Friday Fives: duplicates stopped, photos checked, costs coded
Five automations that stop duplicate jobs before they're raised, send incomplete instructions back to the sender, check completion photos against what was asked for, code costs the moment they land and strip supplier detail off quotes.
What's in this week's edition
Friday Fives is Build Concierge's weekly newsletter:
5 real automations from businesses already using the platform, with what each one does, the problem it solves and the result.
This week covers the checks nobody has time to do: the duplicate caught before a second job is raised, the instruction sent back when it arrives half-formed, the completion photos read against what was asked for and what's being charged, the costs coded the moment they land, and the supplier detail stripped off a quote before it goes out. None of it needs anyone to remember.
Duplicate jobs, stopped before they're raised
Before anything is created, Build Concierge takes the client's own reference off the instruction, the work order number, the PO, the ticket, and searches your job management system for it. If that job is already on the system, no second job is raised. The office is told instead, with the reference and the existing job, so someone can look once rather than untangle it later.
The same instruction arriving twice, once direct and once forwarded, is how most duplicates start. They're usually found weeks later at invoicing, when the second visit has already happened and a credit note is the only way out.
- One work order means one job, every time
- Engineers aren't dispatched twice to the same address
- Nobody spends an afternoon working out which of two records is the real one
Incomplete instructions, sent straight back
Build Concierge checks every incoming instruction against the fields you actually need before it becomes a job: contact name, phone number, full address, access details, whatever your team can't work without. If something is missing, no job is created. The instruction goes back to whoever sent it, naming exactly what's absent.
The gap gets filled at source, by the person who has the answer, in seconds rather than on the day of the visit.
- Every job on your system is workable from the moment it lands
- Engineers arrive with a number to ring and an address that resolves
- No more jobs raised with "TBC" in the contact field and no way to reach anyone
Job photos checked against what was asked for and billed
When a job is closed down, Build Concierge reads the completion photos alongside the work that was requested and the costs recorded against the job, and checks the three agree. Does what's visible in the photos match what was asked for? Do the charges match the work that's been evidenced? Anything that doesn't line up is held and flagged, with the specifics, before the job goes any further.
You set how tight the check is by priority, so high-value or high-risk work gets looked at harder.
- Jobs close down on evidence rather than assumption
- What you invoice is what was requested and what the photos show was done
- Client queries are answered with the evidence already attached to the job
Costs that arrive already coded for the accounts
You set the coding rules once: this client's costs go to this nominal code, subcontractor costs to that one, this division, this VAT treatment. From then on every cost Build Concierge captures, from an email, an invoice, a text from site, lands on the job already coded to match. Where the code varies by supplier or cost type, it's looked up rather than assumed, and lines without a price on them don't get through at all.
- Costs reach the ledger coded the way your accounts system needs them, the day they happen
- Finance reconciles rather than recodes
- The divisional picture of where money is going is accurate all month
Supplier costs marked up and made customer-safe
When supplier costs come across onto a quote, Build Concierge does two things before anyone sees it. It applies your markup, at the percentage you set, across every line. Then it rewrites the descriptions for a customer audience: manufacturer and brand names taken out, model numbers and SKU codes removed, internal specification detail stripped back to a clear short description of what the customer is actually buying.
The priced, cleaned lines go onto the quote ready to send.
- Quotes go out at the right margin, on every line
- What you paid, who you bought it from and what you called it internally stays inside the business
- No more tidy-up pass before sending that takes twenty minutes and still misses one
See these automations running in your operations
Whether you're already on Build Concierge or just exploring what it can do, we'll show you exactly how any of these five would work for your business.
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About the author
Simon leads operations at Build Concierge and writes Friday Fives, a weekly look at five real automations businesses are using to save time and cut costs.
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