What Systems Does a Residential Trade Business Actually Need?

The short answer

You need five trade business systems: job management, team communication, a quoting and sales process, written procedures (SOPs), and hiring and onboarding. Keep the software simple and get the process right first. AI and automation only help once the process underneath already works.

Which trade business systems do you actually need?

When people ask me about trade business systems, they usually expect a list of apps. The list I give them is five things, and only one of them is really software.

1. Job management: one place where every job, customer and booking lives, from the first call to the invoice.
2. Team communication: one channel for the team, so a change reaches everyone.
3. Quoting and sales: the same steps on every quote, whoever runs it.
4. Procedures (SOPs): how each job and each role gets done, written down or recorded.
5. Hiring and onboarding: how people get found, interviewed and brought into the business.

That’s the five I’d build again if I started Smartfix from one ute in my garage tomorrow. Reporting, automations and AI tools all sit on top of those. If the five aren’t there, the extras just add mess.

Why do things start breaking once you hire?

When it’s just you, the system is your head. You answer the phone, quote it, do it, invoice it. Nothing gets lost because nothing gets handed over.

That changes fast. Smartfix went from one ute in January 2018 to seven staff and $1.3 million by 2020, and later to 130+ staff across four offices. A lot of what went wrong at the big end started with things we never wrote down at the small end.

I’ll own this one. We hired people without the structures in place, left them to wing it, then wondered why it hadn’t worked. We hadn’t given them the training or the procedure. It would have saved a lot of money if we’d thought out the process before we hired the person. I’ve written more on that in what to fix before hiring more people.

My brother Finley Dearlove, Fin to everyone, is Head of Installations at Smartfix. When he came on the podcast, he said we’d had “a lot of roles that were reliant on a certain type of person.” He also described how a process gets shown to one person, then passed to the next, until what’s happening on the ground is nowhere near what management wanted.

What does a job management system need to do?

Every job needs one home. Paper diaries and spreadsheets work for a while, then someone forgets to write a customer down and that job’s gone.

We use ServiceM8. Fin’s test for it is simple. He wants to see where the jobs are, who’s on them and how long they’ll take. If it’s too complicated for him to use, he says he just won’t use it.

Our early ServiceM8 setup was a mess. We complained about the software for years, and most of the problems turned out to be how we’d set it up and used it. At one point we were close to switching to a new system for a few minor changes, and Fin reckons that would have cost us over $50,000. So we went back and learned to use the one we had properly.

I made the same mistake again with Hypotential. I jumped into HubSpot because it’s a big name and it can do everything, then found I’d need someone to run an implementation program just to get going. We use HighLevel now. It’s cheaper and simpler, and I wasn’t ready to spend something like $20,000 implementing a system for a startup.

How should your team communicate?

Phone calls work when you’re a team of 10. Fin’s point was that once you’ve got a lot more people on the road, plus customers and suppliers ringing, you blink and your day’s gone.

We moved from Facebook Messenger to Microsoft Teams, with channels for operations, leadership, management and the electrical installers. If someone changes how something’s done, it goes in the chat. We bring it up at every toolbox meeting as well.

I’m guilty here. Back in the day I’d delete old forms and spreadsheets without telling anyone, and Fin would come in the next day and find his files gone. Now I make the change, screenshot it, post it in the channel, and everyone’s aware. Old stuff goes in an archive folder.

One small one: get your business off your personal mobile. I’ve had new coaching clients running everything through their own number. I did it at the very start too, then changed quickly. An office number can be diverted, so when you hire admin or go away, the calls go to someone else.

How do you stop roles relying on one person?

Of all the trade business systems, written procedures are the ones most owners put off. It’s also what we’ve spent a lot of the last couple of years on at Smartfix. If someone goes away for two weeks, the next person should be able to pick up their role and cover it as best as possible.

We’re writing standard operating procedures and recording Loom videos showing what we actually do. A short video of the real task is easier to follow than a long document, and it stops instructions drifting each time they’re passed on.

Your quoting and sales process

Quoting needs the same treatment. Our sales process at Smartfix has five steps: a heads-up call before arriving, arriving with respect, asking the right questions, recommending and closing with a recap before the price, then agreeing next steps. Every quoter runs the same steps.

To be honest, when I ran our September workshop on it, we still didn’t have a documented follow-up process. That one’s on the list. Procedures like these are also what let you step off the tools without losing control.

What should a hiring and onboarding system look like?

Early on I hired off what looked good on a resume, and I hired out of pain. The first reasonable person got the job. That cost us.

Now there’s a set process. A brief phone interview first, which rules out about half the candidates. Then an in-person interview with a set list of questions. Probation periods, structured reviews, and a HR and operations manager who owns it.

Day one is set too: documentation, a run-through of the CRM, then the new starter gets paired with a long-term staff member in the field. Everyone gets the same start, whoever happens to be in the office that day.

If you’re wondering when to bring in someone to own this side of things, I wrote about when to hire your first admin or operations manager.

Where do AI and automation fit into trade business systems?

Everyone’s asking which AI tool to use. When Anthony Lawlor from Nimbus Tech came on the podcast, he explained the difference simply. Automation, he said, “is a predefined set of tasks that will do the same thing over and over again.” AI is more adaptable. You put an input in and it comes back with something generated.

His team uses automation for the boring repeat jobs nobody wants to do by hand, and sometimes uses AI to help build those automations. Anthony worked in a bigger business before starting his own, and the two things he took from it were process and people.

He proved it to himself when he took three weeks off and his team kept things running. In his words, “The process of how we operate was there. The people were there.”

He also asked me what would happen if Smartfix lost its tech for a day. Honest answer: if we lost internet, or the tradies lost their system, we’d be completely st￭. Worth knowing what your backup is before you need it.

How do you improve your systems without starting again?

Small changes. I still do quote days on the road with our quoters, and I always pick something up. Last time it was the job information in ServiceM8. We added the compliance details, and I asked to combine two fields, type and description, that were basically the same thing. Tiny stuff, but it’s easier for everyone.

Fin calls them 1% changes. We’ve been through about a hundred variations of how we use ServiceM8, and he says those small changes have been game-changing.

So start with the five above and keep the software simple. Each week, tighten one thing, then post the change in the team chat so nobody turns up to find their spreadsheet gone.

If you want to talk through your own trade business systems with other owners dealing with the same stuff, come along to one of the Hypotential networking nights in Perth, or have a look at membership. I’d be keen to hear what’s working for you.