Last updated 1 September 2026
Pocket Desk is a text-message assistant for solo tradespeople such as plumbers, electricians, masons, and landscapers. You text it from your own phone. It texts you back. There is no app to install and nothing to log into.
A one-person trade business has no office and no receptionist. The job notes that matter, the receipt for the parts you just bought, the question of what is booked tomorrow, all of it lives in your head or on a pile of paper in the truck. By the time you are back at a desk, half of it is gone.
Pocket Desk is that desk, reachable by text from the job site. You already have your phone in your hand. You send it a note, a photo, or a question, and it keeps the record for you.
You send a text to your Pocket Desk number to:
Pocket Desk replies with what you asked for. That is the whole product.
An example of how a conversation works. Names and jobs are made up.
You: at the Reilly job, replaced the shutoff valve under the kitchen sink, old one was seized. Need to come back for the faucet.
Pocket Desk: Logged to the Reilly job: replaced seized kitchen shutoff valve, faucet still outstanding. Want me to hold a slot this week for the return visit?
You: [photo of a hardware-store receipt]
Pocket Desk: Saved: Corner Hardware, $42.18, today, filed to the Reilly job.
Walkthrough demos of how Pocket Desk handles a job from first text to invoice, one per trade. Every name and job in them is made up; they are illustrations, not real customers.
STOP to any message to stop receiving them immediately. Reply
HELP for help. Message and data rates may apply.
Pocket Desk is built by Ed McCormick and Daniel Schottenhamel, based in Reading, Massachusetts. It is an early-stage project.
The pilot is pre-launch. Right now the only participants are the two of us, testing the service on our own phones and real job notes. No customer has been onboarded. Contact us any time at ed@pocketdesk.net.
Pocket Desk is a pre-launch pilot and not open to the public. Its only participants right now are Ed and Daniel, who build it. Anyone added later is invited one at a time by one of them, in person or by phone, sets the service up for their own phone number, and gives verbal consent first. We never buy, rent, or accept lists of phone numbers, and we never add a number on someone else's behalf.
Read exactly how consent works, including the word-for-word script.
The pilot is free for participants. Standard message and data rates from your own mobile carrier may apply to the texts you send and receive.
How recipients opt in · Terms and conditions · Privacy policy