I started Ripple Roofing & Construction in Round Rock in 2024, after years running operations for a corporate roofing company. I knew the trade. What I underestimated was how much of a roofing business is not roofing.
Quick answer: I built Ketterly, a roofing CRM, because running a roofing company means keeping a lead, a measurement, a quote, a crew schedule, an insurance file and an invoice pointed at the same house at the same time — and I wanted that to happen in one place instead of five. Ripple Roofing runs on it today.
Disclosure: I own both companies. When I mention Ketterly on this site, I am not recommending a vendor I pay — I am telling you what my roofing company runs on and who built it. You should weigh it accordingly.
The Problem Wasn't Roofing. It Was Everything Around Roofing.
A roof replacement is a few days of work. The job around it is weeks long and made almost entirely of information:
- An address, and what the roof on it actually measures
- Photos of hail bruising on a north slope, taken three weeks ago, by someone who is now on a different job
- A quote, and whether the homeowner ever saw it
- An adjuster appointment on a Thursday that somebody has to attend
- A material order that has to land before the crew does
- A final invoice that has to match what was signed
Drop any one of those and you have an unhappy customer — even if the roof itself is flawless. A homeowner does not experience "good roofing." They experience whether you called back, showed up when you said, and billed what you quoted.
The established platforms in this category are real products built by serious people, and plenty of contractors run well on them. My reasons for building something else were specific to how I wanted to work, not a claim that everything else is broken.
The Three Things I Wanted
1. Measurement That Doesn't Cost Me Anything to Run
This one shaped everything else.
When aerial measurement reports cost money per report, you start doing math you should not be doing. A homeowner calls about a possible leak. Do you spend twenty dollars measuring a roof for a job that might be a $600 repair, or might be nothing at all? Multiply that hesitation across every inbound call and every door knock, and you have a business that quietly under-serves small jobs and rushes estimates it did not measure.
I wanted measurement to be a non-decision — run it on every address, every time, and stop thinking about it. Unlimited satellite roof measurement is built into the platform for that reason.
2. Canvassing That Feeds the Same System
After a hail event, canvassing is how roofing work actually gets found in Central Texas. The standard version of this is a rep with a paper map, a notebook, and a pocket full of intentions. Notes get lost between the door and the truck. Addresses get knocked twice.
I wanted the map, the pins, and the leads to be the same data — knock a door, drop a pin, and if it turns into a conversation, it is already a lead with an address and a measured roof attached to it. Not a note to re-enter later that evening, which nobody does.
3. One Record From First Knock to Final Payment
The part I cared most about: a job should be one continuous record. Lead, quote, production, invoiced, closed. Same address, same photos, same numbers, all the way through.
When quoting lives in one tool, scheduling in a calendar app, photos on three phones, and invoicing in accounting software, every handoff is a chance to lose something. Those handoffs are where "we'll get back to you tomorrow" turns into next week.
What Actually Changed for Customers
I want to be careful here, because this is exactly the place where a contractor blog starts inventing impressive numbers. I am not going to give you a percentage. What I will give you is the specific behavior that changed:
Estimates go out faster, because they are assembled rather than composed. The measurement is already there. The pricing is already there. What remains is judgment about your specific roof, which is the part that should take a human's time.
Nothing is waiting on me to remember it. Follow-ups are tasks with dates. Adjuster meetings are calendar entries tied to the job. The failure mode of a small, owner-operated company is the owner becoming the bottleneck, and I built around my own.
Storm documentation stays together. Photos, measurements, inspection notes and scope live on the job, which is what makes an insurance claim hold up. Claims get underpaid when the file is thin — not usually because the damage wasn't there.
Crews get coordinated from a schedule, not a group text. We work with a network of 50+ crew members across the Austin metro. That is not something you run out of your recent-calls list.
The Honest Limits
Building your own tools is not automatically smart, and I would not tell another contractor to do it.
- It is a second business. If you want to run one company, buy software.
- Custom does not mean better by default. A tool built for you can just as easily be a tool built around your bad habits.
- It does not touch craftsmanship. No CRM installs a straight ridge line, seals a pipe boot correctly, or catches soft decking. That is the crew, the training, and the certifications — in our case, CertainTeed ShingleMaster Premier certification, which places a contractor in the top 1% nationally.
- Software is not a substitute for insurance or credentials. Texas does not license roofing contractors at the state level, which means the checks that actually protect you are a Certificate of Insurance verified directly with the carrier, and manufacturer certification. Ask us for both. Ask everyone for both.
What It Means for You
Practically, not much — and that is the point. You will never see the inside of the system. You will see a reply the same day, a measured written quote, a confirmed install date, documentation your adjuster accepts, and a final invoice that matches what you signed.
If you want the mechanics of that, we broke down the whole stack in the software we use to run our roofing company.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Who built Ketterly? A: Jonathan, the owner of Ripple Roofing & Construction, built Ketterly. It is a roofing CRM and operations platform covering lead intake, satellite roof measurement, door-knocking maps, quoting, scheduling, invoicing and payments.
Q: Does Ripple Roofing & Construction actually use it, or is it just a product you sell? A: We run the company on it. The contact form on this website is a Ketterly form, and every lead, quote, schedule and invoice we handle lives in that system.
Q: Why not just use one of the existing roofing CRMs? A: The existing platforms are solid, and most contractors should use one. My reasons were specific: I wanted aerial measurement with no per-report cost so nothing discourages measuring a small job, canvassing that feeds the same records as everything else, and a single continuous job record from first knock to final payment.
Q: Does building software distract from the actual roofing work? A: It is a fair question to ask any contractor with a side venture. The way we answer it is with the roofing work itself — inspections, documentation, install dates and warranties. Ask us for references and a Certificate of Insurance, the same as you would with anyone else.
Q: Can another roofing company use Ketterly? A: Yes, it is available to other roofing and exterior contractors. If you are a homeowner reading this, it changes nothing about your project.
Q: Does this mean my project data is used for something else? A: No. Your job record exists so we can do your job — measurements, photos, scope, schedule and invoice. It is business record keeping, not a data product.
Talk to Us About Your Roof
If you are in Round Rock, Austin, Georgetown, Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville, Hutto, Taylor or anywhere in the Central Texas area and you want a measured, written, itemized estimate, we will come look at it.
Call (512) 763-5277, email tx@rippleroofs.com, or request a free inspection.
— Jonathan, Ripple Roofing & Construction
