What's new in YourTradebase?

Rosie McGill – we salute you!

Rosie helps electrician Edward Barton complete his customer paperwork each and every week – spending up to 15 hours a week.

So, to say thanks to Rosie, we’re sending her flowers and chocolates from Edward.

Here’s what Edward had to say about Rosie:

“I couldn’t do my job without Rosie. Every day she arranges my customers, takes my calls, types my invoices and so much more. She’s definitely the brains behind the operation.”

Not a winner this week? Don’t worry we’re giving away one every week of February, so you might still win!

Haven’t entered yet? Click here and get in someone’s good books!

Has your wife/partner/friend/slave been giving you a helping hand with your paperwork recently?

Well luckily for you tradespeople, you can now say ‘Thanks!’ with our new competition!

Every week in February we’re giving away to one luckily nominee flowers and chocolate so tradespeople can say thank you in style.

What do I have to do to enter?

Simply click here to enter your and your nominee’s details and that’s it!

So if you’ve been helped out with your invoices recently, or had your quotes kept in order by a friend nominate them!

Does your other half do it? How long do you spend on invoices?

We want to know! 

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Here’s how Chris Johnson of Chris Johnson Electrical finds using YourTradebase:

– – –

What’s your trade?

Electrician

 What’s your company or business name?

Chris Johnson Electrical

 How does YTB help your business?

Being an electrician I can be working on a large number of jobs at the same time, keeping track of all the paperwork was becoming a task in itself. Your Trade Base has given me one place I can record all my current and previous jobs and contacts as well as allowing me to track any overdue payments or non confirmed quotations. I can also access Your Trade Base whilst out on site from a mobile or tablet so invoicing for small jobs can be done there and then saving my precious evenings!

I’d estimate it has reduced my paperwork time by up to a day a month (8hrs)

Your Trade Base has improved my business cash flow as Overdue invoices are chased in a more timely manner and I’m made aware of any quotations that have not been accepted, allowing me to follow up with our potential customers.

Your trade Base has also reinforced my brand image giving me a consistent theme across all my correspondence with my customers. The paperwork generated also looks of a far higher quality than anything I could produce myself.

www.chrisjohnsonelectrical.co.uk

www.facebook.com/chrisjohnsonelectrical

It’s the New Year and the perfect time to get your invoices, quotes and estimates back into shape

It was easy towards Christmas to let things slide, but now we have some tips for you to help bust those paperwork woes and get into shape when it comes to creating and dealing with your paperwork:

1) Start as you mean to go on – most resolutions are broken by day 2. So put in place a diary, or ‘appointment’ for yourself for paperwork. And no matter what comes up, keep them. It’s hard to do at first, but once you get in the habit it becomes much easier to do.

2) A stapler is your best friend – even if the documents don’t necessarily have to be together, over the course of a busy day you can just staple everything together, making it much less likely for you to loose that one sheet. Just chuck a stapler in the front of your van, it takes up no room, and all your documents needed for paperwork are there ready and waiting for you.

3) Don’t let it pile up – this is kind of the same as ‘starting as you mean to go on’, but if that doesn’t strictly happen, then just don’t let all your paperwork pile up. Try and do a little bit each day, or every other day, otherwise that big pile of paperwork suddenly seems a lot harder!

4) Use our free invoice tool – okay so this isn’t strictly a tip, but it is absolutely free. You can use it to create invoices in seconds, make them that look professional, send them by email or them print off and best of all you can use it as many times as you want without having to sign up to YourTradebase!

To also help with you paperwork New Year resolutions we’re also giving you 3 months half price in our January sale. So now you have no excuse to beat that paperwork pile!

We’re pleased today to announce a much requested new feature for YourTradebase… you can now create invoices directly from your quotes.

If you’ve created a quote for your customer job, you can now easily convert that into an invoice with the click of a button – saving you time and typing effort!

There are 2 ways to create invoices from your quotes:

1. Click on the quote you want to convert into an invoice – and select the ‘Turn this into an invoice‘ option from the ‘more‘ button. Done!

