What's the one office job you still do after the last job of the day?
Curious how other owners handle this. The field work runs fine, but every evening there's the same pile: quotes that never got a follow-up, invoices past 30 days, and customers waiting on a reply to "when can you come out?" If you could hand ONE of those to someone else tomorrow, which would it be? And has anything (a hire, an automation, a routine) actually stuck for you?Claude Bot - Work on The Business and In the Business at the Same Time
I've been trying to get a lot of the people I coach on this but if you are feeling stretched for time, and have a lot on your plate to try and do - the answer is Claude Bot. This is an extension for your Chrome browser. Everyone know what Claude is but I've always been annoyed because AI can tell you how to do everything but you have to do it. You still have to find where to click, find the setting, learn the interface. Claude Bot DOES THE CLICKING FOR YOU. It's unreal. These are projects I've been sitting on that I've knocked out THIS MONTH!! An estimator for my website. Dude I've been having a crappy half finished estimator on my website for a couple years. I asked Claude bot to revamp my estimator on my website to what is going to make the most sense, give me revisions, help me with prices, then test it. laude Bot says - well if I test this you'll have a bunch of emails in your inbox from the testing. I said that's cool you delete them. Then tell me the results. The only thing is it wasn't' able to put pictures in there. No worries Claude bot, I can manage that. This is The Result Next up - I fired my SEO company. I asked Claude bot to go through my website make a punch list of everything that could be improved SEO wise and help with our rankings. Then I asked it to do the things it's able to and make a list with SOPs for the things it can't. Put them in tasks in my company click up for my VA so she can easily go through everything. Set up tasks that need to be reoccurring and set up tasks we can use Claude bot for. Boom done. Fix and optimize my Go High Level - I paid someone to do my automations but there were some things I didn't like. I didn't want to pay her to make adjustments and also wait for them but I don't want to learn to navigate go high level. Ok Claude bot - do that. All the time I'm doing this, I just have that running on one screen then the other computer screen I'm knocking out quotes or putting together content. Oh ya I also made a dashboard for our click up so I can see where everyone is at with projects in one place, have it help me do quotes if I'm watching football or generally don't have the energy to do the things I need to do, and have it put my calendar together for the next week in a few minutes. YOU GUYS NEED TO GET ON THIS! Yes - you'll end up needing to spend money. But TIME is money. It can save you so much time.Seniors' discount
All right, let's talk about it. I get this request from time to time. "Hey, your prices seem high. We're actually seniors. Do you have a seniors discount." Now, my feeling on this is hell no. These boomers, especially in my area (I'm in Vancouver, Canada), own all the real estate. They got all the money. Why in the world would I offer them a discount. Now, something different. Someone told me they were a senior and they had a really tough time getting by, and they needed help. I would actually defer to maybe even doing the job for free, and I've actually done this a few times. But for the majority of people, what is your system here? Convince me otherwise. Do you offer a seniors discount? I guess the follow-up question would be: Is it really even a discount? Are you just charging a little bit more, and is it more of a marketing discount, or is there an actual real discount?
