ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a general-purpose AI assistant from OpenAI that can write, summarise, brainstorm, and answer questions in natural conversational English. For trade businesses, the practical applications are immediate and significant: drafting professional quote cover letters, writing job ad copy for SEEK or Indeed, composing follow-up emails to customers, generating social media posts, and answering "how would I word this?" questions that used to take 30 minutes of staring at a blank screen.

Why every tradie should be using this: The free tier is genuinely useful. You don't need to be technical. You type what you need in plain English, "Write a polite email to a customer explaining their quote is valid for 30 days", and you get a solid first draft in seconds. The time savings on admin tasks alone justify the zero-dollar price tag.

ChatGPT Plus (paid): The Plus plan gives you access to GPT-4o and later models, which are meaningfully better at nuanced writing, longer documents, and complex reasoning. If you're using it daily, the upgrade is worth it.

What it won't do: ChatGPT doesn't connect to your job management software, won't send emails for you, and can't access real-time pricing data. It's a writing and thinking assistant, not an automation tool. You still need to copy-paste the output into wherever it needs to go.

The biggest mistake tradies make is not using it at all because they think AI is complicated. It's not. Open it, type what you need, and iterate from there.