Building trades craftsman
Client: Julien M., self-employed plumber and electrician for 8 years, managing a limited company (SARL) with 2 employees.
Background: management software for building trades
Julien handles around fifteen jobs a month: emergency call-outs, bathroom renovations, electrical compliance upgrades. He is on site all day with his two workers. So the admin was done in the evenings and at weekends: quotes from a Word template, invoices in Excel, payments tracked in a notebook. The more the business grew, the more the admin backlog piled up.
The problem
- Quotes done in the evening: 1 to 2 hours every evening, and clients sometimes waited a week for their quote, which lost him jobs.
- Forgotten deposits: jobs started without a deposit being requested or received. Julien paid for materials out of his own cash.
- Manual reminders: no clear view of who owed what. Reminders depended on his memory.
- Tight cash flow: materials to be paid for immediately, clients paying at 30 or 45 days, and difficult month-ends.
The Dirigeoo solution
- Quotes and invoices in a few clicks: Julien creates his quotes right after the site visit, from his phone or tablet, with his services and rates saved in advance.
- Deposit management: each signed quote generates a deposit invoice. The balance is invoiced at the end of the job, minus the deposit.
- Automatic reminders: unpaid invoices are chased automatically according to a schedule set by Julien.
- Cash flow dashboard: synced with his bank account, it shows in real time what has been received, what is pending and what is still owed to suppliers.
- Sharing with the accountant: data is sent directly to the accounting firm, with no re-keying.
Results
- Time saved: admin cut from 8 hours to 2 hours a week. Julien has got his evenings back.
- More quotes signed: quotes sent on the day of the visit, instead of several days later.
- Secured deposits: 100% of jobs now start with a deposit received.
- Faster payments: average payment time down from 42 to 21 days thanks to automatic reminders.
- Calm cash flow: Julien plans his materials purchases in advance and no longer dreads month-end.
Testimonial
“I used to end my days on site with two hours of paperwork. Now I do my quote in front of the client and the reminders go out on their own. I know exactly where I stand, and my evenings are mine again.”
Julien M.