How to Keep Track of Jobs as a Tradie (Without a New App)
- Jobs get lost in the gaps between quoting, booking, finishing and invoicing, never while the work itself is being done.
- Giving every job a state and checking one list twice a week closes those gaps completely.
- Responsiveness is praised in 38.0% of positive plumber reviews, showing customers judge you on follow-up, not systems.
Nobody loses a job while they are standing on site doing it. Jobs get lost in the gaps: the quote that was sent and never followed up, the accepted job that was never booked, the finished job that was never invoiced, the invoice that was never chased. In a small trade business those gaps are managed from memory, a notebook, and a phone full of half-read messages, and the symptoms are always the same. A customer rings to ask what is happening. A quote from six weeks ago turns up accepted and you have no room for it. A job gets invoiced twice, or not at all.
Keeping track of jobs does not need new software. It needs every job to have a state, and one place where the state is written down.
Every job is in one of five states
Quoted: the quote has gone out and nothing has come back. Accepted: the customer said yes and the job needs a date. Booked: it has a date and a person. Done: the work is finished and the invoice is owed. Paid: it is over.
That is the whole model. A job can only be in one state at a time, and it only ever moves forward. If you can look at a list and see every job with its state, you can see every gap: quotes that have sat for ten days, accepted jobs with no date, done jobs with no invoice, invoices past due.
One list, whatever it lives in
A whiteboard in the workshop with five columns works. A spreadsheet with five columns works. A job management app works, if you will actually open it. The tool matters far less than the rule that every job is on the list the moment it is quoted and stays there until it is paid.
For each job, the list needs the job number, the customer’s name, the site, the state, the date it entered that state, and who is on it. That is six columns. Everything else, the scope, the materials, the times on site, lives on the job sheet, not the list.
The two moments that matter
The first is quote acceptance. The moment a customer says yes, the job moves to Accepted and a work order gets written: the scope in the quote’s words, the materials, the access details, the time window. That document is what the person doing the job takes with them. Without it, every accepted job generates a phone call on the morning it starts.
The second is completion. When the work is done, the job sheet comes back with the actual hours, materials and any extras, and the invoice goes out from it the same day. Done jobs that sit un-invoiced for a fortnight are the single most expensive gap in most trade businesses, because the money is earned and nothing is happening to collect it.
Done jobs that sit un-invoiced for a fortnight are the single most expensive gap in most trade businesses, because the money is earned and nothing is happening to collect it.
Check the list twice a week
Monday and Thursday, five minutes. Any quote older than a week gets a follow-up. Any accepted job without a date gets one. Any done job without an invoice gets invoiced. Any invoice past due gets a reminder. That routine is the entire system. It is not sophisticated, and it works because it is short enough to actually do.
What the customer notices
Customers do not see your list. They see whether you got back to them. Across 20,286 publicly posted reviews of NZ electricians, plumbers and painters, responsiveness is praised in 38.0% of positive plumber reviews, 34.5% for electricians and 20.4% for painters. Slow communication appears as a complaint theme in negative plumber reviews at about 3%. Most of what customers experience as responsiveness is a business that knows what state each job is in and can answer the question without checking.
Start with the sheet, not the app
If you are going from nothing, start with the job sheet, because that is the document that captures what actually happened on site and feeds the invoice. The work order and job sheet in our resource library is a free PDF and Word template: the work order for handing a job over, and a daily sheet for recording times, materials and extras. Pair it with a five-column list and you have a tracking system that fits in a glovebox.
When the list is working and the gaps have closed, then look at software. Most tradies who buy an app before they have the habit end up with an expensive notebook they do not open.
Jobs do not go wrong on site. They go wrong in the gaps, and the gaps are the easiest thing in the business to close.
What to do on Monday
- Check the list for any quote older than a week and follow up with that customer.
- Check for accepted jobs with no date and book one in straight away.
- Check for finished jobs with no invoice and send that invoice the same day.
