Built for your trade
Find the business that sounds like yours
Every kind of business below loses time and work in its own particular way. Each one gets a system shaped around that, not a general-purpose tool pointed at it. Read the problem first — if it does not describe your week, the package underneath it is not the one for you.
Home improvement firms quoting big jobs
General builders and main contractorsLoft conversion and extension specialistsKitchen fittersBathroom and wet room fittersDriveway, paving and resin installersWindow and door installers
The problem. You spend half a day surveying a job and an evening pricing it, the quote goes out, and then you hear nothing — and nothing anywhere records that the quote is still open. You are up against two or three other firms on every enquiry, so most of that survey and pricing time goes on work you will not win, and you cannot say which part. Meanwhile new enquiries arrive while you are up a scaffold, and one slipped material delivery moves every job behind it.
What we would build for you: Quote-to-Completion System
What you stop doing
- Rebuilding the same price from scratch, retyping the same build-ups, exclusions and terms
- Typing the same answer to every customer asking when you are starting and where you are
- Working out by hand which jobs move, and who needs telling, when one date slips
- Writing up a site variation afterwards from memory, once the decision has already been made
What stops going wrong
- A priced quote is sent and then abandoned, with no follow-up and no record that it was ever open
- An enquiry arrives while you are on site, nobody answers it, and the household calls the next firm on the list
- A survey half-day is spent on an enquiry that was out of area, out of scope, or never deciding
- An extra agreed in the customer's hallway is absorbed as lost margin because nothing captured it
The parts we would build
- A register of every enquiry and quote with its current state, so you can see what is live, what was lost on price, and what was simply never answered
- Call and message answering for the hours you are on site, so a perishable enquiry is captured rather than missed
- A quote builder working from your own rate library, so build-ups, scope blocks and exclusions are reused instead of re-derived
- Follow-up you compose in the evening and that goes out the next morning, because that is when you are working and when the customer is reachable
- A job queue that models one crew on one job at a time, recalculates the downstream dates when something slips, and drafts the messages for everyone affected
- Order-by dates worked back from the start date you promised, on-site variation capture that records the customer's agreement in moments, and job-level costs fed back against what you quoted
Makers selling handmade and made-to-order goods
Handmade jewellery makersCandle and soap makersPotters and ceramicistsPersonalised and engraved gift makersSmall-batch textile and print makersMulti-channel craft sellers with their own shop
The problem. Your income is a direct function of the hours you spend making, and those are exactly the hours that go on reconciling platform payouts, answering "where is my order", and photographing stock. Your shop keeps accepting orders against a despatch time you set in a calmer month, so the queue fills past what you can actually produce — and when it breaks it comes back as refunds and damaged ranking. Nothing you currently use compares what you have promised against the making hours you have left.
What we would build for you: Capacity and Queue System
What you stop doing
- Typing the same order-status answer over and over to customers who have not had an update
- Reconciling platform payouts line by line to work out what you were actually paid
- Rewriting the same product details and resizing the same photographs for every channel
- Working out your remaining capacity in your head before accepting a commission
What stops going wrong
- The shop publishes a despatch promise the queue can no longer meet, and keeps taking orders against it
- A material or a mailer runs out mid-production and halts despatch of finished goods
- A bespoke enquiry is answered once, never followed up, and quietly expires
- A commission is accepted that pushes every order behind it past its promised date
The parts we would build
- A capacity ledger holding what you have promised against the making hours you actually have, which your shop reads before it states a despatch date
- A production calendar that distinguishes attended from unattended time and respects batch, curing and process constraints
- Order status messages derived from the production stage and sent before the customer thinks to ask
- Material and packaging ordering projected from the forward queue rather than triggered when stock falls
- Payout decomposition, so each channel's fees, postage and net remittance land correctly in your accounts
- One product record feeding every channel you sell on, with per-channel renditions, so adding a channel costs less than maintaining a second job
Removals firms working to chain completion dates
Man-and-van removalsFull-service household removalsRemovals firms offering packing and part-packingMulti-van removals operatorsStorage-and-removals businessesOffice and small commercial movers
The problem. Your unit of production is a crew-and-van day. When one passes without a paid job on it, the money is not deferred — it is gone, and there is no overtime or catch-up that recovers it. Customers book against a completion date nobody is yet bound by, so a committed day empties at a few days' notice and cannot be refilled; and the enquiry that could have filled an open day arrives while you are carrying a wardrobe down a staircase.
