Earn more, get paid faster with the right tech

Ange
So good to have you all join us for another episode of The Tradie Show.

Andy
Great to have you all tuning in.

Ange
So in Season 8 we did an episode on artificial intelligence for trade businesses. And if you haven’t listened to it, I definitely recommend heading back and checking it out because it was seriously wild and very interesting.

Andy
Definitely.

Ange
So, Andy, in the episode you brought up a point about how everyone has technology stuck to them at all hours of the day. Do you remember?

Andy
I certainly do. Yep. You’ve got smartphones, you’ve got smart watches, you’ve got tablets, you’ve got smart TVs, you’ve got smart everything these days.

Ange
I don’t think they’ll have a smart TV strip for them.

Andy
Ah, no, no.

Ange
But it would be true to say that in reality, everyone and every business out there definitely has to adapt to the times, or you’re going to get left behind. What I do wanna do is go seriously back to basics and talk about technology that every trade business owner should be using in their day-to-day operations of a business, like specifically with your team on the rotor in the field. You might not think so, but we still see trade business owners who aren’t using technology to its full potential through the flow of a job.

Andy
Yep. Love it. And I’m sure the listeners will too, because there’s so many options out there for you. But when we adopted what we did in Dr. Drip, it was seriously life-changing and completely helped streamline the business.

Ange
Yeah, totally. It does come with a bit of a disclaimer though, because what you do need to do is your own research to see what’s gonna suit your trade or contracting business, because what we did with the tech in Dr. Drip perhaps might not be the most efficient or cost effective option for your trade business.

Andy
Yeah, a hundred percent. Every trade business is different and there’s a thousand options out there. I also wanna add about the whole Apple versus Android debate and say that we are huge Apple fans, so our team had iPhones and iPads, but if you’re an Android user, That can work just as well with most of these tech applications these days. So as an example, some job management software out there at the moment only connects with Apple.

Ange
Yeah, that’s right. So let’s actually take this to Dr. Drip and unpack what we did. So Dr. Drip was a residential plumbing business, meaning our team was on the road primarily by themselves in a vehicle completing between two to four jobs a day, depending on the kind of jobs they had going on and we ran everything through our job management system. But I’m actually getting ahead of myself. Let’s go way back to when we first started out in the year 2000. Back then, we operated a business with these yellow job cards. There was one per job and we were doing like eight jobs a day for each technician. And there was no such thing as a job management system.

Andy
No, there wasn’t. And a normal day for me, I felt like I was a dealer at a casino. You know, I had these big long tables with post-it notes stuck everywhere, and I’d have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then I’d have drip one, drip two, all the way up to Drip eight, and I would schedule the jobs by placing the yellow cards in order of the truck and each day that they were gonna do the work, it was so time consuming. But we had loads of strata work and we had a stack of these yellow job cards and we had a heap of work that was waiting to be booked in, like I’m talking months of work in advance. It was just waiting to be booked in. And it was really interesting cuz sometimes I get a phone call from a strata manager or from a residential customer and they’d say to me, Andy, you’ve had a look at this job. We’ve accepted your quote. It’s been four weeks now. When were you coming to do that job? And you go, hang on Mrs. Jones. I’ll have a quick look. And then you quickly shovel through the cards and then you find it. And then I’d look at my day and go, actually, I had it booked in for this Thursday at seven o’clock. Is that okay? And then I’d shuffle it in. So pretty much a lot of the times the customers that made the most noise were the ones that we’d go and do the jobs for them. It was serious chaos. It was frantic.

Ange
Yeah, it was chaos. Hey, the team would take these yellow job cards and they’d either do the job or they’d hand write the quote and then they’d like hand write the invoice on this triplicate invoice book, and all of it would be returned to the office for our office team admin guys to type up and center the customers.

Andy
Yeah. The problem with, with the job cards set up and listening, we made it sort of work, but they’d get lost and then all of a sudden the team, the admin team in the office couldn’t read the tradies handwriting and then things that should take you. You know, two or three minutes, were taking you 32 minutes because no one could understand what the hell was going on. The big challenge with it all, it just went around in circles inside our office, back and forth with the tradie until finally the customer was invoiced.

Ange
Yeah. But by then, perhaps it’d be maybe even one, if not two weeks since we were on site, and our chances of getting paid were starting to get really low.

Andy
And you say one or two weeks. They were good jobs. When you came across something difficult, it was always put in the two hard baskets, and you always left that always the last, but every day it was left the last, the next few minutes, it was like five or six weeks. Or you’re about to go on holidays and you go, I’ve just gotta do it now. You know, for our long-term listeners out there, you would’ve heard the story at one stage, it would’ve been about 15 to 17 years ago. We had 180,000 outstanding, and that was a lot of money for us as a maintenance plumbing business. That was heaps of money, and it almost broke us all because we just weren’t organized.

