vs Excel
Excel is how the office remembers the plant. Lantern is how the tech in the IDF remembers it. The phone is already in his hand. A workbook is not.
Enlighten playbook · Mike Cobus · not a customer page
For Mike
What to send. What to say. What to collect on day one.
Copy you can paste. First shops to call: Kelley Communications, RD Technology, Edge Electric, Kohl, Terminal-Andrae. The public site for them is /for-contractors. This page is the packet behind it.
Thirty seconds
Say this standing up
Mike Cobus, Enlighten Studios in Waukesha. We built Lantern for the hole between LinkWare and QuickBooks. Tech in the closet looks up a jack, sees the switch port and the phone on that drop. When the pull is done, the Fluke PDF sits on the work order and the invoice matches the PO. We map the building as a job — typically $3,500 for a normal office — then the shop pays $99 a month for the office and $35 a seat in the field. We don’t take a cut of what you bill your customer. Want to walk a live plant this week?
Outreach email
Subject: The phone in the closet — Lantern from Enlighten (Waukesha)
Hi — Mike Cobus, Enlighten Studios in Waukesha. We built a field map for cabling shops called Lantern. The hole we keep seeing: a tech is in the closet with a phone in his hand, the cert lives in LinkWare, and the invoice is a different spreadsheet that does not match the PO. Lantern is the jack, the switch port, the IP phone on that drop, the Fluke PDF on the work order, and the bill that matches. We do not replace LinkWare, QuickBooks, Jobber, or ConnectWise. We sit in the hole between them. How it starts: we map the first building as a job (typical office is $3,500). Then the shop pays $99/month for the office seat and $35/month per tech in the field. A six-person Cable Pro shop lands around $274/month. You bill your customer. We do not take a cut of that. If you want a look, the live tool is https://lantern.enlightenstudios.us/for-contractors. I can walk a mapped plant with you this week. Mike Cobus Enlighten Studios · Waukesha, Wisconsin mike@enlightenstudios.us
Day one
First-customer checklist
Do not open the tenant until the walk is booked and the admin is named. SKU placeholders stay off their price book.
01
Legal name and billing email
The QuickBooks invoice for seats.
02
Who signs and who is company admin
One person invites techs. One person pays Enlighten.
03
Package
Cable Pro unless they truly do not bill the customer.
04
Seat count
Office is one. Field seats are named people, not a pool.
05
First building street address
Plant lives on a building, not on a company name.
06
Access for the walk
Escort, badge hours, after-hours, who has the closet keys.
07
What they already have
Spreadsheet, as-builts, panel schedules, photos. We use it. We do not assume it is true.
08
Cable ID scheme
If they have one, we keep it. If they don’t, we write one before we label.
09
How they bill their customer
SKU list for the price book — footage, jack, cert, trip, labor.
10
Vendor setup
Enlighten Studios in their AP. Net 15 on seats. Freeze if it ages out.
Objections
They already have a tool. Agree.
vs Jobber
Keep Jobber. That is dispatch and the calendar. Lantern is the closet — jack, port, phone, cert, bill. We are not a scheduling app.
vs LinkWare
Keep LinkWare. We do not replace the tester or parse the database. Export the PDF you already export. It sits on the work order so closeout is not a scavenger hunt.
vs ConnectWise
Keep ConnectWise if that is your PSA. We do not ticket the helpdesk, run agreements, or steal the time sheet. The hole is the plant plus the cabling invoice.
vs D-Tools / Accubid
We are not a bid tool. We do not win the job. We run the job you already won — in the closet, then on the invoice.
vs QuickBooks
They still pay you in QuickBooks. Lantern writes the job invoice so the PO, the footage, and the cert agree. Enlighten invoices them for seats the same way they already pay us.