Forum Discussion

BJ's avatar
BJ
Contributor 2
2 months ago

Spreadsheets

I am the VP of Operations for a high-volume surveying company in Texas.  We started using Jobber about 10 ago years when we really started to grow and needed a place to schedule and store all of our data.  Over the last couple years, we have started experiencing issues with keeping track of deadlines.  We have multiple different spreadsheets via google docs where we track timelines.  We will use jobber to create a task and once the surveying task is completed, we then create a new task under the same job for a survey drawing to be completed.  However, jobber is not great about being able to sort via due dates, so we end up adding this information to different spreadsheets.  Those spreadsheets then get additional specific information added to them.  I have 5 full time admins now and need to simplify this process so we can be more productive and eliminate the user errors.  We do about 3,000 jobs a year through Jobber and then there will be at least 4-6 different tasks created for each job.  Does anyone else push this much through jobber each year and if so how do you track your jobs deadlines.  I know there are add-on apps that can help with this, so do yall use any of those apps.  I am not a IT guy so need all the help i can get here. 

ai
construction
scheduling
  • ryaantuttle's avatar
    ryaantuttle
    Jobber Ambassador
    2 months ago

    I think this could be a SIMPLE fix, by making the right connection.

    It sounds like you'd be much better off staying with Jobber and making some Zapier connections to Asana and/or something like Airtable. Im not a huge proponent of switching softwares if there's just some small limitations that can be easily fixed. It's much too costly and not necessary if the options exist.
    Go on Upwork and hire a freelance "Developer" that can log into your Jobber and Zapier account. They'll be able to handle the rest from there.

    Simplicity is always key 

    • WiringByron's avatar
      WiringByron
      Contributor 4
      2 months ago

      I was thinking the same thing. We use Zapier to push our jobs to Asana and do more complex task management in there. 

      We have many tasks in Asana connected to each Jobber job and we don't miss a thing. Every task is auto assigned to someone with directions and a due date for completion. We also have a job board so we can see where all our jobs are in the production cycle as well. 

  • allenmeringolo's avatar
    allenmeringolo
    Contributor 2
    2 months ago

    Hi BJ - it sounds like you have bumped into the limitations of Jobber when it comes to planning and executing jobs with contingencies, complex scopes of work, and lots of deadlines. My company has both a maintenance and construction arm and we are in the process of moving our construction jobs out of Jobber to another software that is a bit better suited to handle the complexity of construction. 

    I would be curious how you have built your spreadsheets. A bit different context but for our snow removal and landscaping operation, we use Jobber exports to build pretty complex spreadsheets to manage scheduling, plan routes, compare budgeted time to actual time, keep tabs on business health, etc. It works pretty well. 

    Let me know if you might be interested in seeing how we set it up. Happy to jump on a quick Google Meet. 

  • aholidaypoolsnc's avatar
    aholidaypoolsnc
    Contributor 2
    2 months ago

    From what I understand, I believe you can simply do this when you are scheduling a task, assessment, job, etc You can select a start to end date with exact times if needed.  Hope this helps?

  • vlad's avatar
    vlad
    Contributor 2
    2 months ago

    If you like working with the spreadsheets, but just need to simplify the process of getting the data from jobber into the spreadsheets, it can be done through zapier or the jobber api. You could even send data from the spreadsheets back to jobber. Let me know if you have any questions.