best way to keep track od small jobs

[Jas0n7]

Whats the best way to keep track of small jobs? Alot of small jobs are hard to keep a track of to weather you've been paid or not. Especially if you are doing 4 or 5 jobs a day!

Any ideas for making it easier?

Thanks,

Jason

 

[electricians]

We use Quicken which is a computer package which is really easy to use , you can put the job on the system and create an invoice when completed , we never loose track of any small jobs .

 

[sparkdog]

I have always used job cards with name,date,address,work done,payment cash or cheque.

 

[accordfire]

Damn this browser. It crashed, right in the middle of trying to reply this thread. Grrrr.

We use a program called Service Life - for every contract we have. Not sure we're not outgrowing it now, and need something a bit more bespoke - but the developer is major helpful, and at £98 you can't really beat it. There's a bit of setting up, but it will manage your customers and your workflow for you easily. The trick is getting into the habit of running an open jobs report every day.

It will output to an accounts program like Sage or Quicken too, which saves a bundle on retyping stuff for invoicing - ISTR you can use Service Life for generating invoices, but we just link to Sage with it.

 

[nickblake]

i use sage accounting package , when a job comes in i put the details into sage then fill it in when the jobs complete ,the other thing i do is i have a wall planner which is set out for 2 months days then fill that in as well this way you can see whats going on and when

 

[Octopus]

I use Intuit Quickbooks pro - once the customer has been input into the database, the invoice takes a couple of minutes to produce, and then the "unpaid" invoices remain on the "aged" debt until you receive payment!

 

[accordfire]

I use Intuit Quickbooks pro - once the customer has been input into the database, the invoice takes a couple of minutes to produce, and then the "unpaid" invoices remain on the "aged" debt until you receive payment!

As with all accounts packages.

Sadly, the trick, often is to know the job is complete before invoicing.....which is what the OP's concern was.....

It's embarrassing, IMHO, to call up a customer looking for payment, only to be told yup, once the job's done.......

It could, of course be done easily enough in a Excel spreadsheet - job raised, job status, passed to invoicing.

 

[Guest123]

When I first started out, I couldn't afford the above software packages so I made my own in excel. Doesn't take long and as long as you remember to fill it in each evenong with any updated information, it does the job. And it's free.