Article

Your job files record how the work was done

By TrustPast

Published October 19, 2026 · Updated October 22, 2026

Every job your company has done left a folder behind. A work order, a dispatch note, a few photos, a technician’s scrawl, a change order, a callback three months later. Nobody kept those folders to sell them, and nobody reads them twice. Polyshares pays to license records like these to train AI models. This page settles what it wants from them, what sets the price, what can stop a deal, and what you keep.

Why buyers want it

Start with what is not wanted, because it is the first worry. Your customers’ names are not wanted. Their addresses, phone numbers and card numbers are not wanted. What a customer paid is not the point, in our view; how the job was done is.

What is wanted is the work. How an estimate became a job. How a change order was settled when the job turned out different. How a technician diagnosed a fault, got it wrong once, and found it on the second visit. That is what a job file holds and a price list never does.

Polyshares puts it in one line on its data licensing page: “The value is not in volume. It is in reasoning that was captured while the work happened.” And on its data handling page, it says what comes out and what stays. “Names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers, and addresses are removed or replaced by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record. Roles, timestamps, and the work itself are kept.”

So the record is de-identified before anyone uses it. The customer becomes a customer. The house becomes a house. The work stays as it was. Our own view: job files are where a trade company’s reasoning gets written down every day. The person who did the work writes it, before anyone knows how the job will end. Which files hold that reasoning in each trade, and which hold only names and payments, is set out on what data buyers want from a trade business.

What sits in a job file

Owners think of a job file as paperwork. It is the company’s memory of one job. Here is what one usually holds, as our own description:

the work order: what was asked for, who was sent, when, and what they found;
the dispatch notes: who was free, who was closest, why the job moved to Thursday;
the technician notes: readings, measurements, what was tried first, what worked;
the photos: before, during, after, and the one of the rotten joist nobody expected;
the materials pulled and the hours booked;
the change orders: what changed, why, and what it cost;
the punch list: what was left at the end, and when it was closed;
the warranty callback, if there was one, and what it found.

One folder is small. Ten years of them is how the company actually works, written down by the people who did it.

Why the job file, not the invoice

The invoice is the last page of the story. It says what was charged. It does not say why.

Here is a worked example, as our own description. A water heater call comes in as “no hot water.” The dispatcher sends the nearest tech. The tech finds a failed thermocouple, replaces it, and leaves. Two days later the customer calls back. The second tech finds sediment, a leaking valve and a unit near the end of its life. The second work order turns into an estimate for a replacement. The customer takes the mid option. The job file now holds two visits, one wrong first call, one estimate, and a closed sale.

The invoice shows a part, a labour line and a new heater. The job file shows a diagnosis that went wrong and then right. Polyshares says on its data licensing page that “A support ticket that shows a problem being misdiagnosed, argued over, and finally resolved is worth more than a clean table of finished numbers.” A service call with a callback is that ticket, in a trade.

The estimate and the job file are one story

An estimate is the start of a job. The job file is the rest of it. The estimates and quotes page explains why the versions and the lost bids count. This page is the other half.

Put the two side by side and you see the gap between what was quoted and what it took. A roofer quoted 14 sheets of decking and used 22. A plumber quoted a fixture swap and found a corroded shut-off. An auto shop quoted brakes and found a leaking caliper. Each gap is a small lesson. Ten years of gaps, by job type, is how a company learned to price. Nobody publishes their misses, so nobody else has that record.

Change orders are where the arguing happens

A change order is the most honest page in a job file. Something was different from the plan. Someone had to say so, price it, and get a yes.

Here is what one usually records, as our own description. What was found. What the crew proposed. What the customer or the general contractor pushed back on. What was agreed. Often there are two or three rounds, in emails, texts or notes on the form itself. That back-and-forth is the judgment.

Polyshares says, on its data licensing page, that “A thread where two people disagree about a quote and work it out carries judgment that cannot be manufactured.” A change order with its emails is exactly that thread. So keep the drafts. Keep the email that said “can you do it for less if we skip the drip edge.” The final number is in the invoice. The argument is only in the job file.