What we would build for you: Van-Day Capacity System
What you stop doing
- Re-reading the diary to work out which of next week's committed days are genuinely real
- Answering the same access, parking and insurance questions by phone from the back of a van
- Re-keying survey notes into a quote, then into a job sheet, then into an invoice
- Ringing round every affected party by hand when a completion date moves
What stops going wrong
- A van-day is held for a booking that was never firm, and empties too late to refill
- Two jobs end up written into the same crew-and-van day
- An enquiry arrives mid-job, goes unanswered, and an open day is never filled
- An access, parking or vehicle-size constraint is discovered on the morning instead of at survey
The parts we would build
- A van-day ledger in which one crew-and-vehicle day is one slot, provisional holds are typed and expire, and the same day cannot be committed twice
- A firmness field on every booking that records exchange status and ages it, so the risk sitting in next week's diary is visible before it lands
- Call and message answering for the hours the crew is loading, stating availability from the ledger rather than taking a message
- A date change handled as an event that lists everyone affected, records the notice given, and drafts the notifications
- Access facts held against the address rather than the job, constraining vehicle class and surviving a re-plan
- Utilisation reporting in days of capacity sold against days unsold, with an enquiry before exchange treated as early rather than lost, and review requests held back while a claim is open
Accountancy, bookkeeping and payroll practices on recurring fees
High-street accountancy practicesOwner-managed business accountantsOutsourced bookkeeping bureauxPayroll bureauxTax return specialistsCompany secretarial providers
The problem. Your fee is fixed before anyone has seen the state of the client's records, and when the records turn out materially worse than described you absorb the extra work — close to a statutory deadline you cannot pause to renegotiate. Because the fee does not depend on time, nothing records the overrun, so it never surfaces in any report and the fee rolls forward unchanged at renewal, year after year. Most of your pressure is waiting on records a client has not sent, and the deadline arrives whether they send them or not.
What we would build for you: Obligation and Deadline System
What you stop doing
- Rebuilding each client's records request from last year's template and last year's memory
- Keeping deadlines in a spreadsheet and re-checking them by hand against the statutory rules
- Writing the same please-send-your-records chase and tracking who replied in your inbox
- Working out in the autumn, by hand, which fortnight of the season is about to collapse
What stops going wrong
- An obligation is missed because nobody remembered to create a reminder for it
- A job is started so late that the deadline can no longer be met, and nobody saw that point pass
- A client is chased for records the practice already receives directly
- Work outside the engagement is absorbed in silence, and the fee is renewed as though it had not been
The parts we would build
- An obligation register where every dated statutory obligation is computed from the client's own facts and recomputed when those facts change, rather than typed in by someone who might not
- A point-of-no-return date on every obligation — the date after which it stops being achievable — driving the chase, instead of the statutory date
- Records requests computed per client and per cycle, tracked item by item, with the client shown exactly what is still outstanding
- An escalation ladder derived from the obligation's own date, with named ownership, interruptible by a person at any step without that counting as a failure
- Friction measured per client and per cycle — days blocked, chase contacts, query rounds, reopenings and out-of-scope requests — set against the fee on record, so pricing is corrected by what the work actually took
- Client-facing status that states facts only: the system will not answer a tax question, will not file without authorisation, and will not show a provisional liability
Walk-in shops selling small items all day
Independent butchersBakers and patisseriesCafés and coffee shopsDelis and greengrocersIndependent pet shopsIndependent homeware and gift shops
The problem. Your margin is decided before the first customer walks in, in the order you place at dawn, and you make that call from memory against footfall nobody can forecast. Order heavy and it goes in the bin; order short and you turn people away all afternoon — and the short side leaves no trace in any till report, so you only ever see half of what it costs you. The ordering itself is daily, across several suppliers whose cut-offs do not line up, and it is the one job you cannot hand to anybody.
