How this actually works

What Middleman is, in one page

Middleman is not a lead service. You never buy a lead, never bid against three other guys for the right to call someone, and never pay for a phone number that goes to voicemail.

Here is the whole shape of it. A homeowner in your service area describes a problem in the app and pays a flat diagnostic fee up front — before anyone is dispatched. That job appears in your feed. You take it, you drive out, you diagnose the problem, and you get paid for that visit whether or not you win the repair. Then you write your own quote — your labor rate, your parts, your margin. If the customer accepts, the full amount is collected and held before you turn a screw. You do the work, you document it, they approve it, and the money lands in your account.

Middleman’s cut is 7% of what you earn on a repair. That’s it. No monthly fee, no lead fee, no membership, no ad spend.

One thing that surprises people: you are not our employee, and you are not our subcontractor. When a customer accepts your quote, the contract for that work is between you and them — your business name, your license number, your warranty. We collect the money on your behalf and enforce the rules of the marketplace. We do not supervise your work, set your hours, require exclusivity, or tell you how to fix anything.

What actually changes about your day

You already know how to run a job. This is only the difference between how you do it now and how it works here — the honest version, including where it’s more work.

The three things that are genuinely harder

No point pretending otherwise. If any of these are dealbreakers, better to know now than after your first payout.

1. Documentation discipline. Written diagnosis, photos, completion summary. The app enforces it — you cannot skip a step because you’re running late. This is the single biggest behavior change for most pros.
2. Everything through the app. Messages, quotes, change orders, payment. No side channel, no cash. Not a suggestion.
3. Financial exposure that outlives the job. A warranty claim can reach back 30 days and pull money out of a future payout. Section 06 lists every way that can happen — there are exactly four, and they’re all avoidable.

And three that are genuinely easier

1. No customer acquisition. No lead spend, no bidding, no racing to call first, no ad budget.
2. No collections. The money exists before you drive out. You are never the one asking a homeowner for a check.
3. Paid drive-outs. The visit that used to be a free estimate now pays $44–$87. Even the jobs you don’t win cover their own fuel.

Getting approved

Nothing appears in your feed until this is finished. Most of it is paperwork you already have in a folder somewhere. Budget an hour, plus background-check turnaround.

1. 01

   Create your account and accept the Contractor Terms

   Plain-language, in-app, versioned. When the terms change materially you re-accept — and until you do, the app is walled. Fee changes are announced 14 days ahead and never apply to quotes you’ve already sent.

2. 02

   Sign the Payment & Clawback Consent

   A separate, short document — deliberately separate, because it’s the one that lets money come back out of your payouts. It lists exactly four situations and nothing else. Read it rather than tapping through; section 06 walks it.

3. 03

   Fill out the application

   Years in the trade, the work you do best, your service city, your LLC or business name, and your license number. Trades are chips — pick the lanes you want open.

   Service area: we’re currently live in the Clermont, FL ZIP allowlist only. Jobs outside it don’t exist yet, for anybody.

4. 04

   Upload credentials

   Trade license, business registration, insurance, workers’ comp or exemption, certifications. Each license is tagged to the trade it unlocks and carries an expiry date.

   Verified against state records and re-checked at expiration. A lapsed credential closes that trade lane automatically — no warning email, the lane just goes quiet. Keep the dates current.

5. 05

   Background check

   Run through a third-party consumer reporting agency, with your authorization. Every individual who goes to a Middleman job clears their own — including techs on a team account.

6. 06

   Connect your payout account and certify your W-9

   Stripe Connect, in your business’s name. This is a hard gate, not a reminder: without a certified W-9 on file and payouts enabled, money does not move — even money you’ve already earned. Do it before your first job, not after.

7. 07

   Approval — the feed opens

   If something gets rejected you’ll see why, and you can fix and resubmit in place. After two rejections on the same document you’ll need to attach a new file or explain what changed.

What each lane actually requires

How work reaches you

There are two lanes and they behave differently. This is the part most pros get wrong for the first week, so it’s worth five minutes.

Lane A — ASAP jobs: first qualified pro takes it

A customer needs someone today. The job hits the feed of every approved, credentialed pro in the category and area. You tap accept, you pick an ETA, it’s yours. Straightforward.

