Tick Tock Tracker does two big things. It runs a watchmaker's repair business, and it organizes a watch collector's collection — and it quietly stitches the two together so a watch's history follows it forever.
That sounds like a lot. It isn't, once you see it. This book walks you through it the way a friend would: one small piece at a time, in order, with no assumptions that you already know how any of it works.
You don't have to read it cover to cover. Each chapter stands on its own. If you're a watchmaker, Parts 1, 2, and 4 are your bread and butter. If you're a collector, read Parts 1, 3, and 4. If you're both — plenty of people are — read the whole thing.
In writing this, we assume:
If that's you, you're in the right place.
Throughout the book, little icons flag things worth slowing down for:
Installed the app already? Jump to Part 2 (watchmakers) or Part 3 (collectors). Haven't installed it? Chapter 2 takes ninety seconds. Want the big idea that makes this app different from everything else? Skip straight to Part 4, the Watch Passport — that's the magic trick.
Tick Tock Tracker is one app that does two jobs:
The clever part is that those two worlds live in the *same* app. So when a watchmaker finishes servicing a watch, the record of that work can land directly on the collector's watch — and travel with it forever. No other app connects the repair bench and the collector's shelf like that.
Why a watchmaker should care: Right now you're probably tracking jobs on paper, texting customers one at a time, and hoping you remember to tell someone their watch is ready. You lose tickets. You forget to follow up. You have no clean way to prove what you did. Tick Tock Tracker becomes the front desk you never had time to hire.
Why a collector should care: You've got watches and no single trustworthy place that records what they are, what they're worth, what's been done to them, and where they came from. When you sell, you can't *prove* any of it. Tick Tock Tracker is a digital home for your collection — and the proof that makes each watch worth more.
Open the app and sign up with your email. The first time you log in, the app walks you through a short setup wizard (more on that in the watchmaker and collector chapters). You can't really do this part wrong — it won't let you skip the steps that matter.
The app has two modes you turn on or off in Settings:
You can run one, the other, or both. Most watchmakers run both. Most collectors run just the collector side. Running *both* at once is a Pro feature (more on pricing in Chapter 15).
Here's the cheat sheet. Don't memorize it — just know it exists so you know what's possible.
The Watchmaker side gives you:
The Collector side gives you:
The next two parts take these one at a time. Pick your side.
The goal of this chapter: get a real watch into the app in about five minutes, and never write an "I got your watch" text by hand again.
The first time you log in as a watchmaker, a full-screen setup wizard runs that you can't skip (on purpose — it makes sure the important stuff gets done):
ticktocktracker.app/intake/your-shop) you'll hand out to customers, with a live preview as you type.Then you get a "you're ready" screen with your intake link and a Copy button.
Tap 🔧 Get a Job. You've got two ways to bring a watch in:
The customer fills out a simple web form — their info, the watch, the problem, photos. No app required on their end. Their submission lands in your Requests queue — and you get a push notification the moment it does, even with the app closed.
On the form, the customer also chooses how the watch gets to you: *"I'll ship it myself"* (they mail it with their own postage) or *"Send me a prepaid shipping label"* (you email them a ready‑to‑print label — the postage just goes on their final bill). If they pick the label, their request shows a 🏷️ "Wants a prepaid label" flag so you know to send one.
Open the request in your queue. You can ✅ Accept & Create Job, ❌ Decline, or 💬 Ask a Question first.
The moment you accept, the customer automatically gets an email and a text saying their request was accepted, with a private tracking link in the email. If they asked you to ship it themselves, the message tells them to mail it to your address. If they asked for a prepaid label, the message instead says *"watch for your shipping label — don't mail it yet"* (so they don't go pay for postage), and you send them one from the job (next chapter).
Once a watch is in your hands, the job moves through clear stages. You just change the status as you go, and the app handles the rest.
A job moves: Intake → Pending → Received → Estimate Sent → In Progress → Parts Ordered → Ready → Shipped → Delivered. (Plus Declined, Cancelled, and Recalled when life happens.)