2. Add a new invoice to a job with an existing quote – you’ll see a button to ‘Import details from quote‘ – click this, select the quote and you’re done!

And the winner is…

As we’ve started doing each month, we asked our users to vote on the feature they’d most like to see in January. Converting a quote into an invoice was the clear winner.

We’ll be running a new vote for another new feature in January, so keep your eyes peeled!

If you’d like to keep up to date with our about-once-a-month updates, you can easily subscribe on our newsletter page  (it’ll take you 10 seconds, you can unsubscribe easily any time and we don’t pass on your details. Ever.)

What’s next?

We’re keen to make sure that YourTradebase continues to be more and more useful for tradespeople.

That’s why we started asking YOU what you needed form an online tool for organising your work and paperwork.

Happy New Year to tradespeople around the web…

… and may 2014 bring you better business and more work.

We’ve been wondering here in the YourTradebase office: what New Years resolutions have tradespeople made for 2014? (and how many of them have been broken or abandoned less than 2 days in!)

If your resolution is to win more work from your customers, then we’ve got just the thing to help: a 30 day free trial of YourTradebase. Better still, if you sign up for a free trial in January and upgrade to a paid subscription before the end of your trial, we’ll give you a half price subscription for 3 months!

That’s a full YourTradebase subscription for just £6.25 a month for your first 3 months.

Or, to put it another way: all your paperwork created quickly, easily, and professionally for less than £1.60 a week.

How can I win more work?

YourTradebase helps tradespeople win more work by producing better paperwork more easily and helping them keep on top of their business and what needs their attention.

Better paperwork = more professional image = more YES’s from your customers!

It also means more time doing what you do best, more time to spend with your customers and more time earning money.

See how YourTradebase helps you win more work by visiting www.yourtradebase.com/features or grab a free 30 day trial at go.yourtradebase.com/register

What’s the short version?

We’re celebrating 2014 with a January sale: a half-price subscription to YourTradebase for 3 months. Sound good? Sign up for a no-obligation trial at go.yourtradebase.com/register

Got a question about YourTradebase? Give us a shout at helpdesk@yourtradebase.com or use the live chat button at the bottom-right of your screen.

Wishing everyone a great Christmas 2013.

From the team at YourTradebase.

We’re pleased to announce that our new FREE invoice tool is now LIVE!

So what does this mean exactly?

Well it means without even having to sign up to our free trial you can create, download, and print invoices for absolutely free!

What’s the catch?

There is none! We just wanted to show off our service and make it easier for you guys to create paperwork. You don’t have to fill anything in, sign up, give us your name or your first born. It really is that simple.

How do I use it?

You simple fill it in as you would any invoice you have sat in front of you. You can edit, change, and move about information, put in your own logo, add your own unique invoice number too.

Can I print it off afterwards?

Yes, you can download and print the invoice to your computer. But once you leave the page it will not be saved by us – but if you want somewhere to save it, you can always sign up for a free trial with us too.

And how much does it cost?

Nothing! Nadda! Nip!

Absolutely FREE!

Just click here for free invoicing to try it out!

Hopefully you’ve been busy in the run-up to this Christmas period – we certainly have been! But instead of working on the tools, we’ve been working on some huge YourTradebase improvements.

And when we say huge, we mean massive huge.

We’re all really proud of the work we’ve done with these improvements – we’re sure it’s going to make YourTradebase a more useful tool for you managing your business and getting your paperwork done.

These updates and improvements are already and waiting for you the next time you log in or sign up, but here’s the lowdown of what’s new:

All new YourTradebase Dashboard

Better information helps you make better decisions. Our updated dashboard gives you helpful information about your business.

You can see exactly what paperwork needs your attention and where your focus should be. Today’s tasks are also shown along with anything that’s overdue.

Don’t miss a trick with your business and concentrate on winning more work.

Even quicker invoices and estimates

Introducing our all-new paperwork editor – now you can quickly create and update your paperwork by entering information directly onto your quotes and invoices, exactly where you want them.

Add as many extra items to your paperwork as you need and then re-order them by simply dragging and dropping.

