° Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning business, Germany

The starting point

The business does project work such as boiler replacements, bathrooms, ventilation and air conditioning, plus customer service, where the phone rings and the caller is often not yet a customer. No system kept the quote and the actual effort together on the same job, so the business tracked them separately: once for the quote, once for the actual hours and material, reconciled by hand at the end of every job. Little of what happened on site reached the office as data: the survey photos sat in a chat app, so quotes were typed up from them by hand; hours came back on paper weekly reports and were typed in again; material lived in a technician's head until someone asked. With dozens of invoices a month, nobody knew which had been paid, and payments were checked by hand only every few months.

What we changed

Survey and quote

The survey is recorded on site with photos, notes, a checklist per trade and the work needed, and one action turns it into a quote. Tenders arrive as GAEB files and leave as priced quotes, and the wholesalers' DATANORM price files fill the catalogue.

The quote as the benchmark, the invoice from actual costs

When the customer accepts, the system keeps an unchangeable copy of exactly what was accepted. The same order then collects what really happens: hours and material booked on site, and anything unplanned as an extra item on the same order instead of an argument at the end of the month. The invoice comes from what was actually done, and the difference from the quote is a number on the order while it is still open.

Customer service and dispatch

A service order is created while the caller is still on the phone, and the customer along with it. Dispatch only proposes technicians who hold the required qualifications, such as gas, F-gases or drinking water, and customers get appointment confirmations and reminders by e-mail. Visits under maintenance contracts are scheduled automatically every year, and the maintenance reports are filled in on a mobile phone at the installation.

The technician app

Technicians see their jobs of the day with the survey photos, log hours with a timer, record material from the catalogue or as free text, send photos and notes that reach the office at once, and close the job with the customer's signature, even where the basement has no signal. They also record their working time in the app, as the law requires. The app replaces the chat app.

Approval, invoice and payment

Nothing is invoiced before a person approves it: the weekly report goes to the master craftsman for approval, and free-text material without a price blocks the invoice until the office prices it. Invoices are issued as e-invoices and show the labour share under § 35a and a Girocode for banking apps; construction work for property developers is billed with instalment invoices under the VOB. Bank statements are matched to the invoices automatically, and the three dunning levels only go out after a person approves them.