Some ASAP jobs carry a rush bonus — extra dollars the customer attached to get someone out fast. Accepting a boosted job commits you to heading out within 90 minutes; the ETA picker won’t offer you anything longer. You keep 93% of the bonus you earn, and how much you earn depends on a clock that starts when the job was posted — not when you accepted it. Section 05 has the full rule, and it’s worth reading before you take your first boosted job.

Lane B — Scheduled jobs: the hat

For a booking on a future date, you don’t accept — you raise your hand. Everyone qualified who wants that slot raises one, and then the job decides. Two ways it can go:

Under 48 hours, the hat collapses. The close time can never land later than 48 hours before the visit, so on a short-notice booking that deadline is already behind us — the button literally changes from “Raise my hand” to “Accept this visit” and the first qualified pro is booked on the spot. Same checks, no waiting.

Why the hat exists at all

Fair question, since first-come-first-served is simpler. Three things the hat does that a race can’t:

• Checks that your license is valid on the service date — not just today. A license expiring Thursday shouldn’t be able to claim a job for Friday.
• Sweeps for a 4-hour double-booking conflict against everything else on your calendar, so you don’t strand a customer.
• Lets a shop owner raise a hand pointed at a specific tech on their crew.

How the hat decides between hands

Raising a hand isn’t a lottery and it isn’t a footrace. Hands are ranked, and the same ranking drives both the customer’s shortlist and an automatic pick. In order of weight:

1. Customers asking for you again. Accepted rebook requests on completed jobs carry the most weight of anything here. It’s the hardest signal to fake and the best predictor of a good visit.
2. Your rating.
3. Completed jobs in that specific category. Twenty released HVAC jobs help you on an HVAC booking. They don’t help you on a plumbing one.
4. Responding within four hours — as a flat bonus, not a race. Raising a hand at minute two and raising it at hour three score identically. Camping the feed buys you nothing.

Two adjustments worth knowing: a hand raised in the first fifteen seconds after a post takes a penalty, because that’s a bot rather than a person reading the job; and pros with fewer than five completed jobs get a small rising-contractor boost, so a new account isn’t buried behind everyone with a two-year history. Ties go to the earlier hand.

What you owe once you’re picked

• Assigned more than 48 hours out? You reconfirm at the 48-hour mark. Miss it and you get replaced at T-24 — the job goes back out. One tap; the app reminds you.
• Assigned inside 48 hours? Nothing. You’re auto-confirmed. One yes, done — we don’t ask you to say yes twice for the same booking.

What you can see before you commit

The feed card shows the trade, the problem, the customer’s photos, the general area, the distance from where you are, the visit fee, and the date. It does not show the exact address, the customer’s full name, or their phone number — those unlock when you accept. That’s deliberate: a stranger’s home shouldn’t be browsable by anyone with an approved account.

One job, start to finish

A plumbing call, from the card in your feed to the money in your account. Every state the job passes through, what you do, and what the system is doing behind you.

1. 01

   The card appears Finding

   “Water heater not producing hot water.” Photos from the customer. General area, 4.5 miles out, $50 visit, today. You have everything you need to decide except the street number.

2. 02

   You accept Accepted

   The address, the customer’s name and their access notes unlock. At this moment a Diagnostic Visit Agreement forms directly between you and that customer, for that visit, at your trade’s flat price. The customer is shown your business name and your license number — not a Middleman-branded technician.

   You may decline any job. Declining costs you nothing. Accepting and then backing out is the thing that costs you standing — see section 09.

3. 03

   You set an ETA Accepted

   A countdown runs on both screens, so the customer isn’t calling to ask where you are. On a rush job, only sub-90-minute options are offered.

4. 04

   On the road En route

   Location pings keep the customer’s arrival estimate honest. If they cancel while you’re driving, they’re charged a $25 trip fee and $22 of it is yours.

5. 05

   You arrive Arrived

   Tapping “I’ve arrived” is geofenced — the app checks a recent location ping against the service address, within about three quarters of a mile. From this point the trip is protected: if the customer cancels now, you’re paid the full 88% plus the rush bonus in full.

