JobGate

Idea

A corporate card for trade contractors that won't swipe until the tech picks the job it's for.

JobGate issues Visa cards (via Stripe Issuing) to HVAC, plumbing, and electrical techs that only authorize once the purchase is tagged to a job and cost code in the JobGate mobile app, then syncs the coded spend straight into ServiceTitan or QuickBooks Online job costing in real time. It replaces the current setup where an office manager spends hours a month untangling unassigned Ramp, Brex, or Divvy transactions, or manually confirming receipts scanned by after-the-fact tools.

Market gap

General-purpose corporate card platforms (Ramp, Brex, Divvy) have no native job-cost coding. A tech swipes, the transaction lands uncoded, and someone reclassifies it by hand after the fact. A CPA firm that specializes in construction bookkeeping documents this directly: Ramp implementations routinely have "no job-level coding from day one, where a foreman swipes and the transaction lands uncoded," and neither Ramp nor Brex offers native job-cost coding or construction ERP sync.

Job-cost bookkeeping apps like Hardhat Ledger and ReceiptDash solve the other half of the problem (receipt scanning, after-the-fact categorization) but never touch the card itself. There is no spend control at the moment of the swipe, so a tech can still buy materials with no job attached, or buy from a vendor outside the approved list, and nobody finds out until the books close.

Timing: field service software adoption has consolidated hard behind ServiceTitan (100,000+ professionals) and Jobber (400,000+ home service pros) over the last few years, so most target businesses already have a job-costing system worth syncing into. Embedded card issuing (Stripe Issuing) is now cheap enough for a 2-3 person team to launch a vertical card program in weeks. Investors are already funding contractor-specific financial infrastructure (Trayd's $10M Series A for payroll and labor cost automation), but card-level job-cost enforcement is still unbuilt.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Target = US HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractor businesses with 5 to 50 field employees running field service management software.

• HVAC contractor businesses in the US: 118,433 (IBISWorld, 2025)
• Plumbing contractor businesses: approximately 129,000 (IBISWorld, cited via Simpro's 2026 plumbing industry statistics)
• Electrical contractor businesses (NAICS 238210): approximately 251,789 (Northeastern Advisors, 2026 electrical contracting industry report)
• Combined universe: approximately 499,000 businesses. ServiceTitan alone serves over 100,000 of these professionals, and Jobber serves over 400,000 home service pros across all trades, evidence that a large share of this universe already runs field service software a card product can sync into.
• Assumption: roughly 25% of the 499,000 businesses have 5 or more field employees and issue purchasing cards to techs (solo and micro operators below 5 employees rarely run a multi-cardholder program). That is approximately 125,000 target businesses. This 25% split is an estimate, not a cited figure, and is the single largest assumption in this model.
• ACV: $1,800/year ($150/month) platform subscription, benchmarked against Housecall Pro ($49 to $350/month) and Jobber ($29 to $599/month) pricing for the same buyer segment. Net interchange revenue share from card spend, typical of vertical card programs like Ramp, Brex, and Extra, is excluded from this estimate to keep it conservative.

TAM = 125,000 businesses x $1,800 = $225M ARR.

SAM: businesses already on ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, or Jobber with 5 to 50 employees, the initial integration targets, estimated at 60,000 businesses x $1,800 = $108M.

SOM (Year 1 to 2, standing start with a ServiceTitan and QuickBooks Online integration and word-of-mouth in trade communities): 500 businesses x $1,800 = $900K ARR.

Monetization strategy

Subscription-plus-interchange, the same structure as Ramp, Brex, and Extra. The subscription covers the authorization rules engine, job-cost sync, and integrations, and is the revenue counted in the TAM above. Net interchange revenue share on card spend through the Stripe Issuing program is the larger long-run line as card volume grows, but is not counted here to keep the estimate conservative. Owners pay because JobGate replaces the 2 to 6 hours a week a bookkeeper or office manager spends reclassifying uncoded card spend, and catches off-policy purchases before they erode job margins instead of after.