DocuSign Integration Frustration
Is anyone actually happy with the DocuSign integration? The way I imagine most of us service contractors would want this to work is pretty straightforward: The client reviews the quote, including all line items, pricing, and terms and conditions. The client clicks Approve. DocuSign generates a document that looks exactly like the quote the client reviewed, including all the details and terms. The client signs that document electronically. A completed, signed copy of the agreement is automatically saved to the client's hub and emailed to both parties for their records. My frustration is that I've learned the basic signed quote in Jobber may not provide the level of documentation and legal protection I would want if a dispute ever escalated into a lawsuit. Why can't Jobber make this process inhouse? Why not allow clients to electronically sign the actual quote, with a legally valid electronic signature, a timestamp, and a record of the agreement, without requiring a separate DocuSign integration? Am I missing something here? Is there a way to accomplish this properly with Jobber, or are other contractors running into the same issue?Here is my A.I prompt for Estimating
Copy this into your AI agent of choice. I've moved over to Grok Bot but I used this as a "my gpt" in chat gpt for a few years as well. This is built for a Canadian Electrical company but go through it and change it as needed or add things: Role: This GPT will act as an electrical estimator with years of experience. I want it to respond in an easy going but also professional manner. You specialize in creating electrical estimates. You know all Canadian Electrical codes. You can also search Canadian Electrical Code rules on the web if you don't know them. When I give you specific details about a job, you are to help me find live prices of listed materials. Add up total costs based on my rates, and also help me format a nice estimate for my client. Throughout this process you are going to go through four protocols: 1) Job Summary Protocol - This is where a summary of the job is given to me in a specific output format. 2) Material Protocol - This is when you calculate materials needed through a series of questions about the job (This is only run through if I don't already have materials I need listed) 3) Calculation Protocol - This is where you calculate the estimate total price of everything from my labour rates, material of charge, travel time, contingency funds etc. 4) The Final Draft Protocol - This is where you combine all of the information together into one nice format I can send to the client Desired output: Job Summary Protocol - When I give you specific details about a clients wants and needs, first you need to break it down into a more manageable format. You can format it like this: Client Name: (List it here) Take the name from the description if the name is mentioned. Project ID: (List it here / Make this a random 6 digit number) Job Description: (List that here) Next, after you've given me this format ask me at the end "would you like me to go through the material protocol? Or do you already have the materials needed?" If I responded with go through the material protocol then do so. If I replay with I already have the material list or something along those lines the move to the next step, the "calculation process" Material Protocol In this step your job is to help me come up with a list of materials and quantities with pricing. This will be based off of the job description. Ask me a series of questions about the job description to get a full understanding of the materials needed. You can decide which questions are necessary to help me see blind spots in the job or extra labour or materials that I might need. Once I answer your questions can you give me a rough draft of the materials needed with quantities and ask me if I would like to make any revisions. If I provide the materials. Go through the list and add to it anything you think I might have missed or need to complete the project. At the end of this materials list ask me if I would like to make any changes or revisions and then ask me if I would like to move on to the "Calculation Protocol" Calculation Protocol In this step your job is to calculate the estimate based upon the previous outputs from this conversation and information gained. You can run me through these questions in order to calculate the total estimate for this project. How many hours do you think this job will take? How many hours for picking up materials at wholesalers? How many hours to add for a project manager overseeing the project? Do you want to add 10% to every quote for PST and Visa payment? Is there anything special about this job that you want to add something extra to the quote for? (An example would be a tough client or a job that's in a further location for us to drive or maybe it's abnormally difficult) What is your preferred store for shopping for materials? - the answer will always be https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home.html and Amazon.ca and Home Hardware and Rona and when you give me the list of materials please include links to the website and quantities of items where you found it so I can order that material later. What gross margin would you like this job quoted at? Once all of these questions have been answered you will calculate the estimate. Our base hourly is $55.00 / hour. We take the base hourly and the base materials cost and we apply the gross margin % I've given you to get our final price. To calculate gross margin correctly, use the following formula: Turn the percentage margin into a decimal (e.g., for 30%, use 0.3). Subtract that decimal from 1 (e.g., 1 - 0.3 = 0.7). Divide the total base cost of hours and materials by this result to get the final price including the margin. Then we add another 10% to account for visa payments and PST tax. After that you can give me the grand total. If I say that it looks good then you can move on to the "Final Draft Protocol" Final Draft Protocol Once we've gone through all the previous steps I would like you to sum up all the information into a nice estimate for the client with a total price. I don't want to show any break down pricing. Just the total price with a nice description of the work that we will complete for the client. Keep this fresh and positive. With a vibe that we are excited to get started on this project for them. Ask me if it looks good or if it needs revisions after each final draft. Operating commands: When the command "Do you have a description of the job you would like estimated? " is pressed start the process in the job summary protocol. When the command "Give me a list of materials and I will search the web for pricing? " is pressed search https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home.html and https://www.gescan.com/ for live pricing of the material list given and give me that pricing in a nice point form list. I've added a logo called plumby peach, when you give me my final estimate proposal can you make it look like an estimate, with my logo and company info. And also make it a downloadable PDF.
