Quote-to-onboarding in 36 hours, not five days — how a 22-tradesman commercial electrical firm cut their dead time
Five days from accepted quote to first site visit. Most of those days were the customer waiting on paperwork. We compressed it to 36 hours, freeing the office manager's week and protecting deals from going cold.
At a glance
- Client
- 22-tradesman commercial electrical contractor, metropolitan AU · ~$4.2M/yr revenue · ~120 active jobs/yr
- Vertical
- Trades
- Engagement
- Done-For-You Workflow Implementation
- Timeline
- 30 days
- Headline result
- Quote-to-first-visit time from 5 days to 36 hours
- Dollar impact
- ~$48K/yr in admin time saved + ~7 deals/yr saved from faster onboarding
Who they were
A 22-tradesman commercial electrical contractor in metropolitan Australia. ~$4.2M/yr revenue. ~120 active jobs/yr running across maintenance contracts, fit-outs, and emergency response. Owner operating, second-generation. Their work was good. Their paperwork was slow.
What was broken
When a quote got accepted, the chain was:
- Office manager generates job sheet from quote (manually, in Word)
- Sends to client for sign-off (email)
- Waits for sign-off
- Generates onboarding pack (insurance, safety docs, billing setup)
- Sends to client for sign-off again
- Waits
- Schedules first site visit
- Books in the right tradesman
The whole sequence took an average of 5.2 days from quote acceptance to first tradesman on site.
The damage:
- ~10% of accepted quotes went cold during the dead time (customers found someone faster)
- Office manager spent ~14 hours/week on this loop
- Tradesmen were idle while paperwork caught up
The number we agreed to move: quote-to-first-visit time from 5.2 days to under 48 hours.
What we built
A quote-to-onboarding flow that runs inside their existing tools (Xero + Outlook + a shared OneDrive):
- Quote acceptance trigger — when the client signs the quote, an automation fires that auto-generates the job sheet from the quote data
- Onboarding pack auto-assembly — insurance certificates, safety docs, billing setup paperwork pulled from a templated library and personalised for the client
- One-pack signing — combined onboarding pack sent in a single signing flow (not two)
- Schedule trigger — once signed, the system queries the tradesman calendar and offers the customer the next three available slots
- Tradesman briefing — assigned tradesman gets a job brief on their phone the night before, with directions, contact, and any safety notes from the onboarding pack
Deployed inside: Xero + Outlook + OneDrive. No new software for the team to learn.
Time to live: 27 days from kickoff.
What changed on the books
| Metric | Before | After (60 days post go-live) |
|---|---|---|
| Median quote-to-first-visit time | 5.2 days | 36 hours |
| Office manager hours/week on quote-to-onboarding | 14 | 4 |
| % of accepted quotes that went cold | ~10% | ~3% |
| Tradesman idle time (between jobs) | high | down materially |
Annual benefit:
- ~$48K/yr in admin time saved (10 hours/wk × 50 weeks × $96/hr fully loaded for office manager)
- ~7 deals/yr saved from faster onboarding at average $5K margin = ~$35K/yr
- Ramp on tradesman utilisation = additional uplift, harder to attribute precisely
Conservative total: $80K/yr in defensible recurring benefit, against a ~$14K build.
What they said
“Five days was killing us. The customer says yes, we say great, then they wait. By the third day they’re wondering if they made the right choice. The 36-hour turnaround means they’re seeing one of our trucks before they’ve even told their accountant they hired us.”
Owner, 22-tradesman electrical contractor
What’s next
- Reporting automation (Phase 2, scoped) — Monday-morning dashboard showing job pipeline, margin per job, tradesman utilisation
- Voice agent on the office line for after-hours emergency dispatch (Phase 3, in discussion)
The quote-to-onboarding flow has been running for 60 days. The office manager has her Friday afternoons back. The tradesmen are on jobs, not waiting.
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