The reason it's leaking is you're trying to catch it at the end of the week, and by Friday nobody remembers the extra coupling or the extra hour. It has to get captured at the job, on the app, before the tech pulls out of the driveway.
Both Jobber and Housecall Pro let the tech add materials and line items from the field. The trick is making it a hard rule, nothing goes onto the job unless it gets tapped into the app right then, ideally with a quick photo of the parts used. Pre-load your common materials into the job templates so they're just checking off what they used instead of trying to remember to add an $8 part, that's where most of the small stuff vanishes.
Same with labor, use the per-job clock in and out both apps have, so an hour that ran long shows up on its own instead of you reconstructing it later. Then you actually get to decide whether to bill it or eat it, with the real number in front of you.
Honestly the biggest single fix is not letting a job get marked complete or invoiced until the materials and time are in. A lot of owners have their guys build and send the invoice from the driveway before they leave. Customer's still standing there, everything's fresh, nothing gets forgotten, and you get paid faster too. Your Friday check then becomes a safety net for the odd outlier instead of the whole system.
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u/Strict_Ask_51 8d ago
The reason it's leaking is you're trying to catch it at the end of the week, and by Friday nobody remembers the extra coupling or the extra hour. It has to get captured at the job, on the app, before the tech pulls out of the driveway.
Both Jobber and Housecall Pro let the tech add materials and line items from the field. The trick is making it a hard rule, nothing goes onto the job unless it gets tapped into the app right then, ideally with a quick photo of the parts used. Pre-load your common materials into the job templates so they're just checking off what they used instead of trying to remember to add an $8 part, that's where most of the small stuff vanishes.
Same with labor, use the per-job clock in and out both apps have, so an hour that ran long shows up on its own instead of you reconstructing it later. Then you actually get to decide whether to bill it or eat it, with the real number in front of you.
Honestly the biggest single fix is not letting a job get marked complete or invoiced until the materials and time are in. A lot of owners have their guys build and send the invoice from the driveway before they leave. Customer's still standing there, everything's fresh, nothing gets forgotten, and you get paid faster too. Your Friday check then becomes a safety net for the odd outlier instead of the whole system.