What sets the price

Polyshares prices each company after it has read the record. Its home page says: “We read a sample of the record. That is how we price it, and why we do not pay for something we have not seen.” Three things move the number, in Polyshares’ own words.

Years, not folders. The estimate on this site asks how many years of records you have, not how many jobs. Polyshares says why it matters, on its home page: “Depth of operating history and how much visible reasoning the record contains move the number far more than raw volume does.” Say a 12-person shop has 15 years of work orders. It may have been through cold winters, hot summers, a materials spike and two software changes. Every one of those shows up in the job files. A record that long holds more decisions, and decisions are what the record is for.

The mess, kept. Most job folders are not tidy. Photos named IMG_4471. Notes in three handwritings. A work order with coffee on it. Owners tend to apologise for this. Polyshares does not ask for tidy. On its data licensing page: “The messy working record is the point, not a defect in it.” And: “Nobody can fabricate ten years of a company arguing with itself and getting to an answer.” So don’t clean up before you apply. Don’t delete the duplicate work orders, the notes that contradict each other, or the photos of the wrong house. Our own advice: the contradictions are where the reasoning shows.

Not headcount. Polyshares says: “The length and texture of the record matter more than headcount or revenue.” A 12-person shop with 15 years of job files is not behind a larger one with three.

What Polyshares has paid is public. Polyshares says typical deals run from $100,000 to $2,000,000 and above (indicative, not an offer). Its case studies page lists four closed deals: a roofing company at $450,000, a general contractor at $300,000, a solar company at $275,000 and a global marketing agency at $110,000 (indicative, not an offer). Each is described the same way: “Perpetual exclusive license to the operational record. Anonymized before delivery.” Polyshares says “Company names stay confidential.” It does not publish what each record contained, so a past deal does not predict an offer. The page on what companies have been paid goes through all four.

Worth two minutes to see your range? The estimate asks five questions.

See your estimate

What blocks a deal, and the fix

Four things stop a record of job files. Each one has a fix, and Polyshares publishes how it handles each.

Work done for a client who owns the paper

A subcontractor holding a general contractor’s drawings under contract may not own them. A commercial job may run under a master agreement that gives the client the records. Polyshares says this material “cannot be licensed regardless of value, and only the contracts separate the two.” Its home page says the licence “does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.”

The fix: read the contracts before you count the files. Polyshares says confirming ownership “is the one part that starts with the company, because only you hold your customer contracts.” It also says customer agreements often allow use “in aggregated or de-identified form,” and that a company “should have its own counsel review any license before signing.” What counts as client-owned material is settled there, not after.

Names, addresses and gate codes on every work order

Every work order carries a customer’s name and address. Many carry a phone number, a gate code or a note about the dog. Owners assume that makes the files unusable. It does not, because the name is not what the record is for. Polyshares says the identifying fields “are removed or replaced by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record. Roles, timestamps, and the work itself are kept.”

The fix: don’t scrub the files yourself, and don’t delete them. List what is never included (below), such as gate codes and photos that show faces or number plates, and raise it before you accept an offer. Polyshares says identifying fields are stripped “before anything moves,” and that “Handling that is our responsibility rather than yours.”

The field-service software’s export rules

Your job files sit in software, and each tool sets its own export rules. ServiceTitan’s help page says to log in “as an administrator or manager” and enable “Allow exporting search results” on an employee’s permissions; without it, the export option does not appear on job searches. Jobber says only admin users can export clients, and the CSV file handles up to 1,500 rows at a time.

The fix: you don’t export anything to apply. Polyshares says: “Intake asks for record counts, not files or exports.” Count first. The steps for each tool, with the vendor’s limits quoted, are in our guides: how to export ServiceTitan jobs and reports and how to export Jobber clients, quotes and jobs. Use them after an agreement, when the scope is written down.

Missing years

The current software often holds the last five or six years. The years before it sit in a lapsed subscription, a binder of carbon copies or a drawer of printed photos. An owner who counts only the current tool undercounts the record.

The fix: count all three places (below, under what owners overlook). Polyshares says “The question worth answering is not how many gigabytes exist but how many years of judgment are visible inside them.” A gap in the middle is a gap; it is not a reason to count none.

