Sparkies power homes, businesses, and infrastructure. Despite providing this essential service, they face a large hurdle not in the form of wires and circuits, but in admin. Fergus founder Dan Pollard writes.

We’ve found that 42% of Australian tradies struggle to track progress and deadlines, while 33% face issues in generating accurate quotes and invoices, according to research conducted by Fergus. Keeping track of paperwork, scheduling jobs, managing invoicing and other admin tasks are important for tradie owners to do, but they don’t necessarily how to do it, nor do they need to do it themselves.

Sparkies doing their own admin is money lost

You’ve spent four years in an electrical apprenticeship, but running a business successfully is essentially like doing an apprenticeship all over again for the business admin side.

Admin can be as complex and time-consuming as a day on the tools. And for every minute sparkies spend doing their own admin, it’s money being lost. The administrative burden impacts more than your business’s bottom line; it also cuts into personal time, leaving you working late into the night, trying to stay afloat in a sea of paperwork.

Running a business is very different from working for a business, and many sparkies struggle with this change when they strike out on their own. Rather than sharing the load, business-owner electricians tend to shoulder the burden on their own and those who fail to address the paperwork problem risk running their business, and themselves, into the ground. The pressure to manage the paperwork overload is too heavy to juggle alongside hands-on work. Sparkies are experts at what they do on the tools – they don’t need to be an expert on everything it takes to run a business, they just need to be accountable for it.

The simple solution is for sparkies to outsource the admin to people—or products—who know what they’re doing.

Stick to what you know – outsource what you don’t

Relying on traditional, manual methods of admin is inefficient and error-prone. Job management software is a more practical solution for sparkies to use to wrangle the admin challenge.

Some of the benefits of smart job management software include:

– automating routine tasks, like scheduling, invoicing, and client communication
– matching jobs with available slots, taking into account location, job duration and the electrician’s specialisation
– automating invoices, pulling data directly from job records
– speeding up the invoicing process and significantly reducing the risk of errors that can lead to customer disputes or delayed payments
– streamlining communication with systems that automate messaging, appointment reminders, job progress updates and post-service follow-up.

Job management software can effectively eliminate a significant portion of the paperwork that has long been a thorn in tradies’ sides. This means electricians can spend more time on the job site and less time bogged down by admin.

The result? A more streamlined, efficient and profitable operation that can adapt quickly to market changes and client needs.

A more organised approach to admin means that sparkie business owners have a clearer picture of the financial status, how they can improve their service delivery, boost their reputation and client satisfaction, and free up time for relaxation. Meanwhile, the accuracy and efficiency of job management software for invoicing and job costing means that electricians are likely to be paid promptly and correctly for their services, putting money back into their pockets.

Smart job management software can be a tradie’s best friend, delivering benefits that extend beyond time savings alone.