Best way to handle inbound calls to company line?
Curious yalls thoughts. Looking to not just grow, looking to scale and improve / continue to implement systems. Currently have myself, 1 outside sales rep, and field labor crew (fence install company) current process: customer calls into company # (my cell phone). I try to answer as if it were an office line to answer asap. From that, I confirm I can Text them, I then send a request form via jobber that has basic info / few questions to answer. If / when they fill it out, I add to the schedule for a confirmed day / time to quote on site. etc…… I feel this part is a lot of back and forth, and until I have an in house admin office worker that can answer these calls the first ring - I won’t be able to truly grow / stay efficient. (If I’m tied up, I don’t like calling them back 2 hours later, etc) but also - I love having them fill out the form bc the way I have questions on it, it turns it from a warm lead, to a warmer lead. Any way to streamline this, get more efficient, improve this current process? ANY thoughts or advice - real thankful.
Easy Solutions for Jobber to implement
There are several quick items in jobber that can be changed by the programmers to make our lives a bit easier. Case in point - Under "JOBS" , why can the programmer add a drop down to filter for "SALESMAN" , just like in the "QUOTES" Section. I even tried to pull this under the custom reports and it responded with "I can’t create this custom report because the available quote data does not include a salesperson field to group current approved quotes by" Please use this thread to add any items you may think jobber can help out with.How Quote Templates Changed Our Speed-to-Lead
One of the simplest things we did in Jobber was build out quote templates for the services we sell most often. Before that, every quote took a little more thought than it should have. What service are they asking for? Which line items do I need? What wording should I use? Did I include the same details I included on the last quote? None of those things are difficult, but they create friction. Once we built templates around our normal services, sending a quote became much faster and more consistent. That matters because speed-to-lead matters. If someone requests a quote from you and three other companies, the business that gets back to them quickly with something clear and professional already has an advantage. Templates also helped us standardize what the customer sees. Pricing, scope, expectations, and options aren't being recreated from scratch every time. We can still customize when the job requires it, but the repetitive part is already done. It’s one of those small Jobber features that doesn’t sound exciting, but over hundreds of quotes it adds up to a lot of saved time. Do you have templates built for most of what you sell, or are you still building quotes individually?
Field note: I tested an automated lead-triage workflow to stop manual quote follow-ups.
I’ve been reading through the community lately, and two things keep coming up from business owners: the anxiety of "Where do I even start with AI?", and the absolute grind of chasing down silent quotes and following up on invoices at the end of a long day in the field. Most "AI automation" advice you hear is just hype. It tells you to "just plug in an AI chatbot," which usually ends up hallucinating, sounding like a robot, and annoying your customers. So, instead of just talking about it, I spent the last few weeks building and stress-testing a specific workflow to solve this exact problem. The Setup: Instead of manually typing follow-ups at 8 PM, this system reads the incoming inquiry, assigns it an "Urgency Score" (1-10), and only sends a high-priority alert for the hot leads (8s and 9s). Everything else gets a polite, professional auto-acknowledgment. It stops the dropped balls and gives you your evenings back, without the immediate overhead of hiring a full-time office admin. I know there’s a lot of skepticism (rightfully so) around AI workflows. So, I documented the whole process. I put together a free, plain-English breakdown of the exact wiring, prompts, and settings I used to make this work reliably. You can view the full blueprint here: Here If you’re tired of the manual follow-up grind and want to see how this is actually wired, take a look. If you have any questions about how this would apply to your specific setup, just reply below. Happy to share what I've learned.How Do You Convert a Diagnostic Quote Into a Repair Job Without Creating Two Separate Jobs?
We service appliances. We get a request through our website and then convert it to a job or we add it manually. Then we go out and diagnose them for a $95-$150 service call, depending on distance. If possible we repair then. If not we send over a quote, then once approved we turn it into another job and schedule it for repair. We end up with two separate jobs, instead of being able to approve the quote and add it to an existing job with a new scheduled job. Is there an easier way to do this that I’m missing?
