Everything behind a better-run trades business.
Lateral runs the operation around the work: trucks, tools, truck stock, crew readiness and the procedures your people sign off on. It sits alongside the software you already dispatch and invoice from.
Built inside a fifth-generation trades business.
One main line, a lateral to every part of the business. Sample data.
Your job software runs the jobs. Who runs everything else?
Pre-trips happen on paper, if they happen. The tool list lives in a spreadsheet nobody trusts. Procedures sit in a binder, a group chat or somebody's head, and you find out a truck was short on fittings when the tech calls from a customer's basement.
Lateral puts the operation around the work in one place, built for the people who actually use it: techs on a phone in the yard at 6:45, and managers who need answers before the first call goes out.
Six parts of the business, one system.
Turn on the modules you need. Leave the rest off until you're ready.
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Fleet & maintenance
Every truck, trailer and piece of equipment in one place. Techs do pre-trip inspections on their phone with photos and a signature, and any defect becomes a repair someone has to close. Service comes due by date, kilometres or engine hours, documents warn you before they expire, and fuel, fluid checks and damage reports land on the right unit.
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Tools, inventory & truck stock
Know which tools are on which truck and who signed for them. Track serialized equipment with barcodes, values, condition and photos, group items into kits, and move them between people, trucks and locations with a full custody trail. Truck stock keeps every vehicle at its minimums with quick restock counts, and techs can ask where a part lives on the truck.
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Crew, dispatch & scheduling
Techs start the day with a one-tap check-in and their kilometres. Dispatch sees who's ready, in which truck, and sends each person a come-in or start-from-home instruction. Every morning is saved for later, multi-day installs sit on a shared calendar, notices reach the whole crew, and customers can get an on-the-way email with their tech's photo and bio.
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People & accountability
Employee records, divisions, roles and the tools and trucks each person holds, in one profile. Run performance reviews and coaching plans with weekly check-ins, collect lead-hand acknowledgements, and keep your company and vendor directories where the whole team can find them.
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Policies, procedures & training
Write SOPs once, or import them from PDF, Word or a web page. Send them through review, publish versions, and assign them to a person, a division or the whole company with a due date. Staff sign off on the exact version they read, training paths bring new hires up to speed, and anyone can ask a question and get an answer from your approved procedures. Call the module whatever your shop calls it.
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Operations Matrix & ServiceTitan
Connect your ServiceTitan account read-only and get a daily command board for the numbers that run the business. Techs see a clean brief of today's job on their phone, dispatch gets a live board of the day, and the shop TV shows progress without exposing customer details. Lateral reads your data; it never changes anything in ServiceTitan.
Add-ons for specialty trades
For sewer, drain and excavation contractors: ground condition assessments that check local geology before you quote a dig and record what the crew actually found, and lining material tracking from box inventory to footage installed on each job.
Built into every module.
A record for everything
Inspections, checklists, fuel logs, expenses and damage reports each produce a clean PDF, stored against the right truck, person or job.
The right people hear about it
Choose who gets emailed for each kind of event, send daily and weekly summaries on a schedule, and test every notification before it goes live.
Problems surface on their own
Missing tools, overdue service, damaged equipment and low stock show up as alerts until someone deals with them.
On the phone in their pocket
Install Lateral to a phone or tablet home screen straight from the browser. No app store, no new hardware, and updates arrive on their own.
AI that works from your own data.
It's built into the places where it saves real time, and it answers from information your company already has, not the open internet.
Ask your procedures
A tech asks a question in plain language and gets an answer from the SOPs and policies assigned to them, with the exact steps it came from.
Draft an SOP in minutes
Describe the job or paste rough notes, and Lateral drafts a structured procedure with steps. Rewrite any step with one click. Every draft waits for a person to review it.
Where is it on the truck?
Say or type the part you need and Lateral tells you which bin it lives in on that vehicle.
Shop notes from failed inspections
When a pre-trip fails, the failed checks and the tech's remarks become a clear note for the shop, ready to send.
Ask the Matrix why
Ask about your numbers in plain English. When something moves, an investigation traces the jobs and patterns behind it.
A morning brief for managers
A few sentences comparing today with yesterday, written from your ServiceTitan numbers and delivered before the day gets going.
- Grounded, with sources. Answers come from your published content and your own numbers, and procedure answers point to the exact steps they used.
- People stay in charge. AI-written procedures are saved as drafts, and nothing is published to your crew until someone approves it.
- Customer details stay out. Contact details are stripped from ServiceTitan data before AI sees it, and AI requests run on our servers, never from the browser.
Know how the week is going before the week is over.
The Operations Matrix turns your ServiceTitan data into a board your managers can read in a minute.
- Close rate and sold estimates by division and technician, against the targets you set.
- Callbacks and repeat properties, so the same address doesn't cost you three times.
- Invoiced revenue against target, with on-hold and unassigned work called out.
- Ask why when a number moves, and get an investigation built from your own job data.
Up and running without a consultant.
Set up your company
Add your divisions, trucks and equipment, and switch on the modules you want.
Bring your crew on
Techs use it on the phones and tablets they already carry. No app store, no new hardware.
Connect ServiceTitan
Optional. Link your account read-only to switch on the Operations Matrix.
Where Lateral comes from
Lateral wasn't designed in a boardroom. It was built on a shop floor, one real morning at a time.
It started as an internal tool inside a fifth-generation trades business, written by the person running its crews and installs. Every module had to survive actual working days: trucks leaving the yard, techs short on time, managers who need answers early. Now we're opening it up to a small group of trades companies.
Built to fit how trades companies actually work.
Works alongside your job software
Keep dispatching and invoicing where you do today. Lateral handles the yard, the trucks, the stock and the standards.
Made for the field first
Big tap targets, short forms and daily routines that take a minute, because that's all a tech has at 6:45 am.
Only the modules you need
Start with fleet or procedures and add more later. Nothing you don't use gets in the way.
Your data stays yours
Each company's data is kept separate and enforced in the database, not just hidden in the app. You decide who on your team sees what.
Questions
Does Lateral replace ServiceTitan or my job management software?
No. Lateral handles the operation around the jobs: fleet, tools, stock, crew readiness and procedures. If you use ServiceTitan, Lateral can read from it to power the Operations Matrix, but it never writes back.
Do I need ServiceTitan to use Lateral?
No. Everything except the Operations Matrix works on its own.
Which trades is it for?
Service and install trades that run trucks, tools and crews: plumbing, drains and sewer, HVAC, electrical and similar.
When can we start?
We're onboarding a small number of pilot companies first. Join the early access list and we'll be in touch about timing.
Which AI does Lateral use?
AI features run through OpenAI's business API from our servers. Only the information needed for the request you made is sent, and customer contact details are removed from ServiceTitan data first.
What does it cost?
Pricing will be per company, based on the modules you use. We'll share it with early access companies before launch.
Join early access.
We're working with a small group of trades companies before launch. Tell us a bit about your shop and we'll reach out when a spot opens.