Plus500

Time Saving Admin Tips For Tradesmen

Are you a tradesman whose office is slowly disappearing under a pile of paperwork? It’s easy for this to happen, especially if you haven’t for much experience in administration or much interest in it. It also doesn’t that many trade industries are still using outdated infrastructure. When it comes to admin, many trades are stuck in the past. However, you can modernize your own admin and spare yourself a lot of paperwork. 


Image - free for commercial use


Set Yourself Up With A Good Project Management App

As more customers approach you, and your work schedule gets busier, you can find yourself starting to struggle to keep track of everything, especially if you’re running a larger business rather than working as a sole trader. Don’t just rely on sticky notes to keep track of everything!


Instead, find job management software or a project management app to help keep track of the all the tasks you need to do. You can also these tools to share files and keep in touch with teammates. 


Figure Out Which Of Your Current Papers Should Be Discarded

Often the heavy burden of paperwork isn’t the paperwork itself, but how the paperwork has been organized. Under all those piles of paper, there’s probably plenty of documents that you don’t need anymore and that stopped being useful a while ago. If you can’t get at old paperwork, it’s hard to sort it out. Take the time to sort through everything, even if it takes a while. 


Look at each document on at a time, and place it in a keep or discarded pile. Shred the discard pile and organize the rest in a better way so you can find everything more easily and won’t have to do this big sorting job again. 


Use Software To Manage Contact Information

You’ve probably already added a lot of entries to your contacts diary during your time working as a tradesman. The contact details of customers, as well as people you’ve met through networking, should all be put into a software-based contact management system, rather than scribbled into your diary or kept in your head. 


You could use a full CRM system, or if that would be overkill for your company, just configure your existing Contacts app for your firm’s use, as this can work just as well.


Add CallBack Dates To Our Calendar

For a tradesman, it’s very convenient that customers will usually seek work from contractors that they are familiar with and have worked with before. As long as you do a good job the first time you work for someone and give them your contact details, you should be able to get repeat business from them with no trouble. 


Some parts of the trade industry, such as carpet cleaning, could see you getting work from the same customer on a regular basis. If this is the case, after you finish the job, ask the customer when they will next need your services. Add this date to your calendar so you can call them back as the day nears to make sure you get the business.

No comments