You didn't start a window fitting business because you love admin. You started it because you're good at fitting windows and serving customers. But somewhere between taking on more work and hiring help, the admin became unavoidable - and probably messier than you'd like.
Getting organised isn't about becoming a different kind of business. It's about stopping the leaks: the quotes you forgot to chase, the photos you can't find, the jobs where nobody's quite sure what was agreed and the FENSA certificates you forgot to submit.
The four things that need organising
Every fitting business, regardless of size, needs to keep track of the same four things:
- Jobs. What work is in the pipeline, what's been quoted, what's scheduled, what's complete. You need to see at a glance where everything stands - not reconstruct it from memory and emails.
- Customers. Who you've worked for, what you did, how to contact them. When someone calls, you should know who they are and see their history in seconds.
- Schedule. Who's going where, when. Visible to the office, visible to the fitters, updated in real time so everyone's working from the same information.
- Photos and notes. Documentation of what was there before, what was done, what was agreed. Attached to the job, not buried in camera rolls and WhatsApp threads.
That's it. If these four things are organised, you have control. If any of them is scattered or unreliable, you're firefighting.
Where most fitting businesses go wrong
The usual pattern: jobs get tracked in a spreadsheet, customers in phone contacts, schedule on a wall calendar, photos in whoever's camera roll. Four systems, none of them talking to each other, all requiring manual effort to maintain.
This works when you're small. One or two people, a handful of jobs, everything fits in your head. The systems are just backup.
It stops working when the business grows. More jobs means more to track. More people means more coordination. The spreadsheet falls out of date. The wall calendar only works if everyone's in the office. Customer details end up on a fitter's phone and disappear when they leave.
The disorganisation isn't dramatic. It's slow and steady: a missed follow-up here, a lost photo there, a double-booking once a month. Each incident is small. Added up over a year, they cost thousands.
The fix isn't more systems
Some businesses try to fix disorganisation by adding more tools: a proper CRM, better scheduling software, a file sharing system for photos. Now you have six things to maintain instead of four, and they still don't connect.
The actual fix is one system where jobs, customers, schedule, and photos all live together. Create a job, it has a customer attached. Schedule the job, the fitter sees it on their phone. Upload photos, they attach to the job automatically. Everything connects because it's built to connect.
That's what FitterPal does. It's not four separate tools bolted together - it's one platform where jobs are the centre of everything. Customers link to jobs. Bookings link to jobs. Photos link to jobs. You're not cross-referencing or duplicating. You're working in one place.
What organised actually feels like
Customer calls about their job. You search their name, see the job, see the notes, see when the install is booked. Ten seconds, no digging.
End of the week, you glance at the board. Eight jobs in progress, three quotes waiting for follow-up, two ready to invoice. No spreadsheet to update, no mental reconstruction of where things stand.
Customer disputes damage six months later. You pull up the job, find the before photos, show them the crack was already there. Conversation over.
Your fitter checks their phone, sees tomorrow's jobs with addresses, customer details, and notes about access. No call to the office. No hunting for information.
That's the difference. Not working harder at admin. Just not losing things.
Start with what's costing you
You don't have to reorganise everything overnight. Think about what's actually causing problems. Quotes going cold? Start tracking them properly. Photos unfindable? Get them attached to jobs. Schedule chaos? Get it visible to everyone.
FitterPal handles all of it, but you can start with the piece that hurts most. The rest follows naturally once everything lives in the same place.
