The website is the front of the business.
The paperwork is the back.
And the back is where the hours go. This page is about the second half, and every job on it already runs in our own business every week. That is the only reason we offer any of it.
What this actually is
The same three jobs, every week, typed out by hand
Every business has them. The order that has to go in on Monday. The list of what is short. The enquiry off the website that has to be turned into a real number. The schedule that has to go out before anybody can plan their week.
None of it is difficult. All of it is the same every time, and all of it happens after the work is finished for the day, which is why it gets done badly or late or both.
We set these up to run on their own, and to put the result in front of a person before anything leaves the building.
The rule underneath all of it
A person looks at everything before it goes out.
Every one of these builds a draft. A draft estimate, a draft order, a draft email, a flag on a screen. It waits for somebody in your business to read it and press send.
A system that emails your customers on its own is a system that will one day email your customers something you would not have said. So they do not do that, and that is not a setting anybody can turn off.
Running now, in our own business
Four of them, and what each one actually does
These are described as they run for a catering business. Yours would be the same shape and different in the details, and the details are the job.
The website enquiry becomes a real number
Twice a day
Somebody fills in the quote form on the website. Twice a day every new one is read, the quantities are worked out from the guest count, the live prices are pulled out of the books, and a draft estimate is built and sat there waiting.
If something is missing, an address without a zip code, a time nobody filled in, it does not guess. It drafts a short note asking for the one thing it needs, and it says on the summary what it could not finish.
What it replaces. Somebody retyping the same form into the accounting system by hand, and getting a price wrong once a month.
The vendor order builds itself
Monday
It reads what is actually on the books for the coming week, works out what has to be ordered, and builds the purchase order to the supplier. Beside it, the list of everything that supplier does not carry, so one person can do one shop.
Then on Tuesday it reads the week again, because bookings change over a weekend, and it says what moved.
What it replaces. An hour on Monday night with a pen, and the thing everybody forgets until Thursday.
The week goes out to the people working it
Tuesday
The schedule for the week is built out of the same books, with who is where, at what time, with what equipment. The emails that go with it are drafted ready to send.
Anything missing gets named plainly rather than filled in with a guess. A job with no address on it is reported as a job with no address on it.
What it replaces. The phone calls on Friday afternoon asking where everybody is supposed to be.
The equipment gets counted
Every morning
Every morning it counts what is committed against what exists, and it stays quiet. It only says something when a type of equipment drops to one spare, and then it says exactly which one.
A report that arrives every day gets ignored by the second week. A report that only arrives when something is wrong gets read.
What it replaces. Finding out on the morning of the job that both of them are already out.
How this is sold
Its own job, its own quote, every time
Office work is never folded into a website setup session and it is never assumed because you asked about a website. If you want a site and nothing else, that is what you get and nobody will bring this up again.
It is the same rate as everything else, $75 an hour, invoiced weekly.
Before you ask
What it needs from you
- Your books already need to be somewhere a computer can read, rather than in a drawer
- Somebody in your business has to own the result, by name, the same as with the website
- Every account is in your name and you can lock us out whenever you like, exactly as on the website side
There is a monthly subscription behind this work, the same one that lets your own person change the website. It starts around twenty dollars a month, it is in your name, and we say the price before you sign up rather than after.
Which job would you take back first?
That is the whole of the first conversation. Tell us the one that annoys you most and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth doing.