Ange
Yeah, we did a lot of things to turn the business around from there, but one of the big things we did is implement technology with our team on the road, and it ultimately saved everyone time. It improved efficiency, it saved us money. And it improved our cash flow massively.

Andy
Yeah. When we turned our business really into a technology hub, you know, even the tradies had a tool bag full of bits and pieces of tech stuff, which really made a big difference for the guys. You know, this stuff is really non-negotiable these days, in my opinion. So listen up. And let’s start off talking a little bit about tablets.

Ange
Yeah, so we mentioned before that we’re Apple fans. So our boys had iPads and you could probably do everything that you would do on an iPad or a tablet on a smartphone. But our team and our older customers loved the biggest screens cuz it was just a lot easier for them to use.

Andy
Yeah, we did a bit of test and measure around this and we always found that having the bigger screens, and I still think to this day, having the bigger screens is better than just having a small phone. But you know, over the years our processes have changed quite a lot. Where our team was now invoicing, collecting money. You know, asking for credit card details, getting customers to sign on glass for pre-approval, and it just made it a lot easier with the bigger screens, especially with our senior customers back in the day.

Ange
Yeah, agreed. So the trades people’s day was streamlined using a job management system. It was obviously accessible on their iPads. And we mentioned before that some job management systems are actually only compatible with say Apple. So it is important to do your homework.

Andy
Yeah, that’s right. And we also used the GPS to make sure our tradespeople knew how to go directly to the job.

Ange
Well, thank God for that because I remember the day that you’d have to read like a street directory and the drive went for like over four different pages and you had the book upside down.

Andy
Ah, yeah. It was absolutely crazy for those directories. I, I know anyone that’s been through that would definitely be like, oh my God, you have to pull over all the time to understand where you were going. It was really tough.

Ange
I got really good at reading that thing. But you actually would’ve been awesome out it, Andy, seeing you when you were once on the tools, that was the era of a street directory.

Andy
Yeah, it was. And um, I seemed to, you know, people used to call myself Directory because, um, I knew everywhere everyone would mention a street in the eastern suburbs. A lot of our Dr. Drip work was in that area, and I knew every street, you know, every now and then you could take me to the eastern suburbs and I could tell you every street name and how to get around. It was like it was burnt in my brain. Well, back to tech and having the team on the tools, having a job management system seriously, guys, if you don’t have one, then you’ve definitely gotta have one and having every one of your tradies out on the field with their mobile tablet was an absolute game changer for the whole industry. There’s so much you can do with this these days. You know, we’ve got our W H S risk assessment. We have every single job that’s important. Every single quote, every single photo. You know, your guys out in the field have pretty much got the business on that tablet, and they can get any information that they personally need, without asking you.

Ange
It seriously has been game changing for lots of trading contracting business owners, being able to do quotes on site has stopped these late nights in the office, attempting to finish a quote that you visited earlier in the day only to procrastinate by watching tv. Something that should have taken an hour has now consumed two hours, and you’re lucky to perhaps even write the first paragraph.

Andy
Yeah, ouch. It sounds like you know what you’re talking about Ange.

Ange
I watched you for years, remember?

Andy
Yeah, I did. And I still know there’s so many tradies out there that are just wasting precious family time and doing stuff right into the night. And you know what? You don’t need to.

Ange
Totally agree. And as well as this, the tradespeople would also fill in inspection reports using the iPad on site, which then provided an opportunity to talk to the customer about other work that may be required and ask for approval then and there.

Andy
Exactly what a time saver all that is now using a tablet in the field and because we also were using a flat rate system, we had the chance to make some more money by communicating other necessarily work onsite why we’re in front of the customer.

Ange
Yeah. And once a customer has said yes to doing the work, it’s important to have the customer sign on glass as approval to proceed with the job. And that is clearly a huge benefit of having a tablet onsite. This authorization has saved us plenty of times.

Andy
Yeah, it sure has. And I bet lots of trade business owners fail to get this authorization at the beginning and also at the end of the job. We’d make sure that we did this every single time at Dr. Drip.

Ange
Yeah. Then we’d also make sure to collect a payment from a customer at the end of a job, which was obviously pretty much plastic. You know, Visa, MasterCard, or eftpos.

Andy
For residential customers anyway, where they were COD, otherwise, the tradespeople would also complete the invoice while they were still on site because while you’re doing the invoice, you should be getting paid for that, and then they wouldn’t actually send it to the customer. It would go into a holding bay within our job management system, and the office would just check over it, make sure that it read really well, and then they’d send it on over to say, a strata customer.

Ange
So all done onsite. No double handling of admin for our office team.

Andy
And no lost paperwork.

