For the ones who are also the office
You are good at the work. The paperwork is what is costing you evenings.
Quotes, invoices, bookings, chasing the ones who have not paid, and a website that has said the same thing for three years. All of it done while you are out on the job, and waiting for a yes when you sit down.
It is an hours problem, not a discipline problem
The work gets done. It is the hour afterwards that does not: the quote you meant to send from the van, the invoice that waits until Sunday, the customer who has not paid and who you have not chased because ringing people about money is nobody's idea of an evening.
None of that is a character flaw. You are one person doing the job of about four, and the office one is the only one that can be put off without anybody noticing today. It just compounds, quietly, until a Sunday disappears into it.
So this does not give you a system to keep on top of. It does the office job. You talk to it the way you would talk to somebody sat in your office, and most of the time it has already happened by the time you mention it.
The things that keep slipping
Handled while you are on site, not queued for you.
The quote that never went out
Say what the job is and it prices it off your own price list, puts it on your own letterhead and sends it. The one you would have sent on Thursday goes out at ten past nine.
The invoice that waited for Sunday
Raised the day the work finished, with the tax and the totals worked out, and sent while the customer still remembers being pleased with it.
Chasing people for money
Anything unpaid is followed up politely, on a schedule, until it is paid. You are never the one who has to ring up and ask twice.
The enquiry that went to a voicemail
Answered while your hands are dirty, with the slots you actually have free, and in the diary before they ring the next name on the list.
Remembering what was agreed
Every job, quote, message and photograph on one customer record, so a conversation on a doorstep in March is still there in November.
The website that is three years out of date
Put your prices up or add a service and the site agrees with you the same day, because it reads the same records as everything else.
An ordinary Tuesday
The same day you already have, with the office half of it already done.
- 06:40
Last night's enquiry already has an answer
It came in at twenty past eleven. It was answered before you were awake, with the slots you actually have free and your real prices.
- 09:15
The quote went out before you got back to the van
You said what the job was. It priced it, put it on your letterhead and sent it, while you were still on site.
- 13:50
The parts came off the shelf on their own
Two used on the job. Stock knows, the cost is on the job, and the reorder is flagged before you run out on a Friday afternoon.
- 16:25
The job closed and the invoice went with it
Photographs, signature, invoice. Raised the day the work finished, rather than the Sunday you finally sat down to it.
- 20:30
You read the day back
Everything it did, in plain English, in the order it happened. You say yes, no, or do it differently, and it stays corrected.
Nothing on this list needed you at a desk.
What owners ask
Will it send things to my customers without me seeing them first?
Only where you tell it to. It drafts and waits by default: quotes, invoices and replies sit ready for a yes from you. Once you trust it with a particular kind of job, say so, and it sends those on its own. You can take that back the same day.
What happens when it gets a quote wrong?
You correct it and tell it why. It keeps the correction and prices that kind of job your way from then on, so the same mistake does not come back next month.
I am not technical.
You talk to it the way you would talk to somebody sat in your office: what happened, what you need, who is waiting. If you can describe a job down the phone, you can get a quote out of it.
What happens to my diary and my spreadsheets?
They come in as they are. Customers, suppliers and price lists get typed up for you. If getting your own work in meant retyping years of it, you would stop on day one, and you would be right to.
I take somebody on in the summer. Does it get more expensive?
No. It is one price for the business with unlimited people, so hiring changes your wage bill and not your software bill.
How long before it is actually useful?
An afternoon. You tell it your trade, your prices, your hours and how you like things worded, hand it your customer list and your price list, and it works from that evening on.
Give it the afternoon you keep meaning to spend on the paperwork
Vestae is in beta and places are currently full. Join the waitlist, and when your invite arrives, bring your customer list and your price list. See what has already been done by the time you sit down the next night.