice: your quote history and
customer list are the business. They don't get pooled into anyone's training data,
and they don't live in a subscription you can be locked out of. Cancel, and the
box's data is yours.
06 · THE NUMBERS
Pricing
One-time implementation
$1,000
Hardware setup, QuickBooks connection, your docs and price
book loaded, your workflows tuned to how Saat actually runs, roster onboarded
by text.
Monthly
$950/mo
Everything above, running daily. No per-seat charges, no
usage meters, no surprise overages — your whole crew texts the same Blue.
The out
30 days
90-day pilot to prove it; cancel anytime on 30 days'
notice. If Blue isn't obviously paying for itself, stop paying for it.
For scale: $950/mo is about a fifth of
a part-time office hire — for something that works 24/7, reads your books, and
never lets a quote die quiet. One saved duplicate bill or one revived $4,800 quote
a month and it's paid for itself.
07 · STRAIGHT ANSWERS
The honest part
What we'd tell a friend before he signed
It's early. Forge is a young company with two customers live — a concrete
contractor and a utility-line contractor. You'd be the third, and the first
plumber. That cuts both ways: you get founder-level attention on your setup, and
you'll occasionally see rough edges before we sand them.
The first two weeks are calibration, not magic. Blue learns your voice,
your vendors, your pricing, your customers. It asks more questions early. Owners
who text it back get a sharply better office manager by week three.
It won't do your plumbing. It also won't do payroll or timesheets —
deliberately out of scope. It runs the paperwork around the work: quotes,
follow-ups, invoices, receipts, scheduling, cash, documents, 811.
08 · NEXT STEP
Seeing it beats reading about it
Twenty minutes, your numbers: we'll walk a real quote-to-invoice
loop and a receipt-photo-to-QuickBooks pass live. If it's not obviously useful,
we shake hands and you keep the coffee.