Your own software for your SHK (Sanitär, Heizung, Klima — plumbing, heating, AC trade) business — free prototype in 5 business days
Maintenance contracts in Excel, DATANORM set-up as an expensive add-on, emergency jobs written on a slip of paper in the van? krafteq builds your own software for plumbing, heating and air conditioning — fixed price instead of a monthly subscription trap, with code that belongs to you. Based in Leverkusen, built for SHK businesses across the Rhineland and all of Germany.
Includes maintenance contracts, GAEB and DATANORM interfaces — out of the box.
Target audienceDoes this sound familiar?
We build for SHK businesses with 1–20 employees — owners and master tradespeople who carry out plumbing installation, heating engineering and air conditioning work. These are the situations we encounter most often:
Maintenance contracts running in Excel
You have 80, 200 or 400 maintenance contracts for heating systems, heat pumps and air-conditioning units — but the reminders, appointments and service reports all live in a growing spreadsheet. Miss a service and you have an unhappy customer, sometimes a liability claim.
DATANORM connection charged as a SaaS add-on
Your wholesaler delivers pricing and product data in DATANORM format. With plancraft, ToolTime or HERO, the DATANORM interface is a paid extra module. With a custom solution it is included in the fixed price — integrated once, no monthly fee.
GAEB tenders are tedious manual work
Architects and main contractors send GAEB files for heating and plumbing lots. You transfer the line items manually into your quoting tool. Hours are lost, typos creep in. GAEB import belongs in every serious SHK software.
Emergency jobs end up on scraps of paper
Boiler failure, burst pipe, no hot water — emergency calls come in evenings and at weekends. You need to raise a job quickly, document the call-out, book materials on site — all from a smartphone, without the office PC, without double-keying everything on Monday.
Heating subsidy documentation creates mountains of paperwork
The BAFA heating subsidy (a German federal incentive programme) for heat pumps and boiler replacements requires clean documentation: appliance type, installation, commissioning, efficiency. We structure your jobs so that your customers can file their subsidy applications easily — we do not advise on BAFA applications, but we make the data readily available.
SaaS has grown, but never quite fitted
TAIFUN is deeply specialised for the SHK trade, but comes with a subscription. ToolTime, plancraft and HERO are generic — maintenance contracts, equipment records and manufacturer-specific fields are missing or sold as add-ons. If your business has outgrown the SaaS straitjacket, it is worth switching to your own solution.
FeaturesWhat do we typically build for SHK businesses?
An SHK software project at krafteq is built from proven modules that we adapt to your workflows. These eight features appear in practically every SHK project — we will work out exactly what you need during the initial consultation and the walkthrough after the prototype.
Job management with materials, hours and call-out
Create SHK jobs, track status, assign engineers. Per job: materials list with pipes, fittings and radiators, hours per engineer, call-out costs separated out. Linked to the customer record, equipment record and photo documentation.
Maintenance contracts and service reports
Automatically schedule recurring services for heating systems, heat pumps, air-conditioning and ventilation units. Reminders to customers and engineers, digital service reports with signature on tablet. Essential for every serious SHK business.
GAEB import and export
Import GAEB files (DA 83/86/90) from architects and main contractors directly — line items, quantities and descriptions land automatically in the quote. Export your own quotes as GAEB for tender submissions. Standard for SHK lots in commercial construction.
DATANORM wholesaler connection
Automatically import product and price data from your plumbing wholesaler (DATANORM 4/5). Calculate materials lists at current purchase price, manage mark-ups centrally, generate order suggestions. Essential for every SHK solution.
Equipment records: boiler, heat pump, air-conditioning unit
A digital record for each customer installation: manufacturer (Buderus, Viessmann, Vaillant, Wolf, Junkers), type, serial number, commissioning date, service history, spare parts. On the next service visit, the engineer has all the data on their smartphone.
Mobile app for engineers
iOS and Android, optionally native. Open a job, book materials directly from the van, log time, photograph the plant room, get the service report signed on site — offline on site too, synced as soon as there is a signal again.
Photo and site documentation
Before/after photos per job — plumbing installation, boiler fitting, AC installation. With comments, georeferenced, linked to the job and equipment record. Handover protocol and defect list in digital form, with signature on tablet.
E-invoicing (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD)
Structured invoices for public-sector clients and B2B (receiving mandatory since 1.1.2025; sending mandatory from 1.1.2027 for businesses with prior-year revenue above €800,000, and from 1.1.2028 for all B2B businesses). Standard included in the fixed price, with optional DATEV or Lexoffice integration for your tax adviser.
How it worksYour own SHK software in three steps
No sales process, no open consulting invoice. You see working software within a week and know the full cost of v1 upfront.
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Submit your enquiry
Describe your SHK business and the workflows you want to digitalise — maintenance contracts, GAEB import, mobile documentation, emergency jobs, e-invoicing. The form takes five minutes. We will respond within 24 hours with a concrete plan.
Free and non-binding. No sales pressure, no newsletter spam.
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Prototype in 5 business days
krafteq builds a working prototype of your one or two most important workflows. Hosted live on Krafteq Cloud, with a login for you and one or two engineers, with realistic sample data matching SHK jobs — a maintenance schedule for a Buderus boiler, an equipment record for a Vaillant heat pump, a materials list with pipes and fittings. In the walkthrough we show everything and discuss the next version.