What we would build for you: Order and Counter System
What you stop doing
- Placing each supplier's order from memory and a walk round the shelves before opening
- Matching delivery notes against invoices by hand and chasing credits for shorts and damages
- Building and reissuing the rota, and collecting availability and swaps by text message
- Reconciling till, card and banking takings line by line at the end of the week
What stops going wrong
- Stock is bought against a forecast made from recall, so it is binned at one end of the week and sold out at the other
- A supplier cut-off is missed and a line is unavailable for the whole day
- A price rise arrives on an invoice and is never noticed against what the same line cost last time
- A certificate, licence or insurance renewal lapses with no warning
The parts we would build
- A demand-to-order loop that arrives as tomorrow morning's pre-filled order against each supplier's cut-off, rather than a dashboard somebody has to choose to open before dawn
- Capture of what was asked for and not available, taken at the counter in a single tap and always reported as a lower bound rather than a complete count
- Goods-in checking with delivery-note matching, credit claims, and price-change detection against the previous invoice
- Reporting in your own units — made, sold, binned, and asked-for-but-unavailable — by product and by hour
- Staff rota with availability collection, swap and holiday handling, and payroll hours drawn from the published rota
- Compliance checklists and an expiry diary covering the food safety pack, allergen matrix, insurance and licences, with allergen questions from customers always referred to a person
Showroom retailers selling big-ticket goods on supplier lead times
Independent furniture retailersBed and mattress specialistsBike shops with sales and workshopFlooring and carpet showroomsAppliance and electrical retailersMusical instrument shops
The problem. Your highest-intent customer walks in, browses, and leaves without giving you a name — then decides over the following weeks somewhere you cannot reach them. You have already paid for the premises, the staffed hours, the stock on the floor and the marketing that brought them through the door before you lose the ability to act at all. On the orders you do win, you have promised a date you do not control, so when a supplier's date moves you lose an afternoon to the telephone.
What we would build for you: Showroom and Open-Order System
What you stop doing
- Working through open orders one by one to find who is affected when a supplier's date moves
- Re-typing a specification into an order and discovering the clash weeks later on the delivery van
- Matching a deposit and a balance taken weeks apart back to the right order by hand
- Keeping a wall planner, an order book and a spreadsheet in step with one another
What stops going wrong
- A browsing visitor leaves with no record, so the entire decision window passes with no contact from you
- A supplier's date moves and the customer only finds out after the delivery day has gone by
- A specification is taken that the supplier's own option matrix does not allow, and the error surfaces at delivery
- A review request goes to a customer with an open snag, and to the one person least willing to give one
The parts we would build
- Showroom capture and a follow-up timer, so a considered buyer hears from you inside the weeks-long window in which the decision is actually made
- An open-order record holding the supplier's promised date as a dated series, so slippage and supplier reliability stay visible instead of being overwritten by the latest guess
- A view across every order sharing one supplier dependency, so a single moved date produces one affected list rather than a day of unconnected phone calls
- Customer-facing order state written in the customer's terms, batched and held for a person to approve before any date change goes out, with a published assistant that will not state a delivery date or a stock position
- Specification validated against the supplier's own option matrix at the counter, while the customer is still standing there
- Deposits held and shown as money owed against goods not yet supplied, deposit and balance reconciled by an imposed reference, and review requests gated on open snags
Operators selling nights, slots or bays that expire
B&Bs and guesthousesHoliday lets and self-catering cottagesCampsites and caravan parksEscape rooms and indoor leisure attractionsCar parks and airport parking operatorsVehicle, caravan and motorhome storage
The problem. A night, a slot or a bay exists for exactly one window. When that window passes unsold the revenue is not deferred and not recoverable — and nothing in your systems tells you it happened, because an empty date produces no invoice, no complaint and no notification. Your own minimum-stay and changeover rules quietly forbid anyone from booking the awkward gaps between bookings. And a cancellation generates the refund task while omitting the commercial one, so the released date runs its clock down unattended.