Now it’s even easier to customise your paperwork – upload your own company logo directly onto your paperwork and watch the layout of your paperwork  gets updated as you type.

Get your paperwork done quicker and with increased control.

Keep on top of where you are with better status updates

Stay on track with what your customers and business needs more easily by updating statuses of your jobs and paperwork with one click of a button.

Customer contact info at a glance

The new YourTradebase is about getting the relevant information that you need, where you need, and when you need it. You told us that getting to your customer contact details was important, and so we’ve made sure that info’s available at your fingertips (well, at your mouse-tips…)

Better searches, better performance and built in help

We’ve made huge improvements under the bonnet too – pages load faster, your information is available quicker and you’re up and running with far less effort.

With a better search experience, help prompts and even live online chat if you need help and support, the new YourTradebase makes staying on top of your paperwork as easy as 1-2-3.

See all these improvements for yourself.

If you have – or have had – a YourTradebase account, you can log in and take a look at all our new features yourself by logging in at go.yourtradebase.com.

We’re really pleased with the all new YourTradebase – we’d love to hear your thoughts, comments, feedback and suggestions. Drop us a line at helpdesk@yourtradebase.com to get in touch…

So I’m the same as a lot of tradespeople: I. Hate. Paperwork.

But over the years I have found that executing a few simple things helped me become a bit more organised and efficient than many of my tradesman friends.

Putting a little bit of effort into how you deal with the random bits of essential paperwork will free up some well deserved time and stop plenty of headaches when the accountant, wife or customer requests come flooding in.

Here are my top tips on getting paperwork sorted:

Job folder(s): 
Get into the habit of creating a folder whenever a potential job surfaces. This could be in the physical kind or digital kind as both become a dumping place for anything associated with any specific job. I personally prefer the physical kind as it is quicker and more convenient  as you can take it wherever you go. You could get into the habit of scanning paperwork and saving into a folder on your PC.

I literally put everything in this folder, from the notes I take when the customer calls in to discuss the possible job through to a copy of the final invoice. Once the Job is complete you can file this folder away with all the associated paperwork ready to hand over when your booker comes knocking.

Bank statements:
As soon as these appear through the door they get filed in date order ready for the accountant/book keeper to do their stuff.

Purchase Receipts:
I am in the habit of trying to include a reference for all job specific purchases. Some suppliers allow you to provide a reference that is printed onto the receipt but others do not.  Quickly write the name of the customer on the receipt before filing away within the specific job folder.

Quotations/Estimates:
After writing up a quotation or estimate I always make my self a copy. My Quotes are all created on my PC so it’s nice and easy to print off a duplicate but should you be in the habit of hand written quotes and estimates then it would certainly pay to photocopy this and file away within the job folder. You can even purchase off the shelf or custom designed NCR sets that will duplicate the quote/estimate onto a separate sheet for you to keep hold of.

Surveys:
Most of us need to visit the site before providing a quote or estimate to view the possible job. This leads to notes needing to be taken to ensure accurate costing. If like me you carry out similar tasks for all customers you may find it beneficial to create a survey form. This helps me capture info and aid in preparing the quotation. This is yet another piece of paper that you will want to keep safely filed in case the customer calls up to discuss the job and will help if the job commences.

Communication:
I document every bit of communication I have with my customers. This saves any future confusions regarding jobs or quotes. It only needs to be a basic note on a piece of paper but recording the note with date and customer name is good practice if like me you have a memory like a fish. File this away in the job folder for easy pickings should a customer start asking questions.

The Better Half:
If you are lucky enough to have one then put a few quid to one side for couple of nice treats. Using this to then persuade them to help out will possibly be the best move you make :0).  We all have limited time due to time being spend on the tools, looking at potential jobs or creating quotes, estimates or invoices so enrolling the help of someone else will really aid in staying organised and efficient.

I hope some of these help you out with your paperwork woes! Have you got any of your own tips?

Ever had a van broken into? Or is it a constant worry for you tradesmen out there?

Our guest post this week deals with tips and advice on how to keep your vans and tools safe.

Take it away Kes!

