Becoming a More Organized Contractor
It’s the season for making (and unfortunately breaking) New Year’s Resolutions. Lots of you probably chose 2016 to be the year of organization and by gosh, we are going to help you get there!
Contractors, running a business is hard work! As your supplier, we support you and want to make it easier when we can. No matter if your enterprise is large or small, one truck or ten, highly profitable or struggling for profit, getting and staying organized is not only incredibly difficult to do, but absolutely critical.
If you’ve already got the perfect system, then don’t bother reading this article… perhaps go check out some of our thoughts on Edison bulbs instead. If you think there may be some nuggets worth chewing on for a little bit, then read on!
Clean Shop!
Coming back from the holidays is always a tough kick in the pants – all of a sudden your schedule fills up and the jobs are in full swing. It’s hard to prioritize, but place a deadline on yourself (like the end of January) to clean up shop. Moving forward you may choose to tailor that housekeeping month to your personal slow season, but for now, let’s call it January.
Review all your files, letters, magazines, receipts, and sell sheets that have accumulated throughout the year. If you need it, file it. If you don’t, toss it. If you haven’t used it in a year, you don’t need it.
Quit saying, “I really have to find time to get this done.”
That phrase is negative and we are positive that negative doesn’t do you any favors. So how do you cut it out? Handle things once and handle them quickly. To mitigate the email and paperwork vortex, we like this system from A Concord Carpenter: The 3 F’s.
- File
- Forward [delegate]
- Forget [delete]
Start paying attention to the time drains in your day: how many of them can be filed, forwarded, or forgotten? Without getting dragged into the weeds, these are the basic files that ought to exist in your office:
- Estimates
- Jobs-to-do
- Receivables
- Completed jobs
- Insurance
- Truck Maintenance
- Tools Info
- Client Info
- Website
- Taxes
Job Accounts
Big projects have a unique way of getting away from you in terms of budget and time. A job account keeps materials used for a certain project separate from your other purchases. This helps you stay organized and informed regarding how much was purchased, your total material cost, and how accurately it aligns with your initial quote.
Start a job account at the beginning of the job, and it’ll make your filing and organization at the end of the job infinitely easier.
Evaluate Course.
Evaluate your business performance in 2015… Really think about what served you well and what didn’t. What investments were worth the time and had big payoff vs what time was spent on something that might have worked well, but didn’t have big enough results to justify the time?
Tweak your goals and procedures to really highlight the things that served you well. What changes can you aim for this year? Make one small change, like using email for quotes or invoices rather than paper. Change happens one step at a time – set a goal and then build a plan to get there. Re-evaluate that plan annually.
Paperwork Monster
Every time you sit down and start working on filing invoices, following up on payments, returning emails, anything that has you focused and at your desk, it’s amazing how something just comes up! A phone call, an employee, an appointment booking, etc.
Avoid letting these distractions derail your concentration by doing one of two things:
- Back to the three F’s: forward. Figure out what can be delegated and do so to keep your concentration where it’s critical.
- Assign maintenance time to yourself. Whether you need 30 minutes each day or an hour every week, set recurring regular time to make yourself sit down and manage those little items that pile up on your desk. Put it on your calendar so you are accountable and your employees know you’re unavailable during that brief chunk of time. It helps make big projects more manageable when you hold yourself to a schedule.
What are some of your favorite organization tips?