The paperwork that piles up after the job's done, handled.
Quoting, invoicing, chasing payment and working out what a job actually made once materials and hire gear are counted, done during the day, not stacked up for whenever there's finally a free evening.
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What's covered
Every one of these already has to happen. The change is when it happens, as the job moves, rather than in a batch on a Sunday night. Job costing especially tends to get skipped entirely, which means a job that quietly lost money keeps getting quoted the same way until someone finally sits down and works out why.
You ring through the measurements and what the job involves on the drive back. Someone types it up in your wording, at your prices, and it goes out that afternoon instead of three days later.
An invoice raised as soon as a job's marked finished, not whenever there's a spare half hour to sit down and do it. When one goes past its terms, a person rings about it, which is the bit most owners put off longest.
What a finished job actually made once the materials, the machinery hire and the tip fees are counted, worked out from records that already exist, rather than a guess at the end of the month.
A person does this work, which is the difference between this page and business systems. Software can raise an invoice on a schedule and send a reminder when one is late. It can't ring a customer who's stopped replying about a big bill and work out whether they're short this month or unhappy with the job. That call gets made by someone who then tells you what they found.
And the rest of it
The admin that doesn't show up on an invoice but still has to get done somewhere.
Jobs booked around travel time and whatever gear is already out on-site, so tomorrow's run isn't rebuilt by phone at seven in the morning.
Supplier invoices filed and coded as they arrive, and a clean handoff to your bookkeeper or accountant at the end of the month instead of a glovebox full of receipts.
Scheduling and supplier paperwork end up in the same pile because both depend on knowing what's already committed, a job booked against gear that's actually free, an invoice matched to the delivery it belongs to. Sorted at the source, neither one turns into a phone call later to work out what actually happened.
What has to come from you
Access to whatever you already use, your own logins rather than ours, and the rules you price by. That last one takes the longest to get out of an owner's head and onto paper, because most of it has never been written down: what the callout covers, when a job moves to day rate, which customers are on account and which pay before the ute leaves. Until those are written down, someone has to ring you to ask, and that defeats the point.
Job costing needs one more thing, which is a decision about what counts. Materials and hire are easy. The arguments are over travel, the hour spent loading, the apprentice standing around waiting for a delivery, and rework that was nobody's fault. Whatever you decide, it stays the same across every job, because a costing method that changes between jobs can't tell you which type of work is worth chasing.
Less time proving what the day was worth
None of this replaces an accountant or a bookkeeper. It's the day-to-day admin that decides whether you actually know what a job made, handled early enough that the end of the month stops being a surprise.
Where this isn't the right fit
If someone at home already does the books and does them well, this is a cost with nothing to show for it. The same goes for a business where the admin genuinely fits in an hour on a Sunday. Handing that hour over costs more than it saves, and you'd still be the one answering the questions.
There's also a limit worth being upfront about. Bad records in, bad costing out. If hours aren't recorded and materials get bought on a personal card with no receipt kept, nobody can tell you what a job made, and the first month or two is spent fixing that rather than producing numbers. It's worth doing. But it's slower than people expect, and anyone promising a clean picture in a fortnight hasn't seen the glovebox.
Worth checking yourself first
One free calculator covers a good chunk of this before you talk to us. The job profitability calculator shows whether a job actually made money once the ute, the hours and the rework are counted. It takes a couple of minutes, and running your own numbers through it first means the conversation with us starts from where your business actually is rather than a guess.
Works alongside
Tell us what admin is piling up
Tell us how quotes, invoicing and job costing currently get handled and we'll point out where the biggest time sink actually is, often not where you'd guess. No charge for the look.