Book Setup Doctor
Run this first. One sitting that learns how your company actually works - your vendors, your rules, your voice, whether you take deposits, how you bill landlords - then audits your book for the gaps that make every other report thinner, and hands back a fix-list saying which reports each fix unlocks.
The problem
Every report you run is limited by two things nobody set up: what the software knows about how your company works, and what your book actually records. Neither announces itself. You just get a thinner answer than you expected and no idea why.
The gaps are always the same. A field that exists and nobody fills. Costs that were never entered, so margin cannot be computed at all. Canceled jobs with no note, so nobody can say later what happened.
What it gives you
- One interview, once - your trades, your vendors, your margin rules, your payroll rules, the voice your messages should have. Every other skill reads those answers instead of asking again.
- The four questions that quietly change other reports: do you take deposits or offer financing, is there a season that reopens work people said no to, do you press convert when you win a job or just book it, and how do you bill landlords.
- A book audit with denominators: how much of your work carries a job type, how many materials carry a cost, how many carry a part number, how far your tags have sprawled, and how often anyone writes a note on a canceled job.
- A ranked fix-list that names which reports get better with each fix, what it costs to fix (a setting, a habit, an afternoon), and the single habit worth adopting this week.
- A plain statement of which reports are ready to run today and which will be thin until something above is fixed.
What you need
| Tier | API Key Required |
|---|---|
| Reads | The MCP |
| Needs | The free MCP plus a Housecall Pro MAX-plan API key you generate. A read-only key is enough. |
| Re-run | At setup, when the business changes, and quarterly. |
Your first ask
Once it is installed, this is the literal thing you type:
What it cannot do
- It changes nothing in Housecall Pro. Every fix is a human action in the dashboard or a habit, deliberately.
- The interview answers live in a private local file on your own machine, never sent to Housecall Pro or to us. A shop running Claude on two computers answers once per computer.
- It cannot see Housecall Pro's Do Not Service checkbox; no integration can.
- Coverage numbers are facts, not grades. A book that has run for years with none of this filled in is normal.
- Requires the MCP (v1.15 or newer) and a MAX-plan API key. A read-only key is enough.
Updates
Every purchase includes all future updates to this skill. Your book decays continuously, so the same job is worth doing again, and each version gets better at it.
The skill checks this site for a newer version when it runs. That request carries the product name and the installed version, and nothing else. There are no account details, no data from your book, no telemetry of any kind. If the check fails for any reason it says nothing and carries on.
Buying it
Sold in the Set Up & Clean pack: $49 one time at half price while the shelf is new for all 4 skills in it. The pack is the unit because a home service company that needs this one usually needs the rest of it the same week. What is in the pack. Lifetime is $149 and covers every pack on the shelf plus every skill added to any of them afterwards.
Questions about whether this fits a particular book go to hello@hcpapi.com , including the question of whether it is worth buying at all.
Independent project. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Housecall Pro.