Ange
And no lost hours struggling to read messy handwriting.

Andy
And you’re making sure you’re getting paid on the spot, which is good for cash flow.

Ange
So good.

Andy
Seriously, it’s a game changer. This is what I mean by doping the right technology in your business can save you so much time and money. It can definitely cut down an admin massively and completely remove the need for paper within your business. No more job cards like the old days. No more diaries like the old days.

Ange
So while we’re talking about the end of a job, let’s just quickly touch on like EFTPOS terminals or the payment gateway, because like you said before, in the early days we actually didn’t use one and the office team arranged the invoices after the fact and basically waited for customers to pay us.

Andy
Which might I add? Does it have to happen if it’s commercial or industrial customers? But, uh, it should not happen if it’s residential customers. So those guys, you need to invoice on the spot and collect the money.

Ange
Absolutely.

Andy
It’s pretty obvious to say that the moment you walk offsite or off the job, you lose your power over the customer in terms of getting them to pay you. So once you’ve left and the job is done, they can basically pay, whenever they want And you are just chasing.

Ange
Exactly. But when you start having a cash flow problem, you have to look deeper as to why and hence how you can fix it.

Andy
Yeah. As soon as we brought in the rule of payment and completion and had the team ready armed with the EFTPOS terminals, our cash flow was pretty much sorted and we went from a business that had 180 grand constantly outstanding to a business that was doing under 10 grand outstanding. It was huge. But when you talk about terminals, some people aren’t happy with the terminals because there are processing fees that come along with it. But you know what? It’s normally around 1.2% or so. But what we did as a business is we would tag that on and the customer would pay for that anyway.

Ange
There are heaps of options out there, so you don’t actually have to have an EFTPOS terminal from a bank. There are like online payment gateways, a bundle with your specific job management system like Stripe. Or you could look into these other easy payment gateways like Square.

Andy
Yeah, there’s a lot of options these days. The point is, it’s your money. You can’t get a McDonald’s and buy a Mick Happy Meal and pay later. You know? It’s your money. Do the job, collect the money at the end of the job where you can.

Ange
So a tablet or this handheld device whilst on site, gives you access to the job management system that holds all the information about your job. Could be images, notes from different tradespeople who’ve been there before, the history of the customer, lots basically, and it saves the information in real time and can complete the flow of a job by closing off the invoice and collecting the money with your payment gateway.

Andy
Yeah, our iPad had many benefits for us. We also had our company systems on it. So basically we had a deck of about 15 of our most important systems or flow charts that were highly relevant to the tradespeople, and we loaded them onto the vice, the iPad. So in that way, if they got stuck, they needed some step-by-step instructions. It was really simple for them just to log onto their iPad and follow the step-by-step. And that was perfect for when you had a newbie trades person and only just started with you and all of a sudden forgot the way the system should flow.

Ange
Yeah, it makes them pretty self-sufficient, really.

Andy
And that’s why we literally treated our tradespeople like their own business, like each truck was its own business, and we could easily track each truck individually, each person, each team member individually, and we could watch their metrics, we could watch their KPIs, and we could see how they’re performing on a daily basis.

Ange
Oh, I’m glad you mentioned that. Another major benefit of having technology in the field. This job management system allows you to have eyeballs on the important data on a daily basis. So we literally knew who was slackening off and who was literally the guns.

Andy
Yeah. The way we had Dr. Drip set up, the reporting was next level. You know, especially when you know what you’re looking for.

Ange
Yeah, agreed. My most favorite part is data, right? So there’s so much power in the numbers.

Andy
Yes. I’m known for screaming, know you are numbers, but let’s get back to tech in the field and obvious, but important piece of technology for tradespeople is also the mobile phone. And I guess the decision we need to make is do you supply one yourself or do you let them use their own?

Ange
Hmm. Interesting question. But they do need one, especially for communicating back to the office and contacting customers before they arrive.

Andy
Yeah, exactly. Our team is really big on also having apps on their phone or their tablet, cause that’d help them with their day-to-day drawings. Like there were different drawing apps where they could take photos and do drawings all over the photos and send to our customers, and then also have it stored in our job management system. So if one of our guys was on holidays and a job had to be done, all the information, all the photos, all the drawings on exactly what needed to be done, any tradie could go and pick up that job.

Ange
Or there are also great supplier apps that you could review products when you’re in the field.

Andy
Yeah, it’s a lot easier for tradies now to be able to jump on these apps and find out exactly what they want to use, what kind of product, and also show the customers as well. Um, it certainly saves a lot of time. There’s a range of products there and you can actually get it up on your iPad and show the customer why on site and get their approval before you purchase.

Ange
Yeah, totally. I love a good app. Sounds nerdy, but they can seriously make life so much easier.

