A multi-million-pound investment by Yepic has seen the Leeds-based start-up launch a game-changing photo-based app for UK tradespeople.
Now available in app stores, Yepic gives electricians, plumbers, builders, decorators and joiners a unique new way to record and manage their jobs using photos taken on their smartphones.
Yepic is the brainchild of its CEO and former electrical contractor, Sam Overment, plus a tech and design team he has brought together with investment backing from Labora, the parent company of City Electrical Factors’ (CEF).
Rapidly gaining momentum within the construction trades sector since its full launch in May this year on mobile and desktop, Yepic's user-friendly interface has been designed to empower the country's tradespeople.
“Yepic is so easy to get started - all you need is a phone number and the app downloaded," said Sam. "When you take a photo on your phone, the app captures the exact location and creates a ‘job’ in the app. You can add a caption like a customer’s name and include notes and tasks to help manage the job, while choosing to have every visit you make and every photo you take automatically added using GPS, accurately recording addresses, eliminating time-consuming manual data entry."
Automatically finding all job photos on your phone, Yepic allows users to quickly sort and categorise thousands of images into job albums, tracking hours spent at each job, capturing precise arrival and departure times.
“Every tradesperson has the problem of needing to record their work movements and jobs with many relying on their memory alone, adding stress to their workday.
"Customers, employers, tutors can challenge how long you are at a job, so having a detailed log of every visit, every hour and a visual record is really helpful; especially when you don’t have to do anything to create it other than take a photo."
The Yepic app is free and has so far been downloaded by more than 13,000 tradespeople with a target of 50,000 downloads by the end of the year in what is one of the UK's largest sectors by employment, including 800,000 self-employed tradespeople among the 2.5 million people employed across the country's construction trades industry.
Users are now also being offered the opportunity to try out a recent upgrade called Yepic+. Yepic+ has additional functionality and advanced features that include job sharing, videos, timesheets and job reports for £14.99 a month or £149.99 for an annual subscription (both plus VAT).
As Yepic's founder, Sam brings industry expertise and a deep understanding of tradespeople's needs, having spent years as a time-served electrician in East Yorkshire.
“I know first-hand how much time and energy can go into capturing all your work movements to calculate hours spent on a job for invoices or hours worked for timesheets, let alone completing the work.
“We really care about tradespeople and appreciate the demands of their unique situations, supporting everything they want to achieve, liaising and enabling a flow of discussion and information while creating better solutions for all of them.
"At the heart of this is Yepic’s real USP, which is about putting tradespeople at the centre of everything we do. It enhances tradespeople and has no real barriers to allowing people to use it.
"We are dedicated to continually improving Yepic and exploring opportunities to integrate technology to further enhance tradespeople's lives," added Sam, head of the Yepic team that also includes Gary Worthington, Chief Technology Officer, and Ric Gravina, Chief Product Officer.
