Provenance record — Version 3 of 6

You are reading a historical version of this article exactly as it was saved on July 25, 2026 at 7:12 pm by zorderzorg. It is preserved, unedited, as part of this site's public record.

Carleton's second dictated pass: shorter opening, the CRM-and-invoicing integration vision, the chief-and-hierarchy explanation of conditional logic, OpenCode and local LLMs via MCP, cost marked anecdotal, Ai-driven installation, how zorderz.org gets written, and the open PBC-vs-LLC question. Claude applied the edit.

Read the current version →

Field Service Management Software, Open Source: Zorderz

Zorderz is open source field service management software for WordPress. Most businesses are already using good tools, and Zorderz is designed to connect those tools so they can talk to each other. Zorderz is an online hub that connects the tools and services your business is already paying for and puts them inside an app your team actually wants to use.

Out of the box, Zorderz is a blank slate

Here is where this is headed. If you already run a CRM and invoicing software, Zorderz should be able to read what is in them and build the matching structure inside your own installation, automatically-ish, so the customers, products and services you already have come across with the same names on both sides and everything knows what to call everything else. Think of it as handing Zorderz the Cliff’s Notes on your business by letting it reach the APIs you connect to it. From there it can work out what your business is and which parts need naming.

To be clear about what is real: that is me describing the future. It does not do that today. It is what we are building toward, and the premise matters more than the timeline. Zorderz is meant to work with whatever you already have rather than replace it, so there is no separate setup ritual by design. A field service management platform should meet your business where it is.

If you do not have those systems, that is fine too. No invoicing software yet? Okay. No CRM? Okay. We are not building our own invoicing or CRM inside Zorderz, at least not yet, because WordPress is not the right place to handle those. But the apps we are building into the platform, like the pricing guide and the knowledge base and the rest of them, are useful on their own, and you can hook them up to your own systems whenever you have them.

It models the business you already run

Every business has to dictate certain actions under certain conditions. Zorderz lets you set those up, and now we can call it what it is, “conditional logic,” so that any number of steps can be automated and the app knows which tasks belong to which people on your team.

Here is what that looks like in practice. You can designate someone a chief. Then you say that chief is the chief of these particular people, and you can scope it: maybe only for a certain type of service work, or a certain product line, or maybe over that person in general. There are different levels of hierarchy, and each level carries its own rules.

So if you can describe it, you can build it. This employee can do that task during these hours, unless an admin says otherwise. Tell the system once, and it lives on as a rule that gets observed and followed from then on.

Bring your own intelligence

Ai inside Zorderz is bring your own intelligence. Today that means Poe, because a single Poe key reaches nearly every model worth using. Next comes OpenCode, and eventually local LLM harnessing through things like MCP.

On cost, and this is anecdotal: roughly $20 in a Poe account has covered on the order of 10,000 calls to the Ai tools and chats built into Zorderz, and we currently spend about $2 a day, much of which is me testing rather than working. What it would cost you is genuinely hard to predict. Every business is different, and it depends on how many people are using it and how hard they are using it.

Where this field service management software came from

In March 2026, Zorderz started as one private company’s new internal app. It worked well enough that after a while I decided a version any company could use ought to exist, so I started lifting the specifics out. That open version is Zorderz.

Who it is for

I do not know exactly who will use this yet, or why. What I know is that it has been useful in my own business, so I expect it will be useful to others who commit to trying it and judging for themselves whether it is worth it. Anyone comfortable with WordPress can install Zorderz and find out.

And I am learning that an Ai can install a WordPress website start to finish, which changes that sentence quite a bit. If the package is clearly installable and you have an Ai smart enough to reach your web server, this stops being hard. So we plan to ship a document inside the project that explains to an LLM how to install Zorderz for itself, a README at the top of the repository written for an agent as much as for a person. Easy installation is the goal, and an Ai agent is one of the users we are designing for.

After that, the future of the project belongs to whatever community forms around it. I will keep building my version of the perfect field service management software, keep taking the feedback that comes back, and between us we should end up with a better Zorderz than I would have built alone.

What to call it

People describe this category with a dozen different names, so for the record, here are the terms Zorderz is aiming at: field service management software, service business management software, job management software, work order software, small business management software, company management software, client portal software, back office software, a business operating system, open source ERP, a self hosted CRM, and a white label employee app. Different words, same want: one place where the work lives. They are also written down here because I want to remember them, and I would rather keep them on the website than go dig through a spreadsheet every time.

How zorderz.org works

This site is where you can follow the status of the Zorderz platform, and the articles on it get made a specific way. First I dictate the article into a voice memo. That goes to Claude Fable 5, with max thinking and web access turned on, and comes back as a written article. Then I read it and dictate again: what is important, what to keep, what to cut, what to change, what to add, and any statements I want included verbatim and exactly where they go. Those revisions get published as the new version.