What owners overlook

Which systems hold the job files

Before you look at a range, know where the records live. Here is the count we ask owners to make, as our own advice.

Job files usually sit in three places. The current field-service or shop-management software, which is the easy part. The old software, which may still export if the subscription lapsed recently. And the paper: carbon-copy work orders, clipboards, binders, a drawer of photos printed in 2009. A company that has run 15 years may have all three.

Then the systems around them. The email account the change orders went through. The group text the crews used. The shared drive where the photos landed. Polyshares lists what it counts as operational data on its home page: “Slack, email, Drive, spreadsheets, CRM history, support tickets, design files, call recordings, accounting and ERP exports.” Our own reading: a work order system is a support-ticket system in a trade’s clothes. Which parts of the CRM around the job files count, and which stay behind, is on CRM records. How years of those jobs add up to a company’s record is on project history.

Count the years and list the systems. That is most of what the estimate on this site asks for.

What this means for a roofing company

This is our own description of what a roofing company keeps, not a list from any buyer.

The work order starts with the inspection: the pitch, the layers, the soft spots, the flashing. The photos go with it, roof by roof, slope by slope. The crew notes record what the tear-off found. The change orders record the decking that had to be replaced and what the customer agreed to pay. The insurance supplements, and the adjuster’s replies, record how a scope was argued with someone who never climbed the ladder. The punch list records the gutter that got bent and the nails in the driveway. The warranty callbacks record which leaks came back, and why.

That is a full account of how a roof gets replaced, a thousand times over. The roofing companies page goes through the rest of a roofer’s record.

What this means for an HVAC company

An HVAC company runs on service tickets. Each one holds the complaint, the readings, the diagnosis and the fix. The maintenance agreements add a visit history to every unit: what was cleaned, what was worn, what was flagged and declined.

The repair-or-replace decision is the most useful page in the file. A tech wrote down the age of the unit, the refrigerant, the failed part and the cost of fixing it. Then the tech quoted a replacement next to it. Hundreds of those, with which way each customer went, show how the company decides when a system is done. The callbacks show when that call was wrong. Our own description; the HVAC companies page has more.

What this means for a plumbing company

A plumbing job file often starts as one thing and ends as another. A slow drain becomes a camera inspection. The camera finds roots, a belly or a collapsed section. The work order becomes an estimate, then a permit, then a dig.

The technician notes, the camera reports and the photos record each step. The service history by address matters most, because the same houses call back. Five visits to one address over eight years show how a building ages and how the company kept up with it. This is our own description; the plumbing companies page has more.

What this means for an auto-repair shop

An auto-repair shop writes a repair order on almost every car. The repair order holds the complaint in the customer’s words, the technician’s diagnosis, the codes, the tests, the parts and the hours. It also holds what the customer declined.

The declined work is easy to overlook. Say a shop recommended front pads in March, and the car came back in June with scored rotors. That shop has a record of its own advice being right. The comebacks show the opposite: a part replaced, the fault still there, a second diagnosis. Across thousands of cars, that is how a shop finds faults. This is our own description; the auto-repair shops page has more.

How a deal works

These are Polyshares’ published steps, in order. The whole sequence, with what can stop each step, is on how a data deal works.

You see your range on our estimate. Five questions, two minutes. It is our estimate, not an offer.
You apply to Polyshares yourself, through the estimate’s link. Polyshares says: “Intake asks for record counts, not files or exports. Nothing leaves your systems until Polyshares has made an offer and you have accepted it.”
Polyshares reads the record. It says: “An offer comes within one to two weeks, and terms are papered right after.”
You confirm ownership, and your counsel reviews the licence. Polyshares describes the scope as “Defined systems, a defined term, and exclusive by default unless we agree otherwise. Nothing outside that scope is covered.”
You approve and share. Polyshares says: “Identifying fields, customer names, emails, and account numbers are stripped by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any lab sees the record. Nothing moves until that is done.”
Polyshares pays: “Net 30 to 60 once the data is approved, anonymized, and delivered. Money moves one way, from us to you.”

