Congrats on hitting that 20–30 team milestone, Alicia! Moving from working in the business to on the business is a massive step, but these workflow bottlenecks will eat up your time if you let them.
For that GC invoicing headache, the real killer is double data entry. To fix this, you need to establish one operational 'source of truth' so you aren't chasing data in five different places. Here is how I’d look at tackling this:
1. Establish a Dedicated System for Your Operations
The cleanest move is to adopt a Field Service Management (FSM) software—something like Jobber—to run your daily operations. You schedule the team, track the jobs, and generate the invoice directly in your own system first so your company reports and scheduling stay 100% accurate. When a GC forces you to use their portal, you just treat their portal purely as a payment delivery mechanism. Once they pay, you manually mark it 'Paid' in your system. This keeps your internal business data completely clean and unified, while QuickBooks handles the back-end bookkeeping.
2. Bridge the Gap with an Offshore Admin
If you combine your internal system with an offshore VA, you can get yourself completely out of the data-entry loop. Before you hire, record a few quick screen-share videos (using Loom) showing exactly how you click through an invoice in your system and how you input it into the GC portals. Hand those videos to your new admin, and let them handle the tedious portal typing while you focus on growth. Look into reputable VA agencies that specialize in administrative support to find the right fit.
Balancing a team that size is huge work, Alicia. Streamlining that workflow is going to give you your time back immediately. You've got this!
