A renovation is months of admin run from a phone on a scaffold: enquiries to answer, site visits to arrange, a stage invoice to raise when the roof goes on, kitchens and windows to chase before the day they are needed. The owner did it in the van at lunch and the evenings, and stage invoices went out a week late because he forgot. He wanted the admin done by the time he got home.
Three things kept going wrong, and each cost the business time, money or a customer.
Three agents built on the firm's job-management app and accounts, with the owner approving every quote and any invoice outside the agreed stage plan, and a person always on the end of a call.
The job app had the projects, the stage plans and the order lists; the accounts had the invoices. The owner recorded how he answers an enquiry and what he asks, and that became the intake agent's script. For the first week he read every reply from the van at lunch; the second week he read the summaries. The billing agent raised its first stage invoice on day six, the morning after a first-fix milestone, and the client paid it before the owner had noticed it had gone.
Enquiries are answered within the hour and site visits booked the same day, from the scaffold or not. Stage invoices go out the day the milestone is reached, and payments arrive nine days sooner across the year. Suppliers are confirmed a week ahead and the foreman hears about a late kitchen before the fitters do. The owner's evenings are his again, and the office manager spends hers on the accounts rather than the chasing.
'The stage invoice for the roof used to go out when I remembered, which was the following Sunday. Now it goes out the day the roof's on, and I find out when it's been paid.'
Owner
Quotes were written up by the owner in the evenings, so they went out four days after a site visit and jobs were lost to faster competitors. Invoices went out late for the same reason.
Every job ended with paperwork: the EICR or minor works certificate typed up that evening, the quote for the next job written at the weekend, and landlords chasing for documents their agents needed by Friday. The firm wanted the paperwork done when the job was done.
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