Tuesday's job sheet should not arrive on Friday.
In construction and installation the work is outside and the administration is inside. Paper job sheets get lost, cannot be read or only reach the office at the end of the week. Extra work nobody wrote down never gets invoiced.
We build apps and systems that work on site, including without coverage, and that fill the administration at the moment the work is done rather than three days later.
What was never written down, you will never invoice.
Construction and installation run on trust between people who have known each other for years. Something extra gets done on site, quickly agreed with the supervisor, and everyone carries on. That goes right a hundred times and wrong once.
At the final account it is then one word against another, and without a signed sheet you lose that conversation. The same goes for hours: if they are estimated afterwards, you only learn at the costing whether a project made money. On projects worth a few hundred thousand that is the difference between a good and a bad year.
The extra work was agreed verbally with someone who no longer works there.
And then there is the shortage. You cannot add a crew, and the people you have you do not want to lose to paperwork. Every form an engineer has to fill in on their own time costs you twice: once in hours and once in goodwill.
The answer is not stricter recording but easier recording. An engineer with dirty hands and a customer waiting is not going to fill in a three-screen form. So we build apps that work offline, prefill everything we already know, and let the customer sign on the spot.
What we build for the trades.
Usually an app for outside and a screen for inside, with an integration in between to the administration you already have.
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A job sheet app that works offline
Hours, materials, photos and a customer signature on screen, including in a basement or on a site without coverage. As soon as there is a connection it all goes to the office, without duplicate or half sheets.
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Extra work captured on site
A photo, a short description and a signature from whoever ordered it. That ends the argument at the final account about what was agreed and by whom.
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Planning for the field
Who is where, what is still unfinished and what moves when an emergency comes in. The engineer sees their day on their phone, with the address, the contact and what was done last time.
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A project file per job
Drawings, inspections, handover photos and certificates together. After a complaint or a warranty claim you find it in a minute instead of hunting for a folder from three years ago.
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Materials and stores
What was taken, what was used and what needs ordering. Scanning in the van or in the store, so the order does not appear only when someone faces an empty shelf.
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A portal for principals
A housing association or property manager sees the status of their jobs, the handover photos and the invoices. That saves your office the weekly round of status emails.
Four things we hear on site.
It is rarely unwillingness. It is an engineer with dirty hands, a phone in their pocket and a customer standing there waiting.
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Job sheets on paper
They get lost, they are illegible or they only come back on Friday. Meanwhile the office cannot invoice and nobody knows whether the job is finished.
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Extra work disappears
Something extra gets done on site, agreed verbally with the supervisor and recorded nowhere. At the final account it is one word against another, and the contractor usually loses.
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Hours do not add up
What ends up on the timesheets is an estimate made afterwards. So you only learn at the costing whether a project made money, and by then it is too late to act.
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Everyone calls the planner
Engineers call for the address, customers call about the time and the supplier calls about materials. The planner spends the day on the phone instead of planning.
How we usually start here.
In the van. A day riding along with an engineer says more than ten meetings about an app they will have to use.
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A day on the road
We watch how a job really runs: what gets written down, what gets remembered and where it goes wrong. Usually the app turns out to need far less than was imagined.
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Start with the job sheet
The job sheet is nearly always the first piece. A few weeks of building, then one crew trials it, and only then the rest, because support from the engineers decides whether it works.
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Then catch up the office
Planning, project file and the link to the administration follow. In short rounds, so the building season does not stall for a software project.
What it connects to.
Hours and invoices stay where they belong: in your bookkeeping or your construction package. We capture what happens outside and send it the right way.
Most building firms already have something: a time package, a costing system, a plan in Excel. We first look at what stays and only build what is missing.
- AFAS Hours and job sheets into the administration.
- Exact Invoice as soon as the sheet comes in.
- Syntess Common in installation; we connect via the database.
- Bouw7 Leave projects and costings where they are.
- Ibis-Trad Pull costings so the budget and the execution line up.
- 12Build Bring in tenders and subcontractor quotes.
- Autodesk BIM 360 Land drawings and revisions on the right job.
- IFC files The open standard, so you are not tied to one CAD package.
- Planon Pull in maintenance orders from housing associations and managers.
- 2BA Pull articles and prices from the installation trade pool.
- Simplicate Top up planning and hours with what happens outside.
- Peppol E-invoices to housing associations and municipalities.
- Digital signature The customer signs on screen and the sheet goes out.
- Scanners Book materials out of the van or the store.
Working with a different package?
Tell us which and we will see whether we can connect. With construction and installation packages that usually works via the database or an export, even when the vendor is not keen.
Questions from this sector.
If your question is not here, give us a call. You get someone who has ridden along with engineers.
Book a callThere are job sheet apps for sale. Why build one?
If an existing app fits, take it. It is cheaper and available tomorrow. Custom only becomes interesting when your process differs, when it has to connect to a system that will not cooperate, or when three packages sit side by side that do not know each other.
Our engineers are not computer people. Will they use this?
If it is faster than paper, yes. So we keep the number of screens small, make the buttons big enough for work gloves and prefill everything we already know. What an engineer has to enter is usually fewer than ten taps.
Does it really work without coverage?
Yes. Everything is stored on the device and sent as soon as there is a connection. That is the hardest part of an app like this and exactly where cheap solutions fail: sheets arriving twice or quietly disappearing.
Can the customer sign on site?
Yes, with a signature on screen and the sheet emailed straight away. For most disputes about extra work that is the difference between invoicing and not.
Roughly what does an app like this cost?
A job sheet app with a link to your administration usually starts around twenty thousand euros. What that is worth depends on how many sheets currently go missing; with twenty engineers it is often paid back within a year.