It is seven in the evening and you are still in front of the quote
You closed the site at six, you loaded the tools, and now you are in the office redoing the same quote for the third time, because the customer has decided she wants the big window with a tilt-and-turn sash and she is changing the color from white to gray
It is not hard work, it is work you have already done twice, and meanwhile the hours you needed to go and measure up another job are gone
The work that eats your hours
Between the moment you take the measurements and the moment you fit, there is a row of steps nobody pays for, and you are the one doing them, because in a small company whoever writes the quotes is also the one who climbs the scaffolding
- The measurements from the survey, taken on site, then retyped into the quote and then retyped again into the order
- The quote redone because the customer changes one window, and changing one means redoing the figures on all of them
- The order to the supplier, with its codes that are not yours, its measurements and its own way of wanting them written
- The order confirmations that come back, and somebody ought to check that they say what you ordered
- The fitting to get into the calendar, with the crews, the delivery times and the customer asking when
- The documents to hand over at the end of the job, which are nearly always the same ones with different details
Examples of what the system can do
These are examples of jobs the system is able to do, not jobs already delivered to some window fitter, Muffin Suite started recently and we would rather tell you than spin you a story
- It takes the measurements and the line items from the survey sheet, even if it is an Excel file laid out your own way, and prepares the quote in the business software you already use, with your price lists and your rules
- When the customer changes one window, it regenerates the new version of the quote leaving all the rest as it was, so you do not check it back line by line
- It turns the lines of the confirmed quote into the order for the supplier, carrying your codes onto its own through the conversion table you give it
- It compares the order confirmation that comes back with what you had ordered, and if a measurement or a code does not match it stops and flags it to you before the piece is cut
- It reads the suppliers' PDFs and emails, pulls out the delivery dates and carries them into the program where you keep the fitting schedule
- It prepares the file of end-of-job documents and stores it under the name and in the folder you use, by job and by customer
If your business software or the supplier's configurator has no technical integration to offer, that is no problem, the system works on the screens the way a person would, and that is the house specialty
What stays with you
The survey, because only someone who knows how to look at a wall spots a wrong measurement, the advice to the customer about what they really need, the price, which you set, and the fitting, which is the trade
The system does the mechanical steps and stops when something does not add up, if a supplier sends a document in a format it has never seen the system invents nothing, it sets it aside and shows it to you
How much autonomy to give it is up to you, at the start it is worth keeping it on a short rein, with more confirmations, then you widen it on the cases you have seen work
Why you come out ahead
In a company like yours the office hours are hours taken away from the work that gets invoiced, if in the evening, instead of quote number three, you manage to fit in one more survey, that is the difference
You don't have to replace your software, the system uses what you already have, and we agree the monthly fee before we start, with no large upfront cost, if you want an idea of what manual work costs you today you can put your own numbers in
How we begin
I'm Antonio Fuccillo, I write the automations myself and I answer the messages myself, so you're talking to the person who does the work and not to a salesman
You show me a procedure, a screen recording while you put a quote together is fine, I look at whether it can be done and I tell you the fee before we start, write to me if you feel like it