Tips for time (and client) management!

[chriscrofty]

Hi all,

I’m fairly new to the game of running my own business and still finding my way with various aspects. At the moment the technical challenges are easy to solve (or I know where to look!), but it’s the management of my workload that I constantly fail at! So a few questions I wanted to put out there ...

1) when quoting for a job that has some uncertainty over how long it’ll take, do you have any rules of thumb of how much extra to build in, or when to warn the customer it could be more than estimated? I know this is very job dependent and if the work is repetitive you learn exactly how long things take, but I seem to keep underestimating the time jobs will take and shooting my self in the foot

2) the next bit is when a job overruns what's fair in terms of delaying jobs that are already booked in? My issue is that I'd normally work late and weekends to get things done to start as agreed on the next job. but that's not going down well with the missus looking after our 3 month old. I find that if I can foresee it and give the customer some notice it's not too bad, but that doesn't always happen and lately some customers pretty mythed at any delays.

Any advice mucho appreciated.

Ta

 

[MikeG.]

You don't say what sector you are involved with.

I'm an architect, and I charge by the hour, not by a percentage of the contract figure. I give an estimate before I start work on the job, and on the couple of occasions when I have approached the upper figure in my estimate range I tell the clients, and ask whether it is OK to continue. If you have to work outside normal hours, you have to. Work after your nipper goes to bed. Building up a new business depends on developing a reputation, and you don't get a reputation by being late with deadlines.

 

[sunnybob]

Untill youre better at time management, just estimate all your work around the principle of having friday off.

calculate a four day week rather than five. That will allow you to over run and catch up. If you get good enough to have a day spare, you can move onto the next client a day early, which is much better than being a day late.

 

[Geoff_S]

Untill youre better at time management, just estimate all your work around the principle of having friday off.

calculate a four day week rather than five. That will allow you to over run and catch up. If you get good enough to have a day spare, you can move onto the next client a day early, which is much better than being a day late.

What a brilliant way of summing it up. I was about to write a book!

 

[petermillard]

Following the same principle, with bigger jobs give yourself extra time between them e.g. a month-long job has a week of ‘buffer’ time before starting the next. If you schedule this in, then overruns aren’t an issue, and as said, you can either start the next job earlier (prep always takes longer than you think) or slot in other little jobs to use up the slack time. Or indeed, attend to those 1001 other things you have to do when you’re a one-man band. [THUMBS UP SIGN]

 

[HappyHacker]

I and another electrician I know use the four day week for planning and do the paperwork: quotes, invoices, certificates etc on the "day off" which is also a buffer for overrun especially if there has been an emergency job in the week.

 

[Adam9453]

Great advice above, I think missing deadlines is usually most companies downfall and fastest way to destroy reputation and relationships. I always build tolerances into lead times to allow time for quality checks and if necessary remedial works. We don't always get the luxury of the lead time we'd like but then it comes down to client management to ensure they are aware there is no room for error and any mistake/issue/machine breakdown etc etc will result in an overrun. Try to avoid this scenario though as customers do like to forget you told them it could overrun at the beginning and demand the impossible on delivery day.
Good luck though and with hard work anything is possible

 

[chriscrofty]

Ah replies! Thanks. I naively thought tapatalk would notify me and missed these.

Will definitely start planning work with a 4 day week, great shout, as are the other tips.

I'm doing small scale domestic carpentry stuff and I also do structural engineering (which is my background), so work is a bit varied atm. I know how long an eng design takes, its the carpentry jobs that I'm still learning. As Peter said prep always takes longer... Bloody prep!

Thanks again


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[deema]

I must be a dinasour, but I was brought up to plan for 5 days and if I got it wrong that’s what the weekend was for. If the Devine spirit had to take six days to create the world due to an over run, I think that I can too!