What’s your best “DIY hack” you’ve used to run your business?
When I first started my business over 19 years ago, estimates meant pen, paper, and carbon copies—rip the top page for the customer, keep the yellow one for myself. That was just the way it was back then, and it worked. Trips to Staples were the norm! But as I think about it, over the years I’ve also come up with plenty of little “DIY hacks” to keep things running when resources were tight or when I didn’t have the systems I do now. Some of those scrappy fixes actually held up surprisingly well! I bet most of you have similar stories— What’s the best “DIY hack” you’ve used to run your business? Maybe it was how you scheduled jobs, tracked expenses, did marketing, or just stayed organized before you had tools like Jobber. Sometimes those old-school solutions are just as clever as the technology we use today. Can’t wait to hear yours!Irrigation Field & Billing Workflow help!
Hello! We just hired an irrigation tech to support our commercial and residential VIP Clients. We offer a free monthly wet-check as part of that service. The issue we're having is the workflow on billing. We typically don't send a quote if the repairs are less than $500, and this is where we're looking for a clearer workflow. We'd like to send a quote to cover ourselves so I'm looking for best practice or a better way to do our workflow. Here's the current workflow Tech conducts wetchecks and completes any minor repairs. Tech marks visit complete, needs invoicing is triggered. Account manager reviews notes, job form, and issues the invoice Client calls if they weren't expecting an invoice for repairs, claiming they thought the checkup was free. This is the problem more with VIP customers than with Commercial accounts. We offer a VIP Landscape service package that includes the wet check, but repairs are billed separately. Should the tech be creating a quote in the field and then completing the repairs? What if the client isn't home? To me, it makes more sense for them to do any simple repairs (nozzles, heads, etc) while they're onsite instead of emailing a quote, driving back to the shop, and then us scheduling the repairs for another day. HELP! How do you irrigation contractors do it or what am I missing?