Pricing strategy

• Starter, $99/month: up to 5 cardholders, ServiceTitan/QuickBooks Online sync, standard authorization rules (job selection plus vendor category required). Entry point for 5 to 15 employee shops.
• Growth, $249/month: up to 20 cardholders, custom approval rules (dollar caps by cost code, manager approval above a threshold). This is the anchor plan, matching the 15 to 50 employee shops that make up most of the target market.
• Scale, $499/month: unlimited cardholders, multi-branch support, dedicated onboarding. For 50+ employee, multi-location operators.

Lead magnet

A free "Uncoded Spend Calculator." The owner connects their existing Ramp, Brex, Divvy, or Amex account read-only through OAuth in under a minute, and JobGate shows exactly how many transactions last month had no job or cost code attached and estimates the dollar amount an office manager had to hand-reclassify. It proves the pain with the shop's own numbers before asking anyone to move their card program.

Social proof that the problem exists

1. https://www.sdocpa.com/ramp-for-construction-companies/ - a CPA firm specializing in construction bookkeeping documents that Ramp has "no job-level coding from day one, where a foreman swipes and the transaction lands uncoded," and states plainly that neither Ramp nor Brex offers native job-cost coding or ERP sync for multi-site project expense tracking.
2. https://hardhatledger.com/ and https://www.g2.com/sellers/hardhat-ledger - a funded, live product built specifically to scan receipts and assign job costs after the fact for electricians, plumbers, roofers, and HVAC contractors. Its existence is evidence the underlying pain (unassigned spend, manual reclassification) is real and already being paid for, just not solved at the card and swipe level.
3. https://alternativeto.net/software/receiptdash/about - a second, independent point solution built specifically so contractors, HVAC techs, plumbers, and landscapers can capture receipts and bill materials back to clients, another signal the same reconciliation gap keeps getting rebuilt piecemeal by different small vendors.
4. https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/construction-tech-automation-trayd-ai-seriesa/ - Trayd raised a $10M Series A specifically to automate payroll, HR, compliance, and labor cost tracking for contractors, showing investors are actively funding contractor-specific financial infrastructure. Card-level job costing is the adjacent piece none of these products build.

Competitors

• Ramp, Brex, Divvy: general-purpose corporate card and spend management platforms. Widely used by contractors for the card itself, but with no native job or cost-code coding at swipe time and no construction or field-service ERP sync.
• Hardhat Ledger: AI bookkeeping app for contractors. Scans receipts and auto-assigns job costs after the purchase happens, syncs to QuickBooks. No card issuing, no real-time spend control.
• ReceiptDash: receipt capture and materials-billback tool for HVAC, plumbing, and landscaping businesses. Also after-the-fact, no card issuing.
• Trayd: contractor fintech focused on payroll, HR, compliance, and labor cost automation, not purchasing card spend.

What competitors offer now

Ramp, Brex, and Divvy give a modern card, receipt-matching by SMS or email, and QuickBooks class sync, but the job or cost-code field is either absent or gets filled in later by an office manager reclassifying transactions one at a time. Hardhat Ledger and ReceiptDash scan the paper receipt after the purchase happens, use OCR to guess the job, and let someone confirm it, which still means every uncoded or wrong-vendor purchase already happened before anyone can catch it. None of them stop a bad swipe from authorizing in the first place.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Move the enforcement to the moment of the swipe. A tech opens the JobGate app, picks the job and cost code (or it is pre-selected because they clocked into that job in ServiceTitan), and only then does the card unlock for a single authorization at an allowed vendor category and dollar cap. Every transaction lands pre-coded in the job costing system with zero manual reclassification.

Distribution wedge: launch the free Uncoded Spend Calculator inside trade Facebook groups and communities like r/HVAC, r/Plumbing, and r/electricians, where office managers already vent about reconciliation. Partner with the same CPA firms that already advise contractors on this exact Ramp/Brex gap (the sdocpa.com source above is one) so they can refer clients directly instead of building a workaround.