You see your own SHK software in action — before you spend a penny.
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Your own v1 in under 4 weeks
If you wish to proceed, you receive a binding fixed-price proposal between €1,000 and €2,000 for your v1 — depending on scope. We develop in one- to two-week sprints with demos. Source code in your own repository from Sprint 1. Krafteq Cloud hosting €250/year per software, first year included (optional — self-hosting equally supported).
Fixed price instead of time-and-materials billing. Code belongs to you. Hosting and maintenance included in year 1.
What you getFour modules — in every Krafteq package
Every Krafteq project delivers not only your individual SHK software, but the complete operational setup around it. Standardised, secure, scalable — engineering quality at a trade price.
Your own SHK software
Tailored to your business and your real workflows — maintenance contracts, equipment records, GAEB, DATANORM. Source code from Sprint 1 in your own repository, fixed price €1,000–2,000, fully documented. Even if krafteq disappeared tomorrow, your software would continue running on any host.
Krafteq Cloud — hosting €250/year per software (first year included, optional)
Optional managed hosting on servers in Germany (EU fallback available). Included: security patches, daily backups, monitoring, Krafteq support, maintenance, GDPR (DSGVO)-compliant operation with DPA (AVV), TLS, your own domain. Self-hosting on your own server or with your own IT provider equally supported. No subscription trap, cancel at any time.
Customer and document portal
A central web interface for your relationship with krafteq: project status, contracts and DPA, tickets, releases, invoices, backup status. No more scattered email threads — everything in one place.
IAM and security from day one
Centralised logins, multi-factor authentication, roles for owner, office staff and engineers, audit log, tenant separation — based on Keycloak (open source, EU-hosted). Optional single sign-on against Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
Comparisonkrafteq vs. TAIFUN, plancraft, ToolTime, HERO & Co.
The established SaaS providers are solid software — TAIFUN in particular is deeply specialised for the SHK trade. For businesses with their own workflows, a desire to own their code, or an honest five-year cost calculation, the picture looks different.
| krafteq Custom Software | plancraft / ToolTime / HERO | TAIFUN / Bosch OfficeOn | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Fixed price + optional hosting | Subscription | Subscription |
| 5-year TCO (business under 10 employees) | €2,000–3,000 | €9,000–18,000 | €9,000–18,000 |
| Code ownership | Yes — from Sprint 1 in your own repository | No | No |
| DATANORM interface (SHK wholesaler) | Included in fixed price (1 interface) | Paid extra / add-on | Included |
| GAEB interface | Included in fixed price | Partly add-on, partly unavailable | Included |
| Maintenance contract module | Included in fixed price | Paid extra or limited | Included |
| Adaption to your workflows | 100 per cent bespoke | Standard configuration, limited customisation | Standard configuration, limited customisation |
| Data export | Any time, self-service in the portal | Restricted | Restricted |
| Location | Leverkusen (NRW), personal point of contact | Hamburg, Berlin, Hanover — remote | Various |
| EU data residency | Guaranteed (Germany) | Variable — partly US back-end | Variable |
| Vendor lock-in | None — standard containers, portable | High | High |
| E-invoicing (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD) | Included in fixed price | Included (partly add-on) | Included (partly add-on) |
TrustWith the rigour of a German engineering partner
krafteq is a German GmbH based in Leverkusen. We have served enterprise clients in industry and manufacturing for years — and we bring those same engineering standards to the SHK stack.
krafteq GmbH, Leverkusen
German company headquartered in the Rhineland. A personal point of contact rather than a call centre. Meetings on site are possible, fully remote equally so — typical travel time to SHK businesses in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Bonn is under an hour.
ISO 27001 certification in progress
Currently in the gap-analysis phase, target Q1 2027. Already in place: code review on every change, secrets management with HashiCorp Vault, vulnerability scanning on every container, SBOM generation.
EU hosting and GDPR by design
Krafteq Cloud runs on servers in Germany (EU fallback available) — no US CLOUD Act exposure. Data processing agreement (DPA) available as standard, encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest, dedicated database per customer.
Built by Senior Engineers
Every specialist brings at least ten years of professional experience. The person building your SHK software has already delivered critical systems in enterprise environments.
“We bring to SHK businesses the same rigour we owe enterprise clients — just at a different scale. Maintenance contracts, equipment records, GAEB and DATANORM are not exotic edge cases — they are everyday SHK work, and they belong in any serious solution. AI-assisted development makes it economically viable for the first time to deliver all of this at a fixed price, with code ownership, without a subscription trap.”
FAQFrequently asked questions
A different trade? See the Trades hub.
We build for Tier-1 trades including electrical, painting, joinery and roofing — as well as many other sectors. The overview page shows modules, comparisons and answers across all trades.
Go to the Trades hubWould you prefer to speak first?
Book a 30- to 60-minute initial consultation. You describe your SHK business and workflows; we give you an honest assessment — even if the answer is: TAIFUN is a better fit for you. No sales pitch, no obligation.
- Free
- Non-binding
- 30–60 minutes