The carbon copy pad in the van
Your engineers carry a pad of job sheets. At the end of each visit they write what they did, the parts they used and the time on site, get the customer to sign, and tear off the top copy. The rest travels round in the van until they drop a bundle at the office, often at the end of the week.
In the office, someone deciphers the handwriting, chases the sheets that are missing, types the details into the job system and raises the invoice. Half the time a sheet has no part numbers, or the time on site is blank, or the coffee got to it first. The engineer is phoned to fill in the gaps, and cannot remember a visit from last Tuesday.
Why paper has hung on
It is not that nobody has thought of an app. Most businesses with field teams have tried one. Engineers found it fiddly, it asked for things they did not have, it crashed or froze when there was no signal, and within a few weeks they were back to the pad because the pad never lets them down.
Paper has real strengths: it works anywhere, it is quick, it bends to odd situations and there is nothing to learn. An app that is slower, more rigid or less reliable than a pad of paper will lose, however good it looks in a demo.
The other reason is that many apps are built for the office's needs first. They capture every field the office might want. The engineer, standing in a cold plant room with dirty hands, just wants to finish and get to the next job.
What the paper trail is costing
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Sheets arrive late | Invoices go out days or weeks after the work |
| Missing information | Phone calls to engineers, guessed details, disputes |
| Lost sheets | Work done that never gets billed |
| Retyping | Office time spent copying handwriting into a system |
| No live view | The office cannot see what is finished until the paper arrives |
| Weak evidence | Hard to prove what was done if a customer queries it |
The lost sheets are the one that stings. Work that was done well, parts that were fitted, and the paperwork simply never made it back.
What we build
We start from your current job sheet, not from a template. If it works on paper, the app should ask the same things in the same order.
- Job list. Each engineer sees today's jobs on their phone, with address, contact, access notes and the history of previous visits.
- Digital sheet. The form mirrors your paper sheet, using tick boxes, drop-downs and pick lists for parts wherever possible, so there is less typing. Required fields cannot be skipped.
- Photos and signature. Before and after photos attach to the job, and the customer signs on the screen with their printed name.
- Offline first. Everything works with no signal and syncs when the phone reconnects, so a basement or a rural site is not a problem.
- Straight to the office. Completed jobs appear in the office system or the job management tool you already use, ready to invoice in Xero, QuickBooks or Sage through their APIs.
- Customer copy. A PDF of the completed sheet is emailed to the customer automatically, with photos if you want them included.
We build it as a cross-platform app for Android and iPhone, usually with React Native or Flutter, and involve a couple of engineers in testing from the first working version. Their feedback shapes the details.
A normal day afterwards
The engineer finishes a job, fills in the sheet in the time it took on paper, gets a signature and drives off. By the time they reach the next job, the office can see the first one is complete, with photos, parts and times.
Invoices can go out the same day. Nobody deciphers handwriting. When a customer queries a visit, the signed sheet and photos are a click away. The paper pads stay in the cupboard for the rare day a phone dies.
Is this your team?
- Engineers complete paper or carbon job sheets
- Sheets reach the office days after the work
- Office staff retype job details and chase missing information
- Some jobs never get invoiced because the sheet was lost
- A previous app was dropped because engineers disliked it
- You cannot see which jobs are finished until the paperwork arrives