   Nobody home? Knock, ring, try the chat. Wait ten minutes marked as arrived — the server enforces the clock, so don’t try to report early — then tap “Customer didn’t answer.” That closes the visit and the fee is yours.

   Keep location on — this one costs real money

   If the ping puts you somewhere other than the job, an after-arrival cancellation drops to the en-route rate — $22 instead of your full 88% — you cannot report a no-show at all, and any rush bonus goes to zero. Turning location off doesn’t protect you here; it just leaves your arrival unverified when you need it proven.

6. 06

   You diagnose Diagnosing

   Opening the quote composer flips the job to diagnosing on both sides. Write what you found. Take photos of it. This written diagnosis is the single most valuable thing you produce all day — it’s what protects your visit fee if the customer later disputes, and it’s what a second-opinion pro sees if they decline your quote.

7. 07

   You build the quote Quote sent

   Your labor number, your parts number, your margin. Three things the app requires before it will send:

   Labor and/or parts — a real dollar amount.
   Time on site — how long the work will take.
   Named parts — if you put parts dollars in, say what parts. “Parts: $180” tells a customer nothing and gets declined.

8. 08

   The customer decides

   Accept, decline, or ask you to revise. A revision request comes with a structured reason — price, scope, parts, or timing — and you get 72 hours to either revise the number or stand by it. Standing by it is a real option and the customer is told the price is unchanged.

   If they decline outright, they can re-open the job once as a badged second-opinion job. Your visit fee is still yours. The replacing pro sees your written diagnosis and the decline reason — never your prices — and takes that visit at a $0 rate.

9. 09

   Money is collected and held In progress

   On acceptance, the full amount is captured and held by the payment processor. It exists before you start. You are not going to finish this job and discover they can’t pay.

10. 10

    You do the work

    Need a part? The job moves to awaiting parts with a lead time the customer can see, so a three-day wait doesn’t read as you ghosting them.

    Found something bigger once you were in the wall? That’s a change order — priced, sent, accepted, and collected the same way as the original quote. Not a conversation in the driveway and a bigger number on the invoice.

11. 11

    You mark it complete Completed

    Two things, and the app will not proceed without them: a written summary of what you did — and if it differed from your diagnosis, what changed and why — plus after-photos of the finished work.

    Write-once. Make it good the first time. The customer reads exactly this before releasing your money, and if there’s ever a dispute, this is your case.

12. 12

    They approve, and the clock starts Released

    The customer reviews your summary and photos and approves. Five business days later — their review window — your payout goes out on the next payout run, into your connected account.

About the price band

While you’re typing a quote, the app works out what kind of task it is and shows a slider: your number’s exact position against a typical range for that work. The range is built from Middleman’s own quote history first, then real invoice data, then published cost guides, and only as a last resort a clearly-labelled AI estimate — drawn dashed, so you know it’s the weak tier.

The customer sees the same slider you do. That’s the point — it replaces “does this sound like a lot?” with a picture. It is not a cap. You can quote anything. The only time the app pushes back is when your number lands above roughly 1.25× the top of a band that has real data behind it, and then it’s one sheet asking why, with an optional note that goes to the customer. Old house, bad access, code upgrade — say so and move on.

The money, exactly

Every dollar that can reach you, and every dollar taken out before it does. No asterisks below this line.

Diagnostic visits

The customer pays one flat, all-in price for your trade. There is no separate booking fee and nothing else is deducted from you.

Your remittance is 88% of the flat fee. The other 12% is Middleman’s 7% referral fee plus a 5% service charge to the customer, both built into the displayed price.

Quoted repairs

You set the price. The customer pays your labor and parts plus a 5% service fee. You receive your labor and parts minus the 7% referral fee.

Released 5 business days after the customer approves the completed work. The fee rates in effect when you send a quote are the rates that apply to that job, permanently — a rate change later can’t reach backwards into work you already priced.

