Common questions

Yes, but it’s not magic. Transcription handles background noise well — compressors, nail guns, music — but if you’re inside a roof space yelling, dictate when you crawl out. The voice memo is captured locally first, so patchy 4G isn’t a problem. It uploads when you’re back in coverage.

The Standalone tier doesn’t need it. You’ll get a customer-facing PDF report with every variation: description, agreement notes, photos, timestamps. Hand it to the customer with the final invoice (or email it from the app).

You review every variation before it gets saved. The transcript is right there — edit the description, change the labour hours, swap the parts. Most tradies tweak about one in five.

Both. The phone app is the main on-site tool — offline queue, background upload. But you can also record straight from a desktop browser: sign in, hit Record, pick the job, and talk. Handy when you’re back at the desk writing up the day. Recording from a desktop needs a microphone and one click to allow access.

Once you’ve reviewed a variation it’s attached to its job. From the job you can pull the variations together into a bill, set the labour hours and rate, add or adjust parts, and write a note that shows on the customer’s copy. Send it as a PDF, or — on the Xero tier — push the line items straight into Xero as a draft invoice.

Your catalog. Add the parts you fit regularly with a price each, plus a few aliases— the way you actually say them out loud — so “ten amp gpo” reliably matches “10A double GPO.” When a variation mentions a part that isn’t priced yet, it’s flagged so nothing slips onto a bill at $0. Labour is charged at the job’s rate, or your workspace default if the job doesn’t set one.

Only if you tell them. The PDF and the Xero line items are in your business voice. Nothing on the invoice mentions Tydra, transcription, or AI.

Add it later. Open the job and record against it from the app, or from any desktop browser — the variation lands in the same review queue as an on-site capture. On the day is best, while the detail is fresh, but a variation captured back at the office still beats one that never makes the invoice.

The native app is iOS-only right now — that’s where on-site voice recording, the offline queue and background upload live, and a dedicated Android app isn’t on the near-term roadmap. You’re not locked out, though: from any desktop browser you can record a variation as well as review captures, manage jobs and customers, and send bills. And from a phone browser — Android included — you can do everything except record.

Invoice data, customer details, and transcripts are stored in AWS Sydney via Supabase. The only exception: when we structure a variation, the audio and transcript are sent to OpenAI (for transcription) and Anthropic (for structuring), processed, and returned. Neither provider trains models on your data. Everything else stays in Sydney.

Yes — NZ Privacy Act 2020 and Australian Privacy Act 1988. A data-processing agreement is available for bookkeepers and businesses that need one.

Export everything from the dashboard before you cancel. After cancellation, your data stays for 30 days in case you reactivate, then it’s permanently deleted. Xero connection is revoked immediately on cancel.

For NZ residential building work over $30,000 you legally need a written contract that covers variations. ⁴ Tydra doesn’t replace that — but the PDFs we generate are exactly the kind of “in writing” record that meets the spirit of the Building Act 2004 written-contract rules and keeps everyone clear on what was agreed.