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How Do You Roll Back a Major Change?
Have you guys ever made a major organizational change then needed to go back? This last year I tried to help buy back some of my time and created a Project/ Operations manager position so I could focus on sales and marketing. It's been a bumpy road to say the least. I first tried to hire two guys from outside the organization, I really thought I did my due diligence but it didn't work out with either of those guys. One guy I learned after a week (lol) the other took me a month and a half. On our third guy, I promoted from within and it seemed like it was working but here we are almost two full quarters in and we have less capacity because I haven't been successful in finding a replacement for him in the field, and we are making less money on jobs because ... well it's a combination of things but he might not be a fit for the position. I'm thinking I need a more decentralized approach since essentially we are at the same revenue number as last year when we didn't have his big overhead position. So the question is - how do you roll that back? Is it possible to make a change like that without alienating the person I'm demoting? Would it be easier to demote if I'm citing financial and structural changes for the company? What's ya'll take on that.Should you stop serving neighborhoods that don’t produce route density?
I had to make this decision in my own business. Early on, I said yes to customers 35–45 minutes outside our core area because I wanted the revenue, reviews, and growth. Over time, those accounts became expensive in ways that didn’t show up on the invoice. More windshield time, more miles, fewer stops per hour, and harder routes for the team. We eventually started looking at which cities were producing our best customers and tightened our advertising around those areas. I also had to let go of an original client who had been with us for more than 4 years because she was simply too far outside where the business had grown. That wasn’t an easy conversation. But a $100 monthly customer can look very different financially when they require a 30-minute detour every visit. Revenue alone doesn’t tell you whether an area is worth serving. At what point do you stop advertising to an area or let existing outlier customers go?Built a free way to ask Jobber questions (invoices, schedule, quotes, etc.) to your fav AI tool
We built a free tool that lets you ask your Jobber account questions in plain English Hey everyone. Big fan of Jobber here, it's the backbone of how we build for home service shops. Wanted to share a small add-on we made for it in case it's useful to some of you. Jobber already keeps all your data in one place, which is the hard part. What we wanted to add on top of that is a faster way to get answers out of it. So we built a free tool that connects your Jobber account to an AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT. You type your question in plain English, like you're texting a friend, and it pulls the real answer straight from your account. It only reads your data. It can't create a job, send an invoice, or change anything. So there's zero risk to your account, it's just a quicker window into the data Jobber's already tracking for you. Some things you could ask it: Which invoices are past due? How much are we owed right now? What's on the schedule this week? Any new job requests I haven't looked at yet? Pull up everything on this one customer How to use it (simple version): You'll need Node installed on your computer (free, quick download) You register a free "app" on Jobber's own developer site, this just gives our tool permission to read your account, approved through Jobber's own login You paste a short bit of text into a config file, or just tell Claude Code to add it for you You type "authenticate with Jobber," log in once, and you're connected It's free and open source, so it stays free. We're not selling access. If it saves you time, all we'd ask is you tell another shop running Jobber, that's how good tools like this get around. Repo's here if you want to poke at it: https://github.com/adeocode/jobber-mcp Happy to answer questions below if anyone gets stuck setting it up.How Do You Track Service Agreement Members and Apply Member Pricing Automatically?
I'm really trying to structure a service agreement and to keep it contained within Jobber for simplicity. Things that I need Once I sell the membership we need to find a way to automatically mark/tag/flag the customer as an active member When that member calls in have a way for me CSR to be able to see that the client as a member When a new quote is created have a line item automatically populate so that the service technician in the field (IOS app) will be able to identify the customer as a member. Secondary pricing for members would be a great bonus. Reporting on members
Fix the Plumbing Before Adding AI
Greetings Community 👋🏿 A concept I’ve thought about a lot: automating a broken workflow doesn’t save time, it just makes the mess move faster. A lot of teams jump straight to automation and the newest AI tools while the systems underneath are already disconnected: scattered user records, inconsistent permissions, duplicate data, and no clear source of truth. Identity is one of the best places to start. A well-managed IdP gives you a central place to manage users, access, and the SaaS applications your business depends on. It makes implementing SSO, provisioning, and deprovisioning across applications cleaner while establishing clear ownership of identity and access. Now you have a cleaner foundation to connect systems and build automations that actually make sense. Otherwise, you’re just automating the mess.Grok Bot & Jobber.......
All right, I did something last night. I had Grokbot sign into my Jobber account and then also sign into my email. I started asking it, "Who owes me money?" It came up with my top four largest invoices that were overdue, roughly about $100,000. So then I said, "All right, let's contact these people." It went in my email. It searched emails to these clients previously so it could see how I typically talk with them. It made a beautiful email outlining all the invoices: how much was due, when they were due, the invoice numbers, and everything, and then sent those emails off to those clients so that I can nudge them and get paid. So, bam, that's my new accounts receivable bot. Now I made a quote follow-up bot as well. This bot went through my recent quotes, and it actually found a couple that the client hadn't opened yet. It also reached out to those people on my behalf through email. Jobber already does a great job at follow-ups, so this new bot is just going to check in with me once a week if it finds any quotes that have been sent and haven't been opened by the client yet. Of course, my mind was blown, and today's job is figuring out what else can Grok Bot do for me in my Jobber account.What’s the single biggest software headache driving you crazy right now?
We’ve all been there—you're trying to streamline dispatching, job costing, or customer billing, and the software you rely on either puts essential tools behind a paywall or makes simple setups way harder than they need to be. What’s the number one operational task or software quirk that makes you want to throw your phone across the truck? How are you dealing with it?How to Know Everything About Everything
Anyone else feel like this needs to be you? You need to know how to market, how to manage people, how to properly incentivize them, be well versed in finance as well as all the technical aspects of whatever trade you are in. We had a situation where we were installing a lighted niche, and the specific tile made it impossible to get the tiles perfectly flat while installing it on the wall, and my guys put the light too far back so it cast a very minor shadow in the niche. In hindsight we could have installed the tiles in the niche ahead of time so we could apply proper pressure to them so there's no lips (and also put the light more forward) ... we won't make that mistake again! As I sit in the office making meta ads, reviewing my financials, it get's super frustrating to have these technical curveballs while sorting through everything else it takes to run a business. This is why we need to build our own checks and balances: Who we call or who we hire (have a good process for vetting people that know what they are doing) What we double check and when Who's the second set of eyes (use your in field managers, make sure everyone is using Jobber for pictures and notes Which leads to what you document Now the niche issue won't ever happen again but we've definitely caught things BEFORE they are a mistake utilizing this system. How to you juggle all the responsibilities?Is “being nice” making your business weaker?
This one can be hard to admit. A lot of service business owners start out wanting to be fair, flexible, and easy to work with. Then slowly, “being nice” turns into saying yes to things that hurt the business. Free extras. Late-night replies. Discounts that were never planned. Custom scheduling for one customer. Skipping fees because the conversation feels awkward. Letting a customer ignore policies because you don’t want conflict. I’ve done versions of this in my own business. At the time, it feels like good customer service. Later, you realize you trained the customer that your boundaries are optional. There’s a difference between being kind and being unclear. Kindness means communicating respectfully, fixing real mistakes, and treating people well. Poor leadership is letting customers, employees, or awkward situations pull the business away from its standards. That eventually affects the team, the route, the profit, and the customers who do respect the process. Where have you had to stop being “nice” and start being clearer?