What we would build for you: Perishable Capacity System
What you stop doing
- Synchronising availability by hand across several channel calendars
- Re-deriving the changeover and cleaning rota every time a booking changes
- Reading net platform remittances to work out what commission actually cost you
- Answering the same pre-arrival questions by message, one guest at a time
What stops going wrong
- An empty date inside your selling window passes with nobody having attempted to sell it
- Your own minimum-stay or changeover rule blocks a gap that someone would otherwise have booked
- The same night is sold twice because two calendars drifted apart
- A cancellation is refunded and the released date is never put back on sale before it passes
The parts we would build
- One ledger of dated units, each carrying its price, its current rule state, its changeover dependency and the selling time it has left, with no second calendar to diverge from it
- Reporting of absence: an empty date inside the sellable horizon raised as an event rather than passing in silence
- A rule-conflict check that names the setting forbidding a sale — a gap of this length against a minimum stay that is longer, so nobody can book it
- Cancellation handled as two events: the refund, and an exposed date with its remaining selling time, its published price and the rules currently blocking it
- A changeover rota derived continuously from bookings rather than stored and allowed to go stale, with a pre-arrival sequence read from one canonical property record
- Gross recorded at booking and the platform remittance treated as a matching problem, so the cost of distribution becomes a calculation; cash received shown separately from revenue delivered by date, without asserting how the gap should be treated in your accounts
Businesses buying vehicles from the public on an instant valuation
Car buying servicesScrap and salvage vehicle buyersVan and commercial vehicle buyersMotorcycle buyersMotorhome and caravan buyersDealership trade-in and part-exchange arms
The problem. Your instant valuation is asked to do three incompatible jobs at once — win the comparison, attract the right vehicles, and be a figure you will actually honour — so it gets set to a number you then revise down on the driveway. Every valuation that does not convert has already spent advertising money and a paid data lookup, so the loss is cash out of the door, not merely revenue foregone. And a vehicle bought is a position rather than a profit: you cannot say whether a buying week was good until the stock has cleared.
What we would build for you: Valuation and Unit Ledger System
What you stop doing
- Re-keying the same vehicle details from valuation into booking, purchase, payment, listing and settlement
- Working out by hand what an individual unit actually cost you and what it returned
- Confirming appointments without checking whether the money and the route are both there
- Chasing paperwork, notifications and settlement details across separate records
What stops going wrong
- Quoted price and paid price are never held side by side, so the gap that drives the whole leak cannot be measured — and the history cannot be reconstructed afterwards
- A valuation is published as a confident figure while the data behind it is unreachable or the variant is unresolved
- An appointment is confirmed for a day on which the business cannot actually pay
- A journey is made, nothing is bought, and the cost is written off as fuel instead of travel hours plus a forgone diary slot
The parts we would build
- One unit record created at valuation and carried through booking, purchase, payment, stock, listing, settlement and notification, so the vehicle rather than the contact is the spine of the system
- A per-unit ledger holding quoted price and paid price side by side with a reason code on every revision, recorded from the first purchase onward because it cannot be added retrospectively
- A valuation that states its uncertainty and withholds a point price when the data source is unavailable or the derivative is unresolved, rather than returning a plausible figure you will not honour
- A funnel built as an ordered sequence of spend decisions — inexpensive checks early, costly lookups late — because each submission can cost you money
- A booking gate that declines: a slot is confirmed when the preconditions hold, payment readiness among them, with working capital treated as a constraint on availability
- Journeys tagged by cause when nothing is bought, and the completed purchase with its value reported back to the advertising platforms instead of the form submission
