The tradie's receptionist — on the phone while you're on the tools

Here's how a tradie loses a job without doing a single thing wrong. You're elbow-deep in a wall cavity, or on a roof, or halfway through a pour that can't stop. The phone goes. It rings out. The caller — someone with a busted hot water system and money in hand — hits voicemail, hangs up, and rings the next name on the list.

That's not bad luck; it's the standard shape of the trade. A caller who hits voicemail often just rings the next name, and that's usually your competitor. You've done it yourself. And the calls keep coming after you knock off, because people notice the leaking tap at dinner time and the dead power point on a Sunday.

The old fixes are all bad. Answer everything yourself and you're quoting drainage jobs from the top of a ladder. Rope in family or the office and you've burned someone's day. Pay a traditional phone answering service and the big Australian providers charge $2.60–$4.00 a call (their published rates, August 2026) for a message — "someone called about plumbing" — that you still have to ring back after they've booked someone else, with diary booking sold separately as a metered product around $2.99 a minute.

Giday is the fourth option: a receptionist who answers in a friendly Aussie voice, knows your prices and your calendar and, from Starter, books the job while you stay on the tools. Ask whether it is a person and it tells you straight away it's a virtual receptionist, not a person — and from Starter it texts you what happened before you're down the ladder (on Essentials, it's emailed).

No script read off a card, no hold music. Here's a realistic booking call, the way Giday runs them:

Giday: Giday, you've reached Harbour Plumbing — Dave speaking, on a recorded line. How can I help you?

Caller: Yeah hi — my hot water system's carked it. Cold showers since last night.

Giday: No good at all — let's get someone out to you. Whereabouts are you?

Caller: Wavell Heights.

Giday: Righto, that's in the service area. For a hot water call-out I've got tomorrow at 7:30 or 10 — do either of those work?

Caller: 7:30. The earlier the better.

Giday: Done — you're booked for 7:30 tomorrow morning. I'll text you a confirmation now with the details. Anything else while I've got you?

That's the whole product in one exchange: warm with the caller, and the job lands in your calendar with an SMS confirmation to the customer. On the phone line where Giday's engine runs today — a Brisbane locksmith, live since late July 2026 — jobs are booked straight into the calendar mid-call: in the measured window of 30 July to 22 August 2026, typically 2.5 minutes from hello to booked, including same-day jobs.

Tradie calls come in four kinds. Giday works out which one it's got early, then runs the right play:

Most answering services can't touch pricing — the operator doesn't know a TPR valve from a tap washer. Giday quotes because you teach it once: you hand over your price list at setup (or we lift it from your website), and from then on it prices jobs the way you would.

The rails matter as much as the feature. Giday only quotes from the list you've approved — nothing off-list, no creative maths. Odd job, weird request, anything not on the list? It takes a message instead, and the quote stays yours to make. You can update your prices whenever you like, and quoting stays switched off until you've signed off on the list.

This isn't theoretical. In the measured window on that Brisbane locksmith's line (30 July–22 August 2026), priced quotes went out over the phone from the approved price list while the locksmith stayed on the tools. On Busy and up, Giday also follows up quoted jobs with an SMS carrying a booking link, so the "yeah, I'll think about it" caller has a one-tap way back to you.

Phone quoting from your price list is included on Busy ($149/mo) and Flat Out ($299/mo) — see pricing for the full tier line-up.

Trade work doesn't respect trading hours. In that same measured window, 1 in 5 calls landed outside business hours, and 1 in 10 on a weekend (30 July–22 August 2026). That's a fifth of your callers ringing when nobody sane is near the phone.

Giday answers those calls at the same price as every other call — no after-hours surcharge, ever. Then, from Starter, it does whichever you've told it to do: put a genuine emergency through to your on-call number, or take the details and offer your next available business-hours time and text the customer a confirmation. The 2am "my tap's dripping" caller gets a warm voice and your next morning time offered on the spot; you get an unbroken night's sleep and a job on the board.

And we'll be straight about what that means: after-hours callers get answered, sorted, and offered real business-hours times — not promised a 3am call-out, unless putting the call through to your on-call number is exactly what you've asked for. More on how the overnight handling works on the after-hours answering page.

Giday isn't a demo reel. The engine behind it has been live on a Brisbane locksmith's line since late July 2026 — a trade that lives and dies on urgent call-outs. Here's the measured window, 30 July to 22 August 2026:

Jobs booked mid-call, priced quotes given over the phone from the price book, messages relayed by text — and every booking in that measured window synced to the owner's job system and was confirmed to the customer by SMS. We built Giday for our own businesses first — the locksmith's phone was the proving ground, and your virtual receptionist runs on exactly the same engine.

Every plan answers 24/7 and takes messages, and from Starter up it books jobs into your calendar — booking isn't an add-on. The difference is minutes and machinery:

All prices AUD, GST included, month to month, no setup fee, no lock-in. Run over your minutes and extra minutes are 50c on every plan, with texts past your allowance 15c each. The phone keeps answering, and if a bigger plan would have cost less for the month, we email you the figures — moving is your choice. Full details on the pricing page.

Give it a go — 60 minutes of call time on us, for a week. That's roughly 50 answered calls' worth of your receptionist doing the real thing: answering, booking, texting confirmations — and quoting, on Busy and up. Card up front, nothing charged unless you keep it, and the trial clock doesn't start until your receptionist answers its first call — not before.

Setup is quick: sign up and your receptionist is live on its own number within minutes; add your prices and calendar in the dashboard, divert with one dial code (just as easy to undo), and you're away. If it doesn't earn its keep, divert back and walk away. Month to month, no lock-in.

Your 24/7 receptionist, from $19 a month — first week free.