The cost to you, in Polyshares’ words: “None. No fee, no commission. We pay you.” Listings “are published without the company’s name, website, people, or exact locations.”

Under Polyshares’ published terms, “You keep the business and the underlying data. The license is defined and bounded.” The data handling page says it plainly: “A license is not a sale. The company keeps operating exactly as before, with the same data, the same systems, the same customers.” The work orders stay in your software. The job folders stay in your cabinet. Your techs keep writing them tomorrow. Polyshares’ data handling page says: “No contacting your customers or staff.” And: “The company is never contacted by a buyer; Polyshares is the sole counterparty.”

Where we fit

We, TrustPast, explain the process and give you a range with our estimate. The estimate is ours, not an offer; Polyshares makes offers, after it has read the record. The estimate names the buyer that fits your headcount; when that is Polyshares, you apply to it yourself, through the estimate’s link. Polyshares pays us a referral fee. You pay us nothing. We never see your files. How we keep it that way is on how it’s safe.

Before you apply

Four things to do first, as our own advice:

Count the years of job files in every place they live, as set out under which systems hold the job files.
Don’t tidy up. Keep the duplicate work orders, the second visits, the callbacks and the change-order emails. The corrections are the reasoning.
Line the job files up with the estimates. An estimate with its job file is a whole job; alone, each is half of one.
Ask your counsel about anything you hold for a client. Only the contracts say what is yours.

Then answer the five questions. If the range is worth your time, apply.

What is never included

Polyshares’ own lines first. On its home page, the licence covers “Defined material for a defined term. It does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.” On its data handling page, names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers and addresses “are removed or replaced by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record.” That is what Polyshares publishes.

Now our advice, which is ours and not Polyshares’:

Customer names, emails, phones, addresses and account numbers. They are on every work order, and they were never the thing being bought. You don’t scrub them yourself; under Polyshares’ terms the PII partner does.

Site photos showing faces, house numbers or number plates. A photo of the job is the work; a photo of the homeowner, the house number or the car in the drive is not. Raise them on the call with Polyshares, before you accept an offer, the same as names.

Gate codes and access notes. “Code 4471, key under the mat, dog in the yard” is not how the work was done. Keep those fields out of what you describe, and say so to Polyshares.

Card numbers and bank details. A card number written on a carbon-copy work order is not part of how the work was done. Keep that page in your own cabinet and raise it before you accept an offer.

Anything a client owns. It stays out; the blocker above, work done for a client who owns the paper, says why and what to do.

Health information. A customer’s medical details on an accessibility job, a note about a resident’s condition on a priority call. Ask Polyshares before you apply if any of your records sit near that line.

Staff personnel and payroll files. A technician’s personal file that ended up in a job folder, the timesheets with wage rates. They are personal information, and they stay with you.

What is licensed is set out in Polyshares’ offer and the terms you agree, after Polyshares has read an anonymized sample. We can only tell you what is usually in and usually out.

TrustPast

Questions and answers

Does the buyer want our customer list?

No. Polyshares says names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers and addresses are removed or replaced by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record. It says roles, timestamps and the work itself are kept.

Do we have to send our job files to apply?

No. Polyshares says intake asks for record counts, not files or exports. Nothing leaves the company’s systems until Polyshares has made an offer and the company has accepted it.

Our job folders are a mess. Do they still count?

Polyshares says the messy working record is the point, not a defect in it. Don’t tidy them up before you apply. What is licensed is set out in Polyshares’ offer and the terms you agree, after Polyshares has read an anonymized sample.

Do job photos count?

Photos are part of the job file, and they show what the crew found before anyone wrote it up. Polyshares lists design files and call recordings among operational data, and it reads the record before it prices it, so it decides what is in scope. Our advice: faces, house numbers and number plates in photos go on the list of things to raise before you accept an offer.

Do we keep the job files afterwards?

Yes. Under Polyshares’ published terms, the company keeps the business and the underlying data, and the licence is defined and bounded. Your techs keep writing work orders in the same software tomorrow.

What does it cost us?

Nothing. Polyshares says there is no fee and no commission. Polyshares pays TrustPast a referral fee; you pay us nothing.