Routine Care offers

Routine Care is recurring maintenance priced by you. A customer posts a request — the home, photos, and what they need done on a schedule — and pros in that trade see it in the Job Feed. You send a sealed offer: your price per visit, your earliest start, a short summary of your experience, up to six photos of your work, and any questions. The price you offer is the customer’s all-in price per visit, and your payout is 88% of it — the same 12% structure as the diagnostic, with nothing else deducted. If the customer chooses you, each visit is booked with you automatically, and you can end the plan from Routine plans (never mid-visit). Middleman does not set Routine Care prices.

Customer-priced jobs

A newer lane, rolling out task by task: the customer picks a listed simple job (think sprinkler shutoff, faucet swap, TV mount), attaches photos, and names an all-in price. It shows in your feed marked customer-priced with the photos and the exact number — you earn 88% of it, captured the moment you accept. The price is fixed in both directions: it can’t be bid down, and you can’t change-order it up. Accepting is agreeing to do the pictured work at that price. If the job at the door is materially different from the photos, decline right there (“Scope doesn’t match”): you’re released without penalty, Middleman reviews your note against the customer’s photos, and a confirmed mismatch pays you trip compensation equal to your trade’s visit floor from the held payment. Walk from a job the photos honestly showed, though, and it pays $0 and counts against your standing — the lane only works if an accepted price is a kept promise. A geofence-unverified arrival pays $0 on every branch, as everywhere else.

If the customer cancels

You are compensated according to how far you got. This is one of the real differences from working your own leads, where a cancellation is simply a dead morning.

Rush bonuses

On an ASAP job the customer can attach extra money — up to $250 — to get someone out fast. It is not a tip for good service. It is paid for speed, it is authorized on their card the moment they post, and it is the single biggest swing in what an ASAP job is worth to you.

What it buys them: a boosted job’s accept screen only offers ETA options of 90 minutes or less. Taking one is a commitment to being on the road quickly, and the customer is shown that commitment.

What you earn: 93% of the bonus, same rate as labor — multiplied by how fast the visit actually happened.

Whatever you don’t earn is refunded to the customer automatically. Three things about that clock:

1. It starts when the job was posted, not when you accepted it. This is the one that catches people. A boosted job that sat in the feed for two hours leaves you a one-hour full-bonus window. Look at the age of the job before you commit — a fresh $100 boost and a three-hour-old $100 boost are not the same job.
2. It restarts if the job comes back out. If a previous pro withdrew and the job re-entered the feed, your clock starts from that moment. You never inherit somebody else’s delay.
3. The 90-minute ETA and the 3-hour bonus window are different things. The 90 minutes is the promise you make to the customer, enforced when you accept. The 3 hours is the money clock. Slipping past your promised ETA does not by itself cost you the bonus — but it’s a review and a scorecard, so don’t treat the 3 hours as the real deadline.

Two more things worth knowing. A customer who isn’t getting takers can raise the bonus while the job is still searching, and that re-pushes the job to you with the new number attached — so a job you passed on at $0 may be worth a second look at $100. And a job reopened for a second opinion has its bonus stripped: the original bonus was already captured and belongs to the pro who made that first visit, so you’ll never see a boosted second-opinion job advertising money you can’t collect.

Night work — the toggle worth knowing about

In your profile there’s a switch for late-night job alerts (9pm–7am), and it’s off by default. Nobody’s phone buzzes at 2am unless they asked for it.

It’s worth understanding what it does and doesn’t do. It controls pushes only — your feed shows every job at every hour regardless. And overnight jobs still unclaimed get re-announced to everyone at 8am, so leaving it off doesn’t mean missing the work entirely; it means seeing it in the morning along with everyone else.

The reason to turn it on: overnight emergencies are the jobs most likely to carry a bonus, and they have the least competition at that hour. If you’re willing to take 2am calls, this is where the rush-bonus economics are best.

Referral credits

You have a personal code for the jobs you can’t take — “that’s electrical, I’m plumbing.” The homeowner gets $25 off their first diagnostic; when their first job is approved and paid, $25 rides your next payout. It never touches your own customers or your own fees.

The four ways money can come back out

This is the section nobody puts in a recruiting pitch. There are exactly four, they are all tied to a specific job, and they are all avoidable.

1. 01

   Warranty refund

   A warranty claim on your job gets escalated and Middleman determines the work failed. The refund is at your expense: the payout transfer can be reversed — which can push your connected balance negative — and any remainder is deducted from future payouts, oldest debt first, until it’s repaid.

