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Anyone else realize they were breaking even or losing money after expenses?
I had a phase where we looked “busy” on paper, fully booked, money coming in, but when I actually broke down the numbers, some jobs were barely breaking even. Once I factored in true payroll burden (taxes, workers comp), supplies, insurance, and transaction fees, it was a wake-up call. There were jobs we were doing that felt productive day-to-day but weren’t contributing to profit at all. For us, it came down to tightening up pricing, being more intentional about which jobs we accepted, and really understanding our numbers on a per-job basis (not just overall revenue). Curious if anyone else has gone through this and what changes made the biggest impact for you?How can home service businesses improve profit margins without raising prices?
If you had double your profit margin without raising rates, what would you cut or optimize? Our payroll all-in consistently remains at around 50%, but I was hoping to hear what others are doing considering labor is our biggest expense as home service businesses!What types of expenses do you put in Gross Profit?
I'm hiring an operations manager and making a portion of their pay based off gross profit performance. This is a big move for me because I've been the ops manager and the sales person so now that someone else's compensation depends on this line item, I need to have it tight. Out of these things, which are appropriate to put in gross profit? Worker compensation insurance Sales commisisions Mileage for technicians driving to jobs Materials used to repair office Labor for an in field "runner" to get supplies for everyone A portion of the ops manager's salary if they work in the field Curious to get ya'lls input on this. Thanks!How can service businesses automatically add late fees or interest to overdue invoices?
Does anyone know how to add auto interest or late fees to invoices? Considering the scope of my work this would be real handy when my average invoice payment time is around 50 days. Because of this I have to finance my own payroll and if I could recoup some of these interest charges automatically. Too many invoices to manually add feesWhat would your business look like if 70% of clients were on auto-pay with no cards expiring?
A year ago I looked at my numbers and realized something frustrating: I was spending hours every week chasing payments and updating expired cards. Between follow-ups, declined payments, and cards expiring every few months, it felt like billing was taking almost as much energy as running the actual jobs. So we made one change in our process: we started moving clients to auto-pay as the default. At first it was slow. A few clients said yes, a few ignored it, and a few needed reminders. But over time it snowballed. Now about 70% of our clients are on auto-pay. The difference in the business is huge. Invoices get paid automatically. Cash flow is predictable. My admin time dropped dramatically because we’re not chasing payments or dealing with expired cards all the time. It also makes scheduling easier because we know jobs turn into actual revenue without the follow-up. What surprised me most is clients actually prefer it. They like not having to remember to pay or deal with invoices every visit. If I could go back, I would have pushed auto-pay much earlier. It turns billing from a weekly stress into something that basically runs in the background.When is it time to hire an accountant?
I am wondering at what point some of you guys have hired an accountant? Did you hire one to grow? To maintain what you have? Or are you simply using one to file taxes at the end of the year? I am thinking about hiring an accountant to manage my finances for me and see where things go, but wondering when is the right time.How can I create an invoice for the deposit?
When doing certain commercial work the client will ask us to send them an invoice for the deposit. This isn't typically how Jobber works as the invoice isn't created until the job is closed usually. What is the best way to send a customer an invoice before having the quote signed, deposit paid, or the job completed? Hope that makes sense. Thanks in advance!
