The Shop Book
How to read this
Four days in your shop, written down and priced, worst first. Every number carries a label: [measured on site] means I counted it, [owner-reported] means you told me and I checked what I could, [industry figure] means someone else’s study, named. The install quote at the bottom is fixed. This document is yours whether we go further or not.
What I watched
Two mornings on dispatch listening to how calls land. One afternoon with the quote clipboard and the follow-up trail (there isn’t one). One ride-along, including a mid-job supply run. One morning with the invoice stack, the bank statements, and the subscriptions nobody could name. Half a day shadowing the owner, counting interruptions. I counted; I didn’t estimate.
The leak list, priced
| Leak | What I saw | Cost / yr |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Quotes go quiet | 19 open quotes on the clipboard, zero follow-ups sent this year [measured on site]. Five went quiet in July alone: $9,600 of work [measured on site]. Counted at a quarter of face value; not every quiet quote was going to close. | $28,800 |
| 2. The parts shelf | About two mid-job supply runs a week [owner-reported], roughly 1.5 crew-hours each at a $95 loaded hour. The shelf has no stocking list; the truck decides when the shop shops. | $14,820 |
| 3. Missed calls | Six calls a month ring out during job hours [measured on site — two mornings counted, then the month’s phone log]. About half never call back [industry figure — CallRail 2025, n=1,000]. At your $310 average small-job ticket, three jobs a month walk. | $11,160 |
| 4. The invoice drawer | Nine days average from work-done to invoice-sent [measured on site]. One invoice a month never leaves the building [owner-reported, confirmed against the job list], $480 average. Slow ones unpriced here. | $5,760 |
| 5. Reviews unasked | 41 jobs in July, zero review asks [measured on site — from the job list]. Nine Google reviews, newest 14 months old. Counted as one modest job a month not arriving from the profile. | $3,720 |
| 6. The whiteboard | The schedule is readable by one man [measured on site]. Three crew-hours a month idle to morning confusion, $95 loaded hour. The unpriced part is worse: the shop’s morning runs through one memory. | $3,420 |
| Total, conservative | $67,680 |
Slide the table sideways for the rest.
Findings without a dollar sign
Your best tech prices water heaters 15% under book, because the book rate was never written down. Not a software problem, not on the leak list, and worth more than half of it. And the hiring flyer taped to the door since March has produced two calls while you turn away a job a week [owner-reported]. The vacancy costs more than any line above; the fix is a recruiting habit, not a poster.
What I’d leave alone
Truck No. 2 is shadow-boarded, labeled, and checklisted; it’s the standard, and the tech who built it should bring the other trucks up to it. The craft itself: callbacks around 2% [owner-reported, checked against the 90-day job list] and the work wins every customer it touches. Your scheduling app, if you had one, would be on this list too. I don’t fix what isn’t broken.
What I’d install, and the number
The top of the list, running before I leave. Fixed quote. This is the number; it doesn’t move:
| Quote-chase (day-2, day-7, day-14 follow-ups, from your number, in your words) | $1,650 |
| Missed-call text-back (answers in under a minute, books from the text thread) | $1,400 |
| Invoice & payment chase (invoice out the day the job closes, reminders after) | $1,600 |
| Review engine (the ask goes out while the truck is still in the driveway) | $1,150 |
| Crew training, checklists, and every login handed over in writing | $600 |
| The Install, fixed | $6,400 |
What I’d change that isn’t software
Included with the Install, no line items: the book rate written down on one page. A standing Tuesday parts run with a stocking list. Whiteboard rules anyone can read, photographed nightly to the group chat until the schedule moves somewhere better. Tuesday-morning changes. Paper and habit.
$6,400 against a documented $67,680-a-year leak list: about 9 cents on the first year’s dollar [arithmetic from the table above]. That ratio is the argument.
If we stop here
Then you got the whole operation written down, ranked, and priced for $1,850, and the Book is yours to fix yourself or hand to somebody cheaper. No hard feelings either way. If you want it built: I start Monday.
Reminder: Marek Brothers Plumbing is a fictional shop. Nothing above is a client result. It’s the document you’d be buying, shown in full instead of promised.