   How you avoid it: take the return visit. You get first right to repair, and a claim you fix never becomes a refund.

2. 02

   Credit after a wrong diagnosis

   The customer or the second-opinion pro questions your diagnosis, and Middleman’s review finds it was materially wrong. Your remittance for that visit is credited to the customer’s job — recovered from you if it had already been paid out. It is never handed to the replacing pro: they answer “does the first diagnosis stand?” on their quote, are paid their own quote in full whatever they answer, and get no part of your visit fee — so their answer is evidence, not a claim on your money. Your payout holds while the review is open, and you get one written response in the app.

   How you avoid it: a written diagnosis you’d defend, with photos. Being wrong about a hard call is not the standard — being materially wrong is.

3. 03

   Dispute resolution

   Funds still being held when a customer dispute resolves may be released to you, refunded, or split. This one affects money before it ever reaches you rather than pulling it back.

   How you avoid it: the photo timeline and the completion summary. In a dispute, the pro with documentation wins.

4. 04

   Chargeback

   The customer’s bank reverses a charge after you were paid, and the underlying issue is attributable to your work or conduct. Recovered the same way as a warranty refund.

Worth saying plainly, because it’s the fair objection: this exposure is real and it outlives the job. A warranty claim can land 29 days after you got paid. If you do clean work and document it, you will likely never meet any of this. If you cut corners on a platform that keeps a photographic record of every job, you’ll meet it faster than you would working on your own.

Your 30-day workmanship warranty

Every job you take through Middleman carries your 30-day workmanship warranty to the customer. Not ours on your behalf — yours. It’s part of your service agreement with them, offered as a condition of taking work here, and we administer and enforce it.

The clock starts when the customer approves the job, not when you finish it.

1. 01

   A claim is filed inside the window

   You’re notified with what the customer says went wrong.

2. 02

   You get first right to repair — 7 days

   Seven days to offer a return visit at no charge to the customer. This is a real advantage: you fix your own work rather than paying someone else to, and the claim closes.

3. 03

   You record the repair

   Summary and photos, same as any completion. That closes the claim on the record.

4. 04

   Or it escalates

   Claims you decline, ignore past the 7 days, no-show, or fail to fix go to Middleman for review. If we determine the work failed and refund the customer, that refund is at your expense — clawback 01 in the previous section.

   We may instead fund a refund ourselves as a goodwill gesture, in which case nothing is charged to you. That’s at our discretion, not something to plan around.

What it does not cover

The workmanship of the original job only. Not unrelated problems that show up later, not damage caused by the customer or a third party after you left, not misuse, not ordinary wear. If a customer files a claim for something outside that, say so in the app with your photos — that’s what the record is for.

Warranty decisions are final as between platform participants, and repeated warranty failures affect your standing.

When a customer disputes

A customer can dispute any time before funds are released — including during the five business days after they’ve approved the work. When they do, the held funds freeze where they are.

Middleman reviews evidence from both sides: your photos, the message thread, the quote, and the job timeline. The outcome is a release to you, a refund to the customer, or a split. That decision is final as between platform participants — though you keep whatever independent legal rights you have against the customer directly.

For a legal dispute between you and Middleman — as opposed to a job dispute with a customer — the terms route to written notice, a 60-day good-faith window, then binding individual arbitration in Lake County, Florida, with a class-action waiver. Small claims court stays open to you either way, and you can opt out of arbitration entirely within 30 days of first accepting a version of the terms containing it, with no effect on your account.

Standing, and the rules you can’t bend

Declining vs. withdrawing — the distinction that matters

Declining a job costs you nothing. You may decline any job, for any reason or none. Scroll past it. There is no acceptance quota to hit and no penalty for a slow week.

Withdrawing after you’ve accepted is different, because a customer has now been told you’re coming. It’s allowed — things happen — and it’s self-serve up until work starts, but it requires a written reason that goes to the Middleman team, and repeated withdrawals affect your standing.

Once money is in escrow on an accepted quote, self-serve withdrawal closes. At that point you message the team rather than dropping the job in the app.