Van Security Tips

Common sense dictates that expensive tools, materials and other pieces of equipment should be removed from a van at night. However there are instances when workers are out at a job where they may have to stay in a hotel and it would not be appropriate to take large, dirty tool boxes and pieces of building equipment into the establishment. It may also be the case that workers are involved in work on a remote piece of property, such as a farm building, and even though they’re out in the daylight, the isolation could make their van prone to attack. What are the best measures that can be employed to improve the security of your van?

Extra Locks

In order to increase the security on your van it is possible to install extra locks on the exterior. These include the following:

• Slamlocks – These are similar to Yale locks, springing into action when the door of a van is shut with no need for further operation. This type of lock is especially useful in ensuring that the contents of a van stay safe whilst parked in a busy area where an opportunist thief could quickly steal something out of the back of a van. Even though slamlocks won’t stand up against a determined attack on a vehicle, they are an extra level of security when compared against the normal door locks.

• Deadlocks – These heavy duty locks are the ultimate in van security. They require the operator to physically enable the lock after shutting the door with a key. They offer strong protection against even the most skilled of thieves and are very difficult to break. The only downside to using this kind of lock is that it can be a little inconvenient to keep securing the lock if workers have to frequently use the van to get tools and materials.

• Catalytic Converter Cages – Thanks to the precious metals that are used in the construction of catalytic convertors, these parts can fetch very good prices even on the second hand spares market. It is now possible to buy special cages for your van’s catalytic converter that are attached to the vehicle’s chassis via special cables. Even though these aren’t completely immune to attacks, they will present such a challenge to most potential thieves that they will probably look for an easier target.

• Reinforced Locks – Many vans, especially the famous Ford Transit, have side doors that feature a large handled locking system. This is one of the most vulnerable points on the van and many professional van thieves will know how to quickly bypass such a lock. These locks can be reinforced using special plating to make them more robust and resistant to even sledgehammer attacks that’s attached to the bodywork via concealed fixings.

Essential In-Van Storage

It’s not just the exterior of your van that can be made stronger. There are also a number of solutions available that are able to significantly increase the security of tools placed inside the vehicle. The most commonly used are as follows:

• Vehicle Storage Boxes – These are in effect a safe for tools that can be stored in the back of a van. They are usually constructed out of strong steel and have solid locking mechanisms that will resist even the most determined attackers. Vehicle storage boxes may even have special systems that allow power tools to be left on charge whilst still secured inside. For added security such boxes can even be fixed to the interior of the van, either with locks or permanent welds.

• Bulkheads – Bulkheads are special metal plates that are fitted between the driver and passenger seats and the cargo compartment of a van. Not only do they help protect the van’s contents from thieves who attempt to access the back of the van through the front cabin, but they also protect the driver and passenger from being injured by the contents of the van in the event of a crash. They can be manufactured in a number of different styles and can even include Perspex in their construction to allow the driver to see through the rear window.

• Grills – Just as bulkheads are used to protect the front end of a van, grills can be used to protect the rear windows of vans. Simply put, they’re bar systems that go across the windows and prevent thieves from entering the van if they break the windows. Such grills are usually supplied as steel bars or a metal mesh that blocks the entire window and is firmly fixed to the van.

Park Sensibly

This may seem like an obvious point, but the best way to stop opportunist thieves from breaking into your van is by not giving them the right kind of cover to attack the vehicle. If you park your van on dark, out of the way, back streets, then it’s much easier for a robber to gain entrance to it without anyone raising any concerns. By parking on clearly lit, well used streets you are likely to deter any potential robbers from breaking into your van or stealing parts from it. If possible always park your van where you have a clear line of sight to it, as a simple shout is usually enough to get rid of anyone who’s taking too close a look at its security measures.

Finally – Save Money on your Insurance

Most workmen have the contents of their van insured alongside the van itself. By using recognised security measures to protect the contents of your van, such as deadlocks and vehicle storage boxes, van owners should be able to negotiate a much more attractive rate on your insurance premium.

Thanks Kes!

Want to feature on our guest blog? Give Emma an email to find out more details!