Case study · our own operation
The Sub That Built the Software: Running Two Trades on One System
Every feature in this platform started as something that went wrong on one of our own jobs. This is the honest version of how it got built.
- Operation
- Our own insulation & concrete operation
- Trades
- Spray foam, batt insulation and residential concrete
- Market
- New residential construction, Middle Tennessee
Read this first. This is our own operation, not a third-party customer. We are publishing it because it is the deployment we can describe in full detail without anyone’s permission, and because a vendor who will not show you their own books is telling you something.
What was broken
- Two trades under one roof, with almost nothing in common operationally. Insulation is measured in square feet off a plan and installed in a day; concrete is measured three different ways, poured on a weather window, and over-ordered on purpose. One spreadsheet could not describe both, so there were two of everything, and the numbers stopped agreeing.
- Work was being added in the field and built before anybody priced it. The crew is paid to keep moving, so they kept moving. By the time a change reached the office the job was closed and the builder had moved on.
- Bids went out as a number in an email. There was no itemised document, nothing for the customer to sign, and no record of whether they had even opened it.
- Nobody could say which jobs made money. The company was profitable; which half of the work was carrying the other half was a guess.
What changed
The decisions that made the difference
- 1
One number, end to end
The estimate number out of QuickBooks becomes the job number, the invoice number and the thing every screen is keyed on. That one decision removed an entire category of reconciliation work, because there was no longer a second numbering scheme to reconcile against.
- 2
A gate that makes the expensive mistake impossible
A job cannot enter invoicing while a change order on it is pending. Not a reminder, not a warning: the transition is refused, in the database, and the job reads as held for a pending change order on every board until somebody resolves it. This is the single control that changed the most.
- 3
Take off the plan, price it, send a document
Blueprint takeoff on screen, priced against our own rate card, out as an itemised quote the customer can accept and sign online. The bid stopped being a number in an email and became a document with a signature on it.
- 4
The crew documents the work as they do it
Photos file themselves to the right job from the phone that took them, with the date and the location on the record, and a share link the builder can open with no account. On a disputed extra this ends the conversation in about ninety seconds.
- 5
Costs land on the job while it is still open
Supplier tickets are read as they arrive rather than at month-end close, against cost codes that match how the two trades actually work, so a job that is running over says so while there is still something to do about it.
- 6
One list of who to chase today
Every open invoice ranked by dollars at risk rather than by age, with a reminder ladder that escalates and ends, and promises to pay recorded against the job so the reminders pause on their own.
Where it landed
- Change orders are priced and sent the same day they are reported from the field, because the person standing on the problem files it from their phone instead of remembering to mention it.
- No job has been invoiced with an unresolved change order on it since the gate shipped: the state machine refuses the transition, so it is not a matter of remembering.
- Bids leave as itemised documents with an online acceptance link, so "did they get it?" is a question with an answer.
- Both trades report separately and roll up together. Margin by trade, by builder and by rep is a screen rather than an afternoon.
- The office no longer reconstructs the week on Friday. The record is written as the work happens.
Modules in use
- Blueprint Takeoff
- Sales & Job Management
- Field Management
- Job Costing
- AR & Collections
We didn’t set out to build software. We set out to stop losing change-order money and to give our own crew their week back.
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Related
- SolutionChange ordersReport it from the field, price it the same day, send it for signature, and let a hard gate stop anyone invoicing a job with a change still hanging over it.Read
- SolutionJob costingBudget versus actual on every open job, by cost code, with committed costs counted before the invoice arrives. Read your margin while you can still do something about it.Read
- TradeInsulation contractorsEstimating, scheduling, crew dispatch, field documentation and invoicing for spray foam and batt insulation subs. Built and run every day by one.Read