Every time you change the status, the customer automatically gets a short text. You don't write it. You don't send it. It just goes.
Before you crack a watch open and order parts, you can send the customer an estimate to approve. On the job screen, tap "📋 Send estimate" — it quotes the current parts + labor total, and you can set an optional evaluation fee in case they decline.
Don't want to build the quote from scratch? Tap "🤖 AI Assist — draft the estimate." It reads the customer's complaint, the watch, and a photo (if there is one), and drafts the likely issues, the parts and labor a typical repair involves with rough costs, and a suggested scope.
You're the expert — it's a *starting point*. Every suggestion has a checkbox: tick the ones that fit, edit the numbers, drop the rest, and "Add selected to the job." They drop straight into your estimate, ready to send. It'll even fill in the movement caliber if it can tell and you hadn't entered one.
Open a job and you'll notice it's laid out like a medical SOAP note — the format watchmakers found instantly familiar:
Little privacy badges (an 👁 eye, a 🔒 lock, a passport seal) show you at a glance what the customer can see, what's private to you, and what gets written onto the watch's permanent passport.
As you work, you'll want to jot things down. The job has a Service Journal — separate, dated entries, not one endless paragraph. Each time you add a note, it's stamped with the date, so you (and later, you again) can see how the job unfolded over time. You can edit or delete an entry, and you can choose to share a specific entry with the customer if you want them to see it.
Every part on a job has its own little tracker: supplier, order date, expected arrival, and a status (Ordered → Received → Installed).
When packages start arriving, the Parts Receiving dock is your friend. It lists every incoming part across *all* your jobs — with the watch and customer shown nice and big — so when a box shows up you find the right watch in one tap and mark it received. The customer automatically gets a "your part arrived" text. Overdue parts flag red and give you a once-a-day nudge.
When you add a *new, priced* part, the customer is automatically given a heads-up (link-free text + email) that you identified a part and roughly what it costs. This is a soft heads-up — you keep working, you don't wait for a thumbs-up. If they have a concern, they raise it in the chat.
Parts + labor + tax − any discount roll up into a job total automatically. Tap to generate a clean, branded PDF invoice. You can record full or partial payments.
You can buy a USPS label without leaving the app, in either direction, and it attaches to the job.
The cost takes care of itself. Whenever you buy a label, the app adds a "🚚 Shipping & handling" line to that job's bill — the postage plus a small 2% convenience fee, rounded up. It shows up itemized on the customer's tracking page and invoice, and they pay it when they settle the bill. You're made whole automatically; the line is editable if you ever want to absorb it.
noreply@…), not yours — and the only contact on the label is whatever you set as your shop phone, email, and address in Settings. Put a dedicated number/email there (not your personal cell) and you stay private.Set your bench capacity and an accepting status (🟢 accepting / 🟡 waitlist / 🔴 not accepting). When your bench is full, accepting a new request puts it on a waitlist — the customer is told their place in line and to hold onto their watch. When a slot frees up (a job is delivered or cancelled), the next person in line is automatically invited to ship.
Money can move *inside* the app now — no more chasing Venmo, Zelle, or cash by hand (though you can still record those by hand if you like).
You connect your bank through Stripe's own quick guided setup — about three minutes. Stripe is the licensed company that actually handles the money; you're the merchant. (This is also why the platform doesn't need a money-transmitter license — Stripe carries that.)
A swap meet for the bench. Post a part you're 🔎 In Search Of or one you have 🟢 Available (set a price *and* a shipping amount). Need to change something? ✏️ Edit any of your own listings to fix a typo, adjust the price/shipping, or swap the photo — and 🔁 flip a listing between ISO and Available in one tap. No deleting and reposting.
When someone buys your part:
On your Analytics screen, tap 📒 Export for QuickBooks and you get a clean spreadsheet of every job — date, customer, parts, labor, shipping, tax, total, paid, balance, status. Open it in Excel or Google Sheets, or hand it straight to your bookkeeper. No more retyping a year of income at tax time.
