Lock Ten Studio
Founding builders wanted

Every order on every job, watched for you.

Material Monitor reads the vendor email your office already gets, keeps every finish item's status current, and each morning tells you which orders need a word. Built by a custom builder for his own office, running on real jobs since July.

Join the founding list See how it works

What you get

Stop chasing orders. Start the day knowing where everything stands.

Finish materials are the part of the job that lives in email. Confirmations, ship notices, backorder notes, the rep saying "Monday." Material Monitor reads all of it so nobody in your office has to.

Vendor emails become status updates

The ship notice, the tracking number, the backorder note. It reads them and proposes the change, with the vendor's own words quoted. You confirm with one tap instead of retyping anything.

The quiet orders get surfaced

The cabinetry ordered three weeks ago with no timeline. The tile whose firm date came and went. They show up on your list before they show up as a hole in the schedule.

Follow-ups written, ready to send

Pick the items that need a word and it writes one email per rep with every open order on it, models and dates filled in. You read it and send it from your own address, in your own name.

The field checks things in from a phone

A delivery lands, the super taps what arrived, how many, in what condition, with a photo of the packing slip. The office sees it as soon as it is saved, and the morning email carries it the next day.

How it works

Three steps, and none of them belong to your vendors.

Nobody outside your office has to change a thing. Your reps keep sending the same emails they send today.

01

Point your vendor mail at it

Forward or copy the confirmations you already get to a private address that is yours alone, or connect the inbox they land in. Bring your selections list from Buildertrend, JobTread or a spreadsheet, and it knows what to watch for.

02

It reads. A person confirms.

Every email becomes a proposed change waiting for someone in your office: ordered, shipped, backordered, a new delivery date. Confirm it or dismiss it. Only an exact tracking-number match applies by itself.

03

Every morning, one email

Problems first. Then what landed, in the receiver's own words. Then the orders that have gone quiet, with the follow-ups already drafted. Everything else collapses into one grey line at the bottom.

The morning email

Sorted by what matters, not by what happened.

A briefing, not a changelog. It never echoes your own edits back at you, and on a quiet day it does not send at all.

Who it is for

The office with someone who owns ordering. Or the owner who is that someone.

A custom home carries a few hundred finish selections, and every one is an order somebody has to place, track and receive. In most offices that lives in a spreadsheet, an inbox and one person's memory.

Custom builders and remodelers, five people to thirty.

A handful of jobs at a time, each carrying its own long list of finish orders. Whether a coordinator owns the list or the owner does it at 9pm, this is built for that desk.

The long-lead items that decide the schedule.

Plumbing, tile, appliances, lighting, cabinetry, doors and windows. The orders where a quiet three weeks turns into an empty bathroom on install day.

Beside Buildertrend, JobTread or your spreadsheet.

Your selections list comes in from whatever you use today and becomes the list it watches. Nothing has to move out, and nothing else has to change.

Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

Whatever inbox your vendor mail lands in today. Forward it or connect it, and the reading starts.

Built to be trusted

It proposes. A person decides.

A wrong status is your problem in a homeowner's driveway, not a software company's. So the whole thing is built around not producing one.

It never sends anything for you.

Follow-ups are drafts. They go out from your address, in your words, when you press send. Your vendors never receive an automated message with your company's name on it.

Nothing changes without a confirm.

Every reading becomes a card with the vendor's own words quoted beside the proposed change. The one automatic update is an exact tracking-number match on an item that already carries that number.

Every change keeps its receipt.

Each item carries its full history: who changed what, when, and the email or note it came from. It reads your vendor mail and nothing else: it never sends, moves or deletes a message.

Why this exists

It started as one office's spreadsheet problem.

Lock Ten Studio is run by the co-owner of a custom home building company outside Washington DC. His company tracked finish materials the way most do: a spreadsheet, a shared inbox and the coordinator's memory. Orders went quiet, dates slipped and the office found out when the plumber was standing in an empty bathroom.

So he built the thing that reads the mail, keeps the list current and tells the office what needs a nudge. His coordinator has run on it daily since July, and his superintendents check deliveries in from their phones. When he described it to other builders, the answer he kept hearing was that companies their size need this too. Material Monitor is that system, opened up.

Where it stands

Straight about the stage it is at.

  • LiveRunning every day inside one builder's office, watching a few hundred finish items across active jobs, reading real vendor mail and sending the real morning email. The receiving app runs on his crews' phones through Apple's TestFlight.
  • OpeningBeing opened to a small group of founding builders now. Self-serve setup and direct inbox connection are being built with them, so the first offices shape what it becomes.
  • Not setThere is no price on this page because there is no public price yet. Founding builders talk it through with the person who decides it.

Questions

Things builders ask.

Do my vendors have to do anything?

No. They keep emailing you exactly the way they do now. There is no portal for them, nothing to sign up for and no new address to learn. Material Monitor works from the mail your office already receives.

Do I need Buildertrend?

No. Your selections list from Buildertrend, JobTread or a spreadsheet becomes the list of items it watches, and anything outside that list you add in a line. It does not log in to any other system.

Does it email my vendors?

Never on its own. When an order needs a word, it drafts the follow-up, one email per rep with every open item on it, and you send it from your own address in your own words. Your reps hear from you, not from a system.

What happens when it reads something wrong?

Everything it reads becomes a proposal with the vendor's own words quoted beside it, and a person confirms or dismisses it. Nothing changes on its own, with one exception: an email whose tracking number exactly matches an item already carrying that number updates that item automatically.

Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace?

Both. Forwarding vendor mail to your private Material Monitor address works with any email system. Connecting an inbox directly is being built with the founding builders, Microsoft 365 first.

What does it cost?

Pricing is not published yet. Founding builders talk price directly with the builder who made it.

Is this the same company as Walkthrough and Handover?

Yes. Lock Ten Studio builds software for custom home builders and is run by the co-owner of a building company outside Washington DC. Walkthrough is its field-report app, Handover builds the homeowner's manual, and Material Monitor watches the orders in between.

Founding builders

Be one of the first offices it watches for.

Send a short email and you will hear back from the builder who made it, not from a sequence. A small group of founding builders gets in first, shapes what it becomes and gets founding terms.

Get on the founding list

Email info@lockten.ai

Tell us who you are and what you build. You will get a real reply from the builder who made it. No mailing list, no drip sequence, no sales calls.

Or write any time: info@lockten.ai