When a spreadsheet is fine
A spreadsheet costs nothing, everyone knows how to use it, and you can lay it out exactly how you like. If one person runs every job, there are only a handful on the go, and that person is always in the office, a spreadsheet does the job.
The signs you've outgrown it
- More than one person updates it, and nobody's sure which copy is the latest.
- The news from site comes in by text and phone call, and only gets typed in when someone remembers.
- When a date moves, you change it in one place and forget the three other places it should have changed.
- You can't see what happened on a job last month: who said what, and when.
- Only one person really understands how it works. When they're off, nobody can find anything.
- You spend Friday afternoon turning it into a report for the main contractor.
If two or three of those sound familiar, the spreadsheet is costing you more time than it saves.
What to look for in job tracking software
- Site can update it from a phone, in seconds, without installing anything.
- Dates are linked, so when the client's date moves, everything before it moves too.
- Every change is kept, so you can look back at a job's history.
- You can send the main contractor a tidy copy, showing only what you choose.
- It works the way your trade works: your stages, your names for things.
- You can try it properly before you pay, and take all your data out any time.
What about the cost?
Work it out against time, not money. If job software saves the office one hour a week of chasing site and updating sheets, and site one phone call a day, it has paid for itself many times over at £29 a month. If it doesn't save you that, you don't need it yet.
Try it side by side
The safest way to switch is not to switch at all at first. Run one or two jobs in the software alongside your spreadsheet for a few weeks, and see which one people actually keep up to date. PAD360 was built that way: it replaced a real contractor's job spreadsheet, and ran side by side with it until the spreadsheet wasn't needed any more. The free trial gives you an example company to try it on, with nothing to install and no card.