This is the feature watchmakers fall in love with. You change a status. The app talks to your customer. You never compose the message.
Every job has a two-way chat. If the customer has the app, they get a push notification. If they don't, the app shows you a Contact Customer sheet — you type one message and it goes out by both text and email so it reliably lands, and there's an "Invite to the app" button right there.
The first time you log in as a collector, the app walks you through a short flow you can't skip (it only runs once):
Each watch in your collection can carry: brand, model, year, serial number, movement, condition, whether you have the box & papers, what you paid, its estimated value, and photos.
Open your collection and the first thing you see is a "net-worth" card: *Your Collection — $184,200 ▲ +25%*, with the number counting up as you add or value watches. Each watch shows its gain or loss versus what you paid. Think "Robinhood or Mint, but for watches."
Point your camera at a watch — or open any watch you've already added — and the AI Advisor gives you an identification, a market-value estimate, and authentication help. Re-run it anytime from any watch.
Any watch in your collection can be marked for sale or trade, with an asking price (or "trade only"). One simple idea runs through the whole thing: a watch is either Listed or it isn't. List or unlist a single watch from its detail screen, or several at once with ✓ Select.
Each listing has a one-tap 🌐 Public / 👥 Friends Only toggle (only you can see it) so you can move a watch between the public marketplace and your private friends circle instantly.
This is what makes the marketplace different from trading with anonymous strangers:
Two ways to see what a friend has listed:
Both show only what each person chose to list — and both honor the 🌐/👥 toggle.
If you sell on Whatnot (the live‑shopping platform), catalog your watches here once and export them in a click. In your Collection tap 🏷️ (select), tick the watches you're listing, and tap ⬇ Whatnot — it builds a ready‑to‑upload spreadsheet for Whatnot's bulk lister, with titles, prices, conditions, and photos already filled in.
Browse the Watchmaker Directory — each shop's star rating, typical wait, and whether they're accepting (🟢 / 🟡 / 🔴). Open a watch → Send for Service → pick a shop, and choose how it gets there: ship it yourself or have them send you a prepaid label.
From there you follow the whole repair inside your collection:
If you read only one part of this book, read this one. The Watch Passport is what makes Tick Tock Tracker different from every other watch app.
The Passport is a permanent, travel-with-the-watch logbook of everything that's ever happened to a watch: when it was bought, who's owned it, and every professional service performed on it — what was done, by whom, when, with photos and price.
That second one is the powerful part. The service record is written and signed by the professional who actually did the work — not self-reported by a seller hoping you'll believe them.
A watch with a complete, professionally-verified passport is worth more and easier to trust. It's the difference between "the seller says it was serviced" and "here's the proof." For insurance, for resale, for the next owner — provenance you can actually prove.
Here's the part that turns the passport from a nice feature into a genuine moat.
When a watchmaker finishes a job, they tap Sign & Record Permanently on a screen that spells out, in writing, that the entry can never be edited or deleted and will be visible to all future owners. At that moment the app creates a unique verification code for the entry — something like 3f8a-92bc-44d1 — printed on the in-app passport, the PDF, and any printed record.
This is the moat. Anyone — a buyer, an insurer, a curious stranger — can go to the public verify page, type in a watch's brand and serial number (or scan its verify code), and get a privacy-safe summary of its verified service history. No login. No account. It looks like a Certificate of Service — a wax-seal badge that says this record is real and untampered.
What the public sees is deliberately limited: the verified service headlines and a "✓ Verified" seal — never the owner's name, the prices, the full serial number, or where the watch lives. The full record only goes to a buyer the owner chooses to share it with.
You don't pay to *use* the app. The core is free — for good. You pay only for *extra capacity and pro tools*, and there's a small fee when money actually moves through the app.
Thanks for reading — now go make something tick.