Written by JD Davenport, who still sells for a living.
The job leaves your hands and comes back wrong. Wrong material, missing part, a second trip that nobody charged for. It does not feel like a system problem when it happens once. It is a system problem by the tenth time.
Two checks and the loop between them. One before anything is bought, one on the day the work finishes. What the second one catches becomes what the first one checks, so the same mistake stops happening twice. Trackers for your first-time-complete rate and your return-trip rate, and a board showing who is on what and what has been waiting longest. Charted puts a list of addresses in driving order.
| File | What it is | What it does for you |
|---|---|---|
| 00 START HERE | What to open first, in what order, and what breaks if you skip a step. | You install it in the right order instead of opening four files at once and finishing none of them. |
| 01 Why Jobs Lose Money After They Are Sold | The reasoning. Read it before you change anything. | You stop blaming the price for a cost that was created after the price was agreed. |
| 02 The Pre-Install Gate Word, editable | One review before material is ordered. The last cheap moment on the job. | The last cheap moment on the job gets used. A mistake caught here costs a phone call; caught on the roof it costs a day. |
| 03 The Close-Out Gate Word, editable | One record on the day the job finishes, filled in on site. | What actually happened gets recorded on the day, on site, by the person who was there, rather than reconstructed on Friday. |
| 04 The Checklist Builder Spreadsheet | Builds the parts list for the pre-install gate out of twenty of your own jobs. | It asks about what actually goes wrong on your jobs, not on somebody else's. |
| 05 The Pre-Install Tracker Spreadsheet | One row per review. Returns your extra-material rate. | You get a number for how often you buy material twice, which is a number almost nobody in this trade has. |
| 06 The Close-Out Tracker Spreadsheet | One row per finished job. Returns your first-time-complete rate and your return-trip rate. | A return trip stops being invisible. It costs a day and leaves no trace anywhere today. |
| 07 The Handoff Scorecard Word, editable | Four scores at the moment a sold job reaches production. | You find out a job arrived incomplete on the day, not when somebody is standing on the roof without it. |
| 07 The Handoff To Yourself Word, editable | The same four scores where the person who sells the job also builds it. | The hardest case to catch, because the person who left the gap is the person who has to notice it. |
| 08 Build These As Forms | If you want the two gates on a phone instead of on paper. The full question list for each. | It ends up on the phone already in their hand, instead of on paper filled in from memory on Friday. |
| 09 The Two Pages - a guide for whoever fills them in | Four minutes, for whoever fills the gates in. Hand it out. | They get it right on the job that is not textbook, because they know why the field is there. |
| 10 The Production Board Spreadsheet | Every job, who is doing it and which day, in two views built from one sheet. | Nobody has to ask where anybody is, and nobody has to remember. |
| 11 Charted (the app) Browser tool | Paste your stops, say how many one person covers in a day, and the week comes back in driving order. | Routing stops being decided by whoever is loudest at seven in the morning. |
| 12 Shared Definitions | The same vocabulary in every kit, so any two of them work together. | Buy a second kit later and it drops in beside the first. No reconciling two sets of words. |
| LICENSE AND DISCLAIMER Text | One business, yours forever. Nothing expires. | Nothing renews, and no decision of ours can ever switch it off. |
| RUN IT WITH AI - copy this prompt Text | Runs the recurring pass with you, reading the queue the spreadsheet produced. | The monthly pass happens even in a month when you do not feel like doing it, because somebody else is asking the questions. |
| SET UP WITH AI - copy this prompt Text | Interviews you and fills the kit in around your business. | You answer questions for twenty minutes instead of reading a manual, and get back a setup sheet for your own business. |
Not sure this is the one that is costing you? Compare all four kits, or read the questions people ask about this one.