You finished an installation last Tuesday. Three parts came off the truck. Two technicians spent six hours on site. You billed the customer. If someone asked whether that job made money, you could not give a straight answer.
The problem is rarely the work. It is the four or five places the job lives, none of which talk to each other: the schedule, the quote, the parts list and the invoice.
Free: the Job Profit and Fast Invoicing Checklist. Bill every job within a day and know what each one earned. Get the checklist
What not knowing costs you
Jobs that lose money look the same as jobs that make money until the end of the year. Without job-level numbers you price the next one the same way, and the same leaks repeat.
Why it happens
The dispatch lives on a whiteboard or group chat, the quote is built from memory, parts come off the truck without being recorded, and the service history lives in someone’s head. Each is a small gap. Together they hide the answer.
The process: four steps from job to profit
1. Put every job on one list
Record each job with the customer, technician, time window, location and status in one place.
Example: “Tuesday 8:00, install, Alex and Sam, status: in progress.”
Pro tip: Update the status as the job moves. A stale list is worse than none.
2. Quote from a standard price list
Keep your common services, parts and labour rates in one list and build quotes from it.
Example: “Furnace replacement: standard labour plus listed parts.”
Pro tip: The first clean quote often wins the job. Send it the same day.
Free: the Job Profit and Fast Invoicing Checklist. Bill every job within a day and know what each one earned. Get the checklist
3. Record parts by truck
Treat each truck as its own stock, and record every part used on a job against it.
Example: “Two filters off truck 2, job 118.”
Pro tip: Count each truck monthly and compare to what was recorded.
4. Keep service history by customer
Put every quote, job, invoice and note in one customer record so you can answer a call-back quickly.
Example: “Customer called about the unit serviced 18 months ago.”
Pro tip: Add the warranty notes at job close, while you still remember them.
Where this runs
The four steps work with a shared sheet. In the business system we set up for clients (Odoo Community), jobs and customers live in the same system as quotes and invoices, each truck can be set up as its own storage location in Inventory, and everything for a customer is on one record. The process is the point. The tool just keeps it going when you are busy.
Your next step
Pick last week’s biggest job and work out what it earned using the four steps. If you want to see how a clean quote is built, the free 7-Day Growth Challenge on quotes shows you.
Free: the Job Profit and Fast Invoicing Checklist. Bill every job within a day and know what each one earned. Get the checklist