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Tried switching from paper to digital invoices for my roofing crew last month... what a disaster.
Spent 3 days setting up QuickBooks on my phone only to have it crash mid-estimate on a $12k job in El Paso. Has anyone else found paper estimates just work better for keeping track of materials on site?
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emery19918d ago
My partner runs a crew in Austin and after losing a paper estimate to a coffee spill in the truck last summer, he went full digital and now saves every job site photo and material list to a folder on his phone. Even with the occasional app crash, he says the time he saves not having to drive back to the shop to print out a revised estimate for a client is totally worth it. For the El Paso thing, idk maybe queue up a quick offline backup of your forms before you head out, that way if the app freezes you just pull up the PDF.
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taraanderson19d ago
...and that's exactly why I still print my estimates on carbon paper. Digital's great until you're standing in the hot sun with no signal and the app freezes up again. I keep a binder in my truck with all my paper forms and a calculator. Takes maybe 5 extra minutes but I've never lost a single bid that way. Plus you can scribble notes right on the paper when the customer asks about changing the shingle color or adding a vent.
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stellachen19d ago
Well, carbon paper's actually been out of print for a few years now. Most guys I know switched to NCR paper back in the 90s. Same idea but you don't have that blue transfer mess on your fingers.
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