Running Two Trades Without Running Two Systems

Plenty of subcontractors sell more than one trade. The insulation crew that also pours flatwork. The concrete outfit that picked up framing because the same builders kept asking. Most software handles it by letting you write the trade on the job and filter a list by it, which is useful and is where it usually stops.

That is the difference this walkthrough is about. Filtering by trade lets you look at one side of the business. Running by trade means each side has its own crew, its own schedule, its own salespeople, its own targets and its own numbers, while the builder, the invoice number and the money stay in one place, because it is still one company.

What you actually do

Five things, and only the first one is required. On a company that already knows how it works, this is an afternoon.

1. 1
   Pick your tradesChoose them off a list of twenty-one. Pick the closest one if your trade is not named, then rename it: the name you type is the word every screen uses from then on.
2. 2
   Put them in orderThe order you choose is the order they appear in every filter, every set of stat cards and every board. Lead with the one that pays the bills.
3. 3
   Scope the peopleGive each seat the trades that person actually sells or runs. A rep can carry several; a crew seat is held to one.
4. 4
   Point each trade at its own calendarOne calendar per trade, named however you like, with the right crews and office people invited to each.
5. 5
   Decide who bills whatIf you bill two trades under two business names, assign each trade to the identity it invoices under. Skip this if you bill everything under one.

Pick the trades your company runs

This is one screen and it is the only place the list is stored. Twenty-one trades to choose from, and you rename any of them, because a shop that calls it flatwork should not have to read the word concrete on every screen for the next four years.

The review step at the end names what turns on for each trade you added, and what does not change. That matters more than it sounds, because the most common worry here is that adding a trade will disturb work that is already in the system. It does not. Adding or removing a trade changes what the software offers you going forward. Jobs that already exist keep their trade, stay visible and keep counting.

What that list actually drives

Once the list is set, it is not a label sitting on a job. It is the thing the rest of the platform is built out of. One trade added to that list gives you, without any further setup:

• A stat card and a column pair on the production report, so each trade is counted on its own.
• A quota department, so a rep selling foam is measured against foam and not against a company average.
• A crew board with its own capacity, so a full week for one trade does not read as a full week for the other.
• Its own calendar and its own scheduling channel, so the people who work that trade only hear about that trade.
• A slot in the aging report, because builders often pay one trade on a different draw than the other.
• Its own rate card, cost codes and starting price list, since a trade priced by the yard and a trade priced by the board foot share no useful numbers.
• A place in the billing map, if you invoice it under a different business name.

That list is the argument for doing it this way. Any one of those on its own is a feature. All of them reading from the same setting is the reason a third trade next year is a decision about whether you want the work, rather than a project.

Scope the people to the trade they sell

Every seat carries the trades that person works in. A rep who only sells insulation gets insulation, and concrete is not in their pipeline, their quota, their scoreboard or their job list. Not hidden behind a filter they could clear. Not there.

Sales reps can hold several trades, because a rep selling both to the same builder is a normal and good thing. Operations seats are held to one on purpose. That seat is very often a subcontracted crew rather than an employee, and handing your foam sub a screen with the concrete jobs, the builders and the money on it is a problem before it is an inconvenience.

One change here moves everything at once. Change somebody from concrete to insulation and their pipeline, their quota, their production numbers and the boards they appear on all follow in the same save. There is no second place to remember.

One schedule, one board per trade

The dispatch board splits by trade rather than mixing both into one grid. Each trade shows its own crews, its own week and its own capacity, and the jobs land on the board for the trade they belong to.

Reading capacity is the reason this is split rather than a preference about layout. "Can we take a job on the ninth?" has two different answers in a two-trade shop, and a single blended board gives you neither of them. Here the concrete crew is open all week and insulation is half booked, and that is readable in a glance instead of by counting bars.

Double bookings are flagged, never blocked. Somebody occasionally has to put two jobs on one crew in one day and they know why. Software that refuses is software people work around.

A calendar for each trade, with the right people on it

When the calendar is connected, the setup asks whether you want one calendar for the company or one per trade, and shows the whole plan before it makes anything. A shop running two or more trades gets the per-trade layout offered first, because that is what almost every multi-trade company turns out to want.

Each calendar is named however you like: by trade, or by the subcontractor who runs it. Who gets invited follows where the job books: a crew list, then a trade list, then a fallback, plus anyone you want on every event. So the concrete sub sees the concrete calendar, the insulation sub sees theirs, and the office sees both.

Bill two trades under two business names

Some shops run both trades under one company. Others have a separate entity for each, with its own name, its own letterhead and its own bank account. Both are ordinary, so the billing name is assigned per trade rather than fixed for the company.

The same assignment drives the quote and the invoice, so a job is quoted and billed under the same name end to end. Each identity carries its own bank details and its own payment terms. An identity with none of its own prints none, rather than quietly borrowing the other company’s account. On a remittance block that is the kind of mistake that takes a month to find.

What does not split is the invoice numbering. One series for the whole company, whatever the letterhead says, so a builder’s accounts payable never receives two different documents carrying the same number.

Report on one trade, or on the company

Both, and that is the point of keeping them separate underneath. The production report grows a stat card and a comparison column per trade, quota is measured per department, and receivables age by trade on the same ladder the whole company uses.

The blended average is the number this avoids. Say one trade runs at 38 points and the other at 12. Blended, you read 26 and a business that looks healthy, so you keep selling the one that is losing money, because nothing on the report ever told you to stop. A single margin number across two trades is not less information than two numbers. It is worse than none, because it is confident.

Why this is hard to add later

It is worth understanding what makes this different from a filter, because it is the thing to test when somebody tells you their product handles multiple trades.

Trade has to be known by the schedule, the calendar connection, the permission rules, the quota math, the price book, the cost codes, the receivables report and the billing documents. Every one of those is a different part of the software. A product that added trade as a field late usually has it in the filters and in nothing else, and everything past the filter (the second calendar, the scoped rep, the second letterhead) comes back as "you would use two accounts for that".

We built it this way because we needed it ourselves. Our own operation sells insulation and concrete to the same new-construction builders out of one sales team, and running that on two copies of anything was never going to work. So the trade list sits underneath the platform rather than on top of it, and adding your third trade costs you a minute in a settings screen.

Every screen on this page is the software running, captured from a demo workspace. The builders, addresses and contacts in it are invented; the plan is one we drew. More at Opulence Built.