ElectricalBossPro Blog — Running an Electrical Business

A Weekly Office Routine for an Electrical Business

Most office problems in a small electrical business aren't caused by hard tasks. They're caused by easy tasks that get skipped: an estimate nobody followed up on, a plan visit nobody booked, an invoice nobody checked. A weekly routine fixes that by making sure every easy task has a day.

Routines Beat Memory

The last article, Bringing a New Electrician Onto the Team: Logins, Van Assignments and the First Week, ended with keeping the office in the loop. The weekly routine is how the office stays in the loop without anyone having to remember.

The routine below is a starting point. Change the days to fit your shop. What matters is that each task has a set time, and the person who owns it knows it.

Every Day

A few things happen every working day, whatever else is on the calendar:

• Morning: check the dispatch board for each van, confirm route order, answer overnight texts and look at new Form Responses from the website.
• During the day: book new calls, move skipped jobs to a new day, reply to customer texts from two-way texting.
• End of day: read each van's completed and skipped jobs, make sure every completed job has an invoice, set up tomorrow.

Automatic reminders, on-the-way and arrived texts handle most customer updates on their own, which keeps the daily work manageable.

The end-of-day check is the one most worth protecting. It takes a few minutes when done daily and an afternoon when left for Friday. A completed job without an invoice, a skip without a new day, or a tech note asking for a callback is easy to fix the same evening and easy to lose by the end of the week.

Monday: Plan the Week

• Look at the whole week on the dispatch board, van by van. Are installs spread sensibly? Does the service van have room for calls?
• Check the Waiting List for plan visits that are due now or overdue. Book them into gaps, grouping nearby addresses on the map.
• Confirm approved estimates from last week are scheduled.

Tuesday: Estimates

• Go through every open estimate. Automatic follow-up emails have already gone out. Decide which need a personal text or a call.
• Pass the largest estimates to the owner for a personal follow-up.
• Update any estimate the customer wanted changed and send it again for online approval.
• Close estimates that are clearly lost, and note why.

Wednesday: Customers and Records

• Read customer ratings from the customer app. Pass anything poor to the owner. Thank the tech behind anything great.
• Clean up records: fix addresses, merge duplicate clients, update tags.
• Check that equipment updates from techs look right on the house.
• Reach out to customers whose inspections came back with recommendations but no estimate yet.

Thursday: Money

• Look at past-due invoices. Past-due follow-up has handled the first reminders. Decide on next steps for anyone still unpaid: a text, a call, or a word with the owner.
• Check for failed card charges and ask those customers to update their card in the customer app.
• If it's near month end, prepare for monthly statements to property managers and commercial accounts.

The full approach to collections is in Getting Paid Faster in an Electrical Business: Card on File, Auto-Charge and Past-Due Follow-Up.

Friday: Review and Next Week

• Sit down with the owner for a short weekly review: jobs completed, invoices sent and paid, estimates approved, overdue plan visits.
• Look at next week's board and fix anything obviously off.
• Check the text allowance if it was a busy week. Plans include 500, 1,000 or 2,000 segments a month sent and received on Start, Pro and Crew.

The weekly numbers are covered in Simple Reports for an Electrical Business Owner: What Is Worth Checking Every Week.

Monthly and Seasonal Tasks

A few things only need doing once a month or once a season:

• Send monthly statements to accounts set to Monthly billing.
• Count customers on yearly plans and see if the number is growing.
• Before the busy season, refresh estimate templates and check your service list prices.
• In the slow season, build call lists from equipment and inspection history.

Make It Stick

Write the routine down and put it where the office can see it. For the first month, check it off each week. After that, it becomes habit. If a task keeps getting skipped, either move it to a better day or ask whether it's needed at all.

For the rest of the business side of an electrical shop, return to the electrical business software overview.