By sector
Trades and installers
A trade business does not have an admin problem. It has an office that runs at the speed of whoever is nearest the phone, while the people who earn the money are up a ladder. These pages work out which parts of that office run on rules.
What the office side actually looks like #
In an electrical, plumbing and heating, roofing, glazing or small building firm, the work that repeats is not the work on site. It is everything that wraps around it.
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An enquiry arrives while every pair of hands is on a job
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Somebody prices it, sends it, and then waits
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Two weeks later nobody can say whether that quote was ever opened
The customer has gone quiet without saying no.
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The diary is rebuilt by phone
A job overruns, the next one slides, and three customers need telling.
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Parts get collected on account
The receipt lives in a van door pocket until somebody empties it.
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The notifiable job needs paperwork on the way out
A certificate to raise, a scheme to notify and a customer who needs a copy.
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An invoice goes out, and the second job starts
Which is getting paid for the first one.
None of that is hard. All of it is interruption driven, and it lands on whoever is least able to refuse it: usually the owner, in the evening, or one office person who is also the receptionist, the credit controller and the compliance department.
How to tell which parts run on rules #
The useful test is not "could a computer do this".
If yes, it runs on rules. Sending a customer the certificate they are entitled to, at the point the job is signed off, is rules. Deciding whether a board needs replacing rather than repairing is not.
A lot of trade admin sits clearly on the rules side once you look at it honestly.
Runs on rules
- Deadlines that are fixed in law and never move
- Documents that must reach a named person inside a stated number of days
- Scheme notifications that follow every job of a given type
- The arithmetic of what you are entitled to charge on a late invoice, which is set out in the late payment legislation rather than being a matter of taste
Stays human
- The pricing call
- The difficult conversation about a variation
- Every judgement about whether something is safe
Start with the free tools if you want to put a number on the hours first.
Trades and installers
Quotes, jobs, certificates and the calls nobody was free to answer.
- Missed calls while everyone is on site Why the figures you have read about missed calls do not hold up, and what to count instead
- Following up a quote What goes quiet after a quote, and which parts of the follow up run on rules
- Engineer diaries and scheduling Which parts of filling an engineer diary are decisions and which are just arithmetic
- Electrical certificates and EICRs Where the inspection ends and the paperwork starts on an EIC, a minor works cert or an EICR
- Landlord gas safety records The annual check, the 28 day deadline and the two year retention rule, and who has to do what
- Building control notifications Who tells building control the job is done, and what the customer should be holding afterwards
- Parts, supplier orders and receipts The paper trail between the merchant counter and the job, and what Making Tax Digital changes
- Getting paid, and chasing late invoices What the law lets you charge on a late commercial invoice, and where the chase becomes clerical
- CIS returns and the reverse charge The monthly Construction Industry Scheme cycle, its penalties, and how the VAT reverse charge fits
- Asking for reviews after a job What consumer law now says about incentivised reviews, and which part of asking is a rule
Where these numbers come from
- GOV.UK, Competent person scheme: current schemes and how schemes are authorised , read 19 September 2026
- GOV.UK, Late commercial payments: charging interest and debt recovery , read 19 September 2026
Last checked 19 September 2026.
Our workings are on the methodology page .
Free audit
Find out what the repeated work costs you
The audit counts every job the business repeats, ranks them by the hours they eat, and maps the five worth automating first. It is free, you keep everything, and there is no obligation at the end of it.