“We stopped writing progress claims on Sundays”
A renovation contractor running six to eight projects at a time, with two people carrying the entire administrative load between site visits. Variation orders were written on whatever was to hand and priced weeks later. Progress claims went in a fortnight after the works were complete, which pushed payment out by the same fortnight.
The project manager wrote variations into a notebook and re-priced them at home. Progress claims were assembled on Sunday mornings from three WhatsApp groups, a camera roll and the site diary. Roughly twelve hours a week between two people, almost all of it outside working hours.
Month 0 set up the Quotation Agent against the existing rate card and WhatsApp, then the Progress Claim Agent against the schedule of works and Google Drive. The Vendor & SLA Agent followed in month two. Pricing above $5,000 and any first claim on a new project stayed with the project manager by design.
Variations now leave the same day they are asked for. Claims go in within two days of works completing. The first version of the claim agent kept flagging photographs that existed but were named badly, which took a fortnight to fix properly rather than by loosening the check.
The agents that went live
“I thought I would hate approving things on my phone. It turns out approving is the easy part — it was the writing that was killing me.”
Try these agents yourself
The construction demo runs the same lineup. Give it a quote request from your own business.
Want numbers like these for your own business?
The audit works them out before you commit to anything. $1,000, credited to month one.