Exploring Tradie · handout one · Efficient TradieWhere did the hours gothat you did not invoice?
Every finished job has money in it nobody charged for. This handout walks one builder through finding it — four steps, one every two weeks, never everything at once. Use it with your own AI project; it is written so your AI can follow it with you.
Kea Ridge Builders
- Who
- Owner on the tools, one apprentice, one experienced contractor
- Work
- Bespoke residential builds, plus small handyman jobs in between
- Admin
- Owner quotes; his wife does the books and invoicing in the evenings
- Software
- Xero; receipts through Hubdoc; moving to NextMinute for jobs
- Frustration
- "We finished an $850k build and I still could not tell you what it made."
The roadmapFour steps. Two weeks each. Step one this week.
Name the wastes
The eight wastes walked through one job you have just finished. Find the bottleneck.
5S the job software
Set NextMinute up so the job structure matches the quote. Big builds and small jobs treated differently.
Back-cost one job
Quoted, cost and invoiced side by side. Where the margin came from, and where it went.
Make it the habit
A job setup sheet before every build. A materials check each month. Plan, do, check, act.
The rule: never more than four steps, never less than two weeks apart. If step one is not done, step two waits. Simple beats detailed, every time.
Step 1 · week 1Name the wastes on a job you have just finished
Lean calls them the eight wastes. On a building site they look like this. Sit down with whoever was on the job and tick the ones you saw. Most crews find three in the first ten minutes.
- Pick one job — finished, invoiced, still fresh
- Go through the eight, one at a time, with examples from that job
- Circle the biggest one. That is your bottleneck
- Ask why five times about the circled one, until you reach a cause you can change
Paste the eight wastes and your ticks into your AI project and ask: Which of these is costing us the most hours, and what is the smallest change that would reduce it? Keep its answer to one change.
No process, so everything routed through the owner. Waiting on him for decisions, admin structure missing, and NextMinute doing about a fifth of what it could. The bottleneck was the owner. The cause, five whys down: nothing was written down, so nobody else could do it.
Step 2 · week 35S the job software so it can answer the question
5S is a workshop tool — a place for everything — applied here to NextMinute and Xero. The point: costs can only be reported against a structure that was already there when they arrived. Set the job up around the quote and back-costing becomes a report, not a project.
- Quote sections become the job's cost sections, in the same order
- Big builds get a job each. Small handyman jobs are grouped and reported together
- Bills come into Xero with line items (Xero bill extraction, not just a total), so materials land on the right section
- Timesheets stay simple — if they take longer to fill in than today, they stop being filled in
Give your AI the quote sections and ask it to draft the NextMinute job template and a one-line rule for each section: what goes in it and what does not. That becomes the job setup sheet in step four.
Two kinds of job, two treatments. Bespoke builds set up section by section against the quote. Handyman work pooled into one monthly job. Hubdoc swapped for Xero bill extraction so every Placemakers line hit the right section.
Step 3 · week 5Back-cost one job — then the next one against its quote
Back-costing is reading a finished job backwards: what it cost, what it earned, where the margin came from — and how that compares with what you quoted. The first time you do it the quote is usually one lump sum or a few sections, so you can see over and under in total but not which stage ran hot. That is still worth doing — it shows you the shape.
- Quoted, cost and invoiced — labour, materials and subbies, other — one line each
- Labour by phase: is the markup the same on foundations, framing and fit-out, or does it drift?
- The invoiced figure against the quoted one, section by section — where the job made its margin and where it gave it back
- What the report cannot tell you yet, and what step two fixes for next time
Export the job's costs and invoices and ask your AI to build this exact table, then: Write me four things worth my time from this, in plain words. Check its key figures against Xero before you believe them.
The build made 17.5% — the first time anyone could say so. Materials came in under the quote but returned the least; the labour markup drifted from one phase of the build to the next. And because the job was not set up to match the quote, nobody could see which stage ran hot. That is what the next build fixes.
Hi Dan
Attached is the job profit report for Harbour View and a one-page job setup sheet for the next build. The job made 17.5%, which is a sound result — and the first time we have been able to say so.
What the report shows
| Charge type | Quoted | Cost | Invoiced | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | $172,000 | $131,500 | $184,200 | 28.6% |
| Materials & subbies | $398,000 | $386,900 | $419,600 | 7.8% |
| Other | $18,000 | $2,150 | $27,400 | 92% |
| Total | $588,000 | $520,550 | $631,200 | 17.5% |
Two things worth your time: materials carry the risk and return the least at a flat 10% markup — they came in $11,000 under the quote, so the quote was fine, the markup is the issue; and the labour markup is not consistent across the phases of the job — foundations and framing were priced at one rate, fit-out at another, so the margin depended on which phase ran long. Worth knowing before you price the next one.
What it cannot tell us yet
The quote was one figure per section, and the job in NextMinute (job software) was not set up to match it, so we can see over and under by section but not by stage. Which part of the build ran hot is the next question, and the setup sheet is where we answer it for the Ellis build.
Roadmap
You: fill in the setup sheet for the Ellis build by Friday.
Me: build the job in NextMinute (job software) from it, and set the monthly check.
Kind regards
Monique
Step 4 · week 7Make it the habit: plan, do, check, act
The last step is the one that keeps the other three true. Lean calls it PDCA — a small loop that runs every job and every month, instead of a big review once a year.
- PlanThe job setup sheet, filled in before the job is raised: client and address, big build or small job, quoted or charge-up, the quote sections, who is on it, and what you want to know at the end
- DoThe crew records time and materials against the sections, nothing more than today
- CheckThe monthly materials check: are the bills complete and on the right section?
- ActThe job profit report, read against the quote. What we learned goes into the next quote and the next setup sheet
This is where your AI earns its place: the same report, every month, from the same exports, with your own instructions in the project. You read the four things worth your time. It does the typing.
Two loops. Big builds: setup sheet → job to match the quote → monthly check → profit report against the quote. Small jobs: pooled monthly, one line. The owner reads one page a month and quotes with the last job's margin in front of him. The wife's evenings are shorter.
What changed at Kea Ridge
- Before
- Finished build, no idea of the margin; owner the bottleneck; software a fifth used
- After
- Margin known per job and per person; setup sheet before every build; a monthly report the owner reads
- Still to do
- The first build set up stage by stage against its quote is under way — which stage runs hot comes with it. Step by step.