Permits, inspections, and three visits per job. One system holds all of it.
An electrical job is rarely one visit. There is the walkthrough, the rough-in, the wait on the inspector, the trim out, and the call two months later about the switch in the hallway. Meanwhile the service side is filling up with panel diagnostics and dead outlets that pay this week. Running both off a whiteboard eventually costs you an inspection date. North Star is a custom operations system MinnSight builds and runs for electrical contractors, sized to how you actually work.
No call required. Flat monthly, no per-tech fees.
Multi-visit jobs that stay whole
A kitchen remodel rough-in in March and a trim out in May are the same job, but most scheduling tools treat them as two unrelated appointments. North Star keeps the job as one record with phases inside it. You can see which stage each project is in, what is waiting on the general contractor, what is waiting on an inspector, and what is ready to schedule this week. Photos from the rough-in stay with the job, so the electrician doing the trim can look at where the home runs went before opening a wall. Materials ordered against the job stay attached too. When you have eleven projects running at different stages across three crews, the value is not a prettier calendar. It is knowing on Monday morning which four jobs are actually schedulable and which seven are blocked.
The permit file you will need two years from now
Permit numbers, license numbers, inspection results, and load calculations have a habit of living in a truck, an inbox, and a filing cabinet at the same time. North Star holds them against the address and the job. A failed inspection gets logged with the correction and the reinspection date. A passed final gets logged with the date and the inspector. When a homeowner sells the property, or an insurance adjuster asks about the panel you upgraded, or the city asks for something on a commercial tenant finish, it is one lookup instead of an afternoon. MinnSight also builds in whatever your state and municipality require of you specifically, including which of your licensed electricians was on which job, because that record matters more in this trade than in most.
Service calls and bid work on one board
Service work pays fast and fills gaps. Bid work is bigger and slower. Most shops run them as if they were two companies, then discover the crew double booked. North Star puts both on the same schedule with the difference visible. A four-hour panel upgrade, a $260 troubleshooting call, and a two-week tenant buildout look different on the board because they are different. You can hold service capacity open on purpose, then see immediately when a bid job slipping a week frees up a truck. Over a quarter, you can see the split between service revenue and project revenue, which is the number most electrical contractors are guessing at when they decide whether to hire.
Change orders that actually reach the invoice
The homeowner asks for two more can lights while your electrician is already in the ceiling. He says yes, because saying yes is good service. Then it never gets billed. Change orders are the quietest margin leak in electrical work, and they happen on almost every project. In North Star, added scope gets captured on the job in the field, with a price and the customer's approval, before the crew moves on. It flows into the invoice with the original contract amount and the changes listed separately, which is also what keeps the conversation easy when the final bill is $1,150 more than the bid. Nothing about that requires anyone to remember a conversation from eight days ago.
Where the job quietly loses money
A rough-in fails on a basement finish because of box fill. The correction gets made the next week, but nobody reschedules the reinspection. The general contractor finds out at drywall and the whole job slides.
The failed inspection, the correction, and the reinspection all live on the job. It sits on the blocked list until someone books the inspector, and the general contractor sees the same status.
Your electrician adds two recessed lights and a dimmer during a remodel, roughly $420 of work. He mentions it to you in a truck conversation on Thursday. It never lands on the invoice.
He adds the scope on his phone with the price and the homeowner's approval before leaving. It appears on the final invoice as a separate line the customer already agreed to.
Three years after a 200 amp service upgrade, the homeowner is selling and the buyer's inspector wants the permit record. You spend an hour and a half between the city portal and old email.
The address record carries the permit number, the inspection date, the load calculation, and the photos. You send it in under two minutes.
One record per job, permit and panel
North Star brings your whole electrical business into one place. We fit it to how your crews already work, and we keep it maintained.
One flat monthly price, and no fee per electrician. The levels and what each one covers are set out on the pricing page.
See North Star pricingAdd on when the work calls for it
Help your team suggest the right extras without the hard sell. We build guide cards from the details you already have for each customer and job.
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Browse all toolsOur tools cover the common needs. If your audit turns up something specific, or you already have an idea, we build that too.
Start with the free auditComparing what else is out there?
Honest, side-by-side breakdowns of MinnSight against the tools businesses usually weigh.
What are you leaving on the table?
Assumes 3 jobs a week slip through from missed follow-ups, double-bookings, and quotes that never went out. North Star keeps every job in one place. Adjust the sliders to match your business.
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Click through a finished build
This is one build shown end to end, with sample work already in it. Pick a role, owner, crew, or customer, and see what each one is able to do.
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from real numbers?
Give us a look at your current job board, your permit records, and the last month of invoices. We will come back with a written picture of what a custom North Star would run for your shop. Start with the free audit. It costs nothing and there is no meeting to schedule. A guided demo is available if you want one.
Built for service businesses in Minnesota. No call required.