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Thorbis

In the Trenches · Progress

Building in the open

Where Thorbis actually stands: the loop we are finishing first, what Minimum Great Product means, what comes next and later, and why the front door is a waitlist.

The Thorbis teamAugust 26, 20264 min read

This blog will mostly be field guides, so this progress post is the exception: a plain statement of where the product stands, written the way we would want a vendor to write it to us. Byron Wade, our founder, is a licensed contractor building the tool he could not buy, and the standard for these posts is what he would tolerate hearing from a rep. The short version: we are finishing one loop before we finish anything else, the price and the roadmap are public, and the front door is a waitlist on purpose.

The loop comes first

Everything in field service is one loop: a customer with a problem, an estimate they approve, a job on the board, the work done and documented, an invoice, a payment, a receipt on the books. Seven steps. A shop that can run that loop without re-typing anything can run its Tuesday.

That loop is what we ship first, with dispatch on one screen and the truck phone full screen: iOS and Android with the web, not web first. Collecting on the job is part of the loop, not an add-on: card, Tap to Pay, check, cash, bank. Around the loop sit the things a Tuesday actually needs: one search that jumps from a street name to the job, a price book you build yourself and estimate from, and owner reports that say what closed, what is open, and what a tech ran, with a spreadsheet out when you want one.

What Minimum Great Product means

We call the current stage Minimum Great Product, and the definition is a constraint on us, not a slogan. The roadmap's exact words are that we do not leave this stage until it is production: the loop a real shop runs on a real Tuesday. Writing that down in public is the point, because it means you can hold us to it.

The pieces have been landing in the changelog for over a year: customer records in March 2025, estimates and invoicing in April, the dispatch board in June, progress payments in August, the job command center in September. The changelog lists what shipped. The roadmap owns what has not.

The changelog lists what shipped and the roadmap owns what has not, and neither is allowed to borrow from the other.

What is next, honestly labeled

Next, once the loop is production, is the rest of the shop's operations, turned on as add-ons to the same records, not a migration to a new system:

  • Phone: the business number (routing, recording, texting) at $15 per active number, with the truck app included.
  • Inventory: warehouse and truck stock, transfers, purchase orders, and what left on the job.
  • Growth and sites: reviews, referrals, the shop's website, and booking that writes a job instead of an email.
  • Payroll: fixed worker bands, not a per-head meter.
  • Projects: the long commercial job: a real project wrapped around the progress billing that is already in Core.

Later, deliberately later, is the intelligence and money layer: Brain, meaning agents with approvals; Vision, meaning scan the room, remember the property, read the check; Money, meaning banking and the actual books, after the loop is proven and not instead of it; then fleet, APIs, and multi-company. Until Money is a real product, QuickBooks keeps the books and Thorbis keeps the jobs. We will not sell a replacement for your ledger before we have earned the loop.

Why the price and the plan are public

One price is posted: $99 per company per month, unlimited people, with $15 of metered usage included. The roadmap and changelog went public in June 2026. The reasoning for both is the same: a claim you can check is worth more than a claim you have to trust, and a vendor who hides either the price or the plan is asking you to buy the demo instead of the product.

Why the front door is a waitlist

There is no self-serve signup today. That is not scarcity theater; it is a capacity decision. Every shop that comes on early gets a real migration and real attention, and the fastest way to break that promise is to onboard faster than we can support. We would rather onboard slowly than badly, and the waitlist is what that choice looks like from the outside. That is the whole state of the union, and when it changes, the changelog will say so before this blog does.

From the same team

The product behind the posts.

Waitlist open. One email when your invite is ready, nothing else.