The short list of things that end accounts

• Taking payment for a Middleman-sourced job outside the platform. Cash on the side, “call me direct next time,” a separate invoice. This is the fastest way off the platform and there is no version of it that’s fine.
• Working outside your license scope. Including running trade work through the handyman lane.
• Misrepresenting credentials. Grounds for immediate removal.
• Letting a credential lapse. Not a removal — the lane just closes until you renew. But it closes quietly, so watch your expiry dates.
• Conduct that endangers customers.

The standards you agreed to

• Arrive within the window you accepted.
• Communicate with customers through the app.
• Work to code and professional trade standards.
• Hold and keep current every license, registration and policy your trade requires here.
• Treat customers and their property with respect.
• Never solicit or accept off-platform payment on a Middleman job.

Those define the result the marketplace requires — not the manner or means of your work. Nobody is telling you how to sweat a joint.

What the system watches — stated plainly

You should know what’s monitored rather than find out from a suspension. It’s a short list, it’s automated, and it flags for human review — nothing here suspends an account on its own.

• Off-platform contact in chat. Phone numbers, email addresses and payment-app handles are pattern-matched. Sharing a number so a customer can let you in the gate is not what this is looking for; steering the payment off the platform is.
• Skipped or implausibly fast steps. A job that jumps from accepted to complete in four minutes gets looked at.
• Diagnosis write-up quality. Your written diagnosis is scored, and a note that says nothing gets flagged. This is the same field that protects your fee in a dispute — one honest paragraph clears it easily.
• Unverified arrivals and cancellations that follow an off-platform signal.

If you run a crew

Team accounts exist so a licensed shop can put its own techs on Middleman jobs without each of them needing a contractor license.

• The entity holds the credentials. The qualifying agent’s license under ss. 489.119 and 489.1195, the liability insurance, the workers’ comp coverage, and the payout account all belong to the business, not to you personally.
• Your people are yours. Employees or subcontractors of your business, never Middleman’s. You supervise them, you pay them, you carry their comp.
• Every tech registers and clears their own background check. Only cleared, registered individuals can be sent to a Middleman job, and each accepts a short conduct agreement — app communication, customer privacy, no off-platform solicitation.
• The customer is always shown who’s actually arriving. Not the company name with an anonymous van.
• Payouts go to the entity’s account only. Middleman never splits or advances pay between you and your people — that’s your payroll, run your way.
• Managers can raise a hand pointed at a specific member, so you can put the right tech on the right job rather than whoever taps first.

Is this actually worth it?

The honest answer depends on numbers only you know. Here’s how to work it out in about two minutes.

What 7% actually costs you

Now price what you’re replacing

Take a normal month and put a number on each of these:

1. What you spend to fill the calendar. Lead fees, ad spend, directory subscriptions, whatever it is — divided by the jobs that actually closed. That’s your real cost per won job today. On Middleman it is zero.
2. Free estimates that went nowhere. Count last month’s. Multiply by an hour of your time plus fuel. On Middleman each of those pays $44–$87 instead.
3. Card processing on the jobs you do collect. Roughly 3% on most terminals — so about 3 of the 7 points are already leaving your pocket.
4. Time chasing money. The follow-up texts, the re-invoicing, the one that never paid. Put a number on it or just note that it goes to zero.

If lines 1 and 2 together are worth more than 7% of your revenue, the fee is already paid for before you count anything else. For most residential shops filling a calendar with purchased leads, they are — by a wide margin. If your calendar is full from twenty years of referrals and you’ve never paid for a lead in your life, the math is much closer, and the honest pitch is different: this is filler work for gaps, and paid drive-outs on jobs you’d otherwise quote free.

Where it’s genuinely worse for you

• Big-ticket work. 7% of a $3,000 job is $210, and that’s a real number. If your book is mostly large replacements, run it carefully.
• Cash-flow timing. If you’re used to a check in hand at the door, the five-business-day window is an adjustment — the money is certain, but it isn’t instant.
• The documentation habit. If you hate paperwork, you will hate the first two weeks. Most pros stop noticing it by the tenth job.

The questions pros actually ask

Cheat sheet

The whole handbook, compressed. Screenshot this one.