Andy
Yeah, they do. And one of our team’s favorites was the app called Voxer. Um, it’s basically like a walkie talkie for your phone that can send voice, uh, memos or even text messages and even pictures as well. But we use it to communicate between the team so their tradie would arrive on site, they’d check out the work, and they’d always let the office know how long they’re gonna be there. It was like, Hey Mary, how are you going? I’m just out on site now. I’ve had a look at the job. I know you’ve allowed two hours, but I was up, up, sold a bit of work. I’m gonna be here for four hours. So it really made it a lot easier for the dispatcher to make sure everyone was on track. And then they’d also reach out and say, Hey, I’ve only got 30 minutes left. I’ve only got five minutes left. I’ll give you a call when I’m finished and those sorts of things make a huge difference for dispatchers that are running a team.

Ange
Yeah. It certainly helps to stop blocking up that main phone line to the office cuz you don’t wanna be missing potential work or because your phone line is tied up with one of your team talking about what they’ve done for the day.

Andy
Yeah, that’s why Voxer is great. Uh, I know a lot of our members, you know, are using WhatsApp. WhatsApp is very similar to Voxer, so you’ve just gotta work out which one is the right one for you.

Ange
I know our boys used to take before and after photos with their phone and upload them to the job management system cuz you don’t ever wanna be blamed for that like cracked tile on the wall when it was there when you started.

Andy
And that’s interesting you say that cuz that happened to us at Dr. Drip and one of the guys had taken before photos and we also took after photos and the customer had blamed us for cracking a tile. But because we had a structure, we had a system in place, it saved us quite a lot of money and an argument with the customer.

Ange
Interesting.

Andy
I mean, at the end of the day, the mobile phone has literally become another additional appendage for every single human. Yeah, and I guess that’s why there is such a debate about whether you should provide one for your tradespeople or let them use their personal one.

Ange
Well, what are your thoughts on that?

Andy
Well, I think having a completely separate work phone removes the needs perhaps, of giving them a phone, allowances and giving them pay packages around using a phone. And the biggest problem with, especially the younger crew coming through the, the phone is attached to them and they’re so used to watching social media, looking at TikTok, doing all that stuff. You don’t want them to, it’s hard because, In a perfect world, I’d like to say, here’s the work phone. Don’t use your phone for the whole day. But you just can’t seem to do that. And, no one will let you do that. And there’s a lot of power in staff at the moment, being able to do what they want to do. Uh, it’s a real tough one. Ange, it’s a tough one.

Ange
I guess it does take away the temptation though, right? Because it clearly defines a separation between work, phone and a personal phone.

Andy
Yeah, it does. But then everyone just carries both phones. You know, they have the work phone in one pocket and then they have their personal phone in the other pocket, and now they’ve got two phones to look at. And that was the challenge that we had. And, and it’s really hard, especially when they’re working, you know, you’re not working on site with them every day. What is the angle here? Personally, as I said, I prefer to give them a work phone and a work number, and everything should be used on that work phone. So if one day they say, I am out of here, then you just grab the phone and it’s still yours and, and you’re gone. What happens is when you are getting them to ring with their own phones and ring your customers, all of a sudden the customers start ringing them back. They’ve gone out on their own, and then they start doing work they shouldn’t be doing. Listen, I’m sure everyone out there’s got their technology hacks and I know you are all listening to what we’ve got and what we did within our business and there’s probably a thousand other things that you can do as well. And I know some of you are going, yeah, there’s some really basic stuff, but why the hell if it’s so basic? Isn’t every trade business owner actually using this, because this is the difference between working massive long hours you shouldn’t and cutting your time back and getting hours back, which everyone wants, but they’re not doing some of the real simple stuff, Ange.

Ange
Yeah. And for us, technology was the key to streamlining the systems within the business to be way more efficient with our time. It literally underpins the entire business.

Andy
Definitely it might take a little bit to set up the right technology, but once it’s done, I guarantee you, you won’t look back and it’s seriously gonna save you hours and hours of admin each week, improve your cash flow massively, and help you get back on top of your business. The thing is that people who don’t use tech the right way are losing out on making extra money and they’ve also losing their time. So guys, get on it and we’ll catch you next week for another kick ass episode.

Ange
Absolutely catch you then.

Andy
Sorry to quickly interrupt today’s episode guys, but as you know, we are coming up to the end of the financial year and guess what we have a deal for you. Book a strategy call with me before June 30 for your chance to get $1,200 off your yearly Lifestyle Tradie membership. It’s a hundred percent tax deductible, but be quick. Offer ends June 30 and memberships are limited, terms and conditions apply.

Subscribe to The Tradie Show, wherever you get your favorite podcast. Rate and write us a review or for more information about Lifestyle Tradie, head to lifestyletradie.com.au.