The full version history of every one of those passes sits at the bottom of each article, and you can open any of them. The point is to make the thought process legible, including how content gets made now compared to how it used to get made, with a lot of typing and deliberate phrasing and practiced sentences. Now it can be more free association, and then picking out the best parts of what was actually said. I said it once, out loud, and it is what I actually think.

Why it is called Zorderz

The name is about orders. The premise is making orders so easy you could generate them in your sleep, because the platform quietly handles the parts that used to require you to be awake and paying attention.

I am also working out how this should be structured as a business, a public benefit corporation or an LLC, and pricing out what each one would actually cost. There may eventually be something to sell, most likely training on how to configure the platform, though that gets less necessary the moment an Ai can configure it for you. So the monetization question is honestly open right now, and that is fine. The first job is a community, and the rest can develop as we go.

Thanks for coming by, and feel free to contribute to the platform so it gets better for everybody.

— Carleton

What changed since Version 2

Removed text is struck through; added text is highlighted.

Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Deleted: <p>Zorderz is open source field service management software for WordPress. Most businesses already use good tools. The trouble is that those tools do not live in one place, and none of them know how to talk to each other. Zorderz is the hub, and the toolbox, that connects the services your business already pays for and puts them inside one app your team will actually want to open.</p>
Added: <p>Zorderz is open source field service management software for WordPress. Most businesses are already using good tools, and Zorderz is designed to connect those tools so they can talk to each other. Zorderz is an online hub that connects the tools and services your business is already paying for and puts them inside an app your team actually wants to use.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Out of the box, Zorderz is a blank slate</h2>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Added: <p>Here is where this is headed. If you already run a CRM and invoicing software, Zorderz should be able to read what is in them and build the matching structure inside your own installation, automatically-ish, so the customers, products and services you already have come across with the same names on both sides and everything knows what to call everything else. Think of it as handing Zorderz the Cliff's Notes on your business by letting it reach the APIs you connect to it. From there it can work out what your business is and which parts need naming.</p>
Added: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Added: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Added: <p>To be clear about what is real: that is me describing the future. It does not do that today. It is what we are building toward, and the premise matters more than the timeline. Zorderz is meant to work with whatever you already have rather than replace it, so there is no separate setup ritual by design. A field service management platform should meet your business where it is.</p>
Added: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Added: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Deleted: <p>Out of the box, Zorderz is ready to be customized with your own business's products, services, employees, routes, and customers. Whatever you call the things in your business, the system gives you a place to name them, categorize them, and let them interact with each other. The point of a field service management platform is that the work, the people, and the money all show up in the same place, under your own words for them.</p>
Added: <p>If you do not have those systems, that is fine too. No invoicing software yet? Okay. No CRM? Okay. We are not building our own invoicing or CRM inside Zorderz, at least not yet, because WordPress is not the right place to handle those. But the apps we are building into the platform, like the pricing guide and the knowledge base and the rest of them, are useful on their own, and you can hook them up to your own systems whenever you have them.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:heading -->
Deleted: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Rules that follow your people</h2>
Added: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">It models the business you already run</h2>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Added: <p>Every business has to dictate certain actions under certain conditions. Zorderz lets you set those up, and now we can call it what it is, "conditional logic," so that any number of steps can be automated and the app knows which tasks belong to which people on your team.</p>
Added: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Added: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Deleted: <p>Every business runs on conditional logic, even when nobody writes it down. This person can approve that. That crew member cannot send an estimate over a certain amount unless a chief signs off. Zorderz makes those rules easy to set per user, and it understands hierarchy, so one person can be the chief of another and permissions flow the way your organization actually works. If you can describe a rule in one sentence, you should be able to switch it on in about the same amount of time.</p>
Added: <p>Here is what that looks like in practice. You can designate someone a chief. Then you say that chief is the chief of these particular people, and you can scope it: maybe only for a certain type of service work, or a certain product line, or maybe over that person in general. There are different levels of hierarchy, and each level carries its own rules.</p>
Added: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Added: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Added: <p>So if you can describe it, you can build it. This employee can do that task during these hours, unless an admin says otherwise. Tell the system once, and it lives on as a rule that gets observed and followed from then on.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bring your own intelligence</h2>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Added: <p>Ai inside Zorderz is bring your own intelligence. Today that means <a href="https://poe.com">Poe</a>, because a single Poe key reaches nearly every model worth using. Next comes OpenCode, and eventually local LLM harnessing through things like MCP.</p>
Added: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Added: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Deleted: <p>AI inside Zorderz is bring your own intelligence. Today that means <a href="https://poe.com">Poe</a>, because a single Poe key reaches nearly every model worth using. We are working toward open code and other connections, so this grows into bring your own API in the fullest sense. The cost is worth being concrete about: roughly $20 in a Poe account can cover on the order of 10,000 calls to the AI tools and chats built into Zorderz, which puts the monthly AI bill for a small team around $20. We currently spend about $2 a day, though much of that is testing rather than normal use.</p>
