Every quoting app sells you speed. None of them know how fast you work, what condition that wall is really in, or what you forgot to price. That's where the money goes.
No sign-up. It runs in your browser with a job already loaded.
Chalky, patched, twenty nail holes and a filled crack — same square footage as the smooth one next to it, and more than twice the hours. Nobody bids the wrong number on purpose. You just measure the room, because the room is the thing you can measure.
Squareaway asks about the wall before it prices anything. Prep condition, spray or brush, bare drywall or repaint, whether that trim is really included. The questions take fifteen seconds and they're the difference between a day and two days.
It's that the estimate gets written two nights later at the kitchen table, after a ten-hour day. Painters who get something written out inside a day close at roughly double the rate of painters who take three. Same painter. Same price. Same job.
This one writes itself while you're standing in the room — talk it through, or tap it in one-handed. Signed before you're back in the truck, if they're ready.
Twenty small favours across a job is most of a week you didn't charge for, and on a job running at twenty percent that's half the profit. Not one of them felt like a big ask at the time. That's exactly why it's invisible until the job closes.
The answer isn't saying no — you want the work. It's making yes take thirty seconds and come out signed. Tap the extra, read the price back, get a signature, back up the ladder.
Every painter's estimates are off. That isn't the problem. The ones who know by how much quietly run better margins than the ones who don't.
At the end of a job it asks you one question — you bid 18 hours, how did it actually go — with four buttons and real hour figures. No timesheets. After enough jobs it knows you run about fifteen percent over the book rate on heavy prep, and it prices that way. For you, not for painters in general.
It refuses to use that data until it has enough of it, and it'll tell you how many more jobs it needs. A trend from one bad Tuesday isn't a trend.
If you pitched it somewhere that isn't your office and they signed somewhere that isn't your office, that's a home solicitation sale under Texas Business & Commerce Code chapter 601. The customer gets three business days, and you have to hand them a detachable cancellation form — in duplicate, ten-point bold, carrying your business address and the date they've got until.
Miss it and § 601.201 says the contract is void. Not a fine. Void — on a job where you've already bought the paint. Squareaway prints the form with the estimate, counts the days properly, and records that it was handed over before the signature.
I'm not a lawyer and these rules change. Chapter 601 is free to read — go and look.
Talk it through or tap the room presets. It handles the geometry — walls minus openings, ceilings, trim by the linear foot.
Before it prices anything. New drywall drinks more paint. Ceilings run slower. Trim is brushwork. Skip a question and it prices as if the answer was no, and says so.
A typed name is a legal signature. It's bound to that exact document, so if a figure changes afterwards the fingerprint stops matching.
At the same rates as the original, as a separate signed amendment. Never by editing something already signed.
Opens your own texts with the message written. From your number, in the thread they already know, so the reply lands on your phone.
It's not finished, and it's not for sale yet. I'm building it, and I'd rather show you something honest than a waiting list.
The demo runs entirely in your browser. Estimates, the questions, pricing, the PDF, the cancellation notice, change orders and the follow-up all work. Sign-in and taking a deposit don't — those need a server I haven't put up yet. Nothing you type goes anywhere.
What I want right now isn't your money. It's fifteen minutes and a straight answer about how you price work.