Where to start

Take the enquiry without writing it on a job sheet

An enquiry that lives in a text message is the one you forget. This one has a record from the moment it arrives, whether it came off your website or off the phone.

Price the job from your own list

You priced this exact job three weeks ago. Your saved prices mean you do not price it again, and you do not undercut yourself by memory.

Send the quote and watch what happens to it

You can see it was opened. The ones that were not are the ones to ring, and you are not guessing which.

Let them accept it and book themselves in

The evening phone call you would otherwise have made. They pick a slot you are actually free for.

Do the work and finish it on your phone

Photos, a note of what you did, and the job closed before you drive off. No paperwork waiting at home.

Raise the invoice from the finished job

The job already knows what the work was and what it was worth. Raising the invoice is one press, and it is not the same press as sending it.

Get paid, and chase what is late without a difficult phone call

A payment link on the invoice, and a list of who has not paid that is ordered by how late they are rather than by when you remembered.

See what you have finished and never billed

The money most one-man businesses lose is not unpaid — it is uninvoiced. This is the list, and it is usually a surprise.

Put the week in one diary

Who is on what, where, and whether it fits their working day. The diary refuses to double-book somebody and warns when the day will not fit.

Set working hours and time off once

Everything else reads them: the booking screen, the customer's own slot picker, and who is free tomorrow. Nobody is booked on their day off by accident.

Let the customer know the day before

The reminder that stops the no-access visit. A locked door costs you the whole slot and nobody pays for it.

Watch the job move without ringing anybody

Clocked on, en route, finished. The office knows where the day is without interrupting the person doing it.

Charge for what they found when they got there

The extra work your engineer finds is quoted, approved by the customer on their phone, and added to the invoice. This is the single biggest thing most teams are not billing for.

Record what the job looked like

Photos before and after, kept against the job. Internal until you choose to send them, which is what makes people willing to take them.

Keep the van moving

The diary knows how far apart two jobs are and says when the drive between them does not exist. Port Talbot at ten and Pontypridd at five to eleven passes every other check there is.

Work the Revenue Radar

Quotes nobody answered, services due again, customers who have gone quiet. Work you have already paid to win once.

Run a job that takes forty visits, not one

A job is the work; a visit is a block of somebody's time. A three-month site contract is one job with a diary behind it, not forty jobs.

Put two or three people on the same visit

A two-man lift is one visit with two people on it, and both of their diaries show them busy. Recording the second person without counting them busy would be worse than not having it.

Carry their purchase order number through to the invoice

A main contractor's accounts department will not pay an invoice without the PO on it. It is recorded on the job or the quote and printed on the invoice and the statement.

No guide of its own yet — it is a field on the job and the quote, and it prints on the invoice.

Bill the days actually worked

Two men on site for six weeks at a rate per man per day. The diary already knows who was there; the invoice is a count, not an estimate, and a rate nobody has set is refused rather than billed at nothing.

Take the money in stages

A deposit is stage one, the last stage is the remainder rather than a percentage, and what has already gone out cannot be rescheduled.

Bill a managing agent once a month

Thirty jobs across twenty addresses on one statement, with their PO numbers and their terms.

Record the retention they are holding

Without this, an invoice paid short by retention reads as overdue and your biggest customer ends up on the chase list for money that is not late.

Get the CIS deduction right, and get it back

On labour only, on the net, and the total does not move. The statements and the tax-year reclaim come out of the same figures the invoice went out with.

Apply the VAT reverse charge where it belongs

Construction work for another contractor, with the wording HMRC wants on the invoice.

See what the contract actually made

Profit off the line items, never the invoice total, and it tells you what share of the work it is speaking for rather than quietly leaving the uncosted half out.