Added: <p>On cost, and this is anecdotal: roughly $20 in a Poe account has covered on the order of 10,000 calls to the Ai tools and chats built into Zorderz, and we currently spend about $2 a day, much of which is me testing rather than working. What it would cost you is genuinely hard to predict. Every business is different, and it depends on how many people are using it and how hard they are using it.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Where this field service management software came from</h2>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <p>In March 2026, Zorderz started as one private company's new internal app. It worked well enough that after a while I decided a version any company could use ought to exist, so I started lifting the specifics out. That open version is Zorderz.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Who it is for</h2>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Added: <p>I do not know exactly who will use this yet, or why. What I know is that it has been useful in my own business, so I expect it will be useful to others who commit to trying it and judging for themselves whether it is worth it. Anyone comfortable with WordPress can install Zorderz and find out.</p>
Added: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Added: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Deleted: <p>I do not know exactly who will use this yet, or why. What I know is that it has been useful in my own business, so I expect it will be useful to others who commit to trying it and judging for themselves whether it is worth it. Anyone comfortable with WordPress can install Zorderz and find out. After that, the future of the project belongs to whatever community forms around it. I will keep building my version of the perfect field service management software, keep taking the feedback that comes back, and between us we should end up with a better Zorderz than I would have built alone.</p>
Added: <p>And I am learning that an Ai can install a WordPress website start to finish, which changes that sentence quite a bit. If the package is clearly installable and you have an Ai smart enough to reach your web server, this stops being hard. So we plan to ship a document inside the project that explains to an LLM how to install Zorderz for itself, a README at the top of the repository written for an agent as much as for a person. Easy installation is the goal, and an Ai agent is one of the users we are designing for.</p>
Added: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Added: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Added: <p>After that, the future of the project belongs to whatever community forms around it. I will keep building my version of the perfect field service management software, keep taking the feedback that comes back, and between us we should end up with a better Zorderz than I would have built alone.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What to call it</h2>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Deleted: <p>People describe this category with a dozen different names, so for the record, here are the terms Zorderz is aiming at: field service management software, service business management software, job management software, work order software, small business management software, company management software, client portal software, back office software, a business operating system, open source ERP, a self hosted CRM, and a white label employee app. Different words, same want: one place where the work lives.</p>
Added: <p>People describe this category with a dozen different names, so for the record, here are the terms Zorderz is aiming at: field service management software, service business management software, job management software, work order software, small business management software, company management software, client portal software, back office software, a business operating system, open source ERP, a self hosted CRM, and a white label employee app. Different words, same want: one place where the work lives. They are also written down here because I want to remember them, and I would rather keep them on the website than go dig through a spreadsheet every time.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:heading -->
Deleted: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">How Zorderz' website works</h2>
Added: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">How zorderz.org works</h2>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Deleted: <p>This site runs on a simple loop of AI and human input. First I dictate my thinking to an AI. The AI turns that into an article. Then I read it and decide what mattered, what did not, what to change, and what to add. Those revisions get published and become the new final version, while every earlier version stays public in the version history at the bottom of each article. You can watch the thinking change.</p>
Added: <p>This site is where you can follow the status of the Zorderz platform, and the articles on it get made a specific way. First I dictate the article into a voice memo. That goes to Claude Fable 5, with max thinking and web access turned on, and comes back as a written article. Then I read it and dictate again: what is important, what to keep, what to cut, what to change, what to add, and any statements I want included verbatim and exactly where they go. Those revisions get published as the new version.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Deleted: <p>Most articles here will not have images. Images take a lot of time to make, and this is meant to be an information first record of what we are doing and why. In that spirit, a transparent admission: right now I do not fully understand how GitHub works. I will get there, and when I do, the files go up and a community can start forming around them.</p>
Added: <p>The full version history of every one of those passes sits at the bottom of each article, and you can open any of them. The point is to make the thought process legible, including how content gets made now compared to how it used to get made, with a lot of typing and deliberate phrasing and practiced sentences. Now it can be more free association, and then picking out the best parts of what was actually said. I said it once, out loud, and it is what I actually think.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Why it is called Zorderz</h2>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:heading -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <p>The name is about orders. The premise is making orders so easy you could generate them in your sleep, because the platform quietly handles the parts that used to require you to be awake and paying attention.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Added: <p>I am also working out how this should be structured as a business, a public benefit corporation or an LLC, and pricing out what each one would actually cost. There may eventually be something to sell, most likely training on how to configure the platform, though that gets less necessary the moment an Ai can configure it for you. So the monetization question is honestly open right now, and that is fine. The first job is a community, and the rest can develop as we go.</p>
Added: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Added: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Deleted: <p>I hope you join for the journey, and I hope it is fun for everyone.</p>
Added: <p>Thanks for coming by, and feel free to contribute to the platform so it gets better for everybody.</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <!-- wp:paragraph -->
Unchanged: <p>--- Carleton</p>
Unchanged: <!-- /wp:paragraph -->

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