Fire and security systems
Fire and security contractors running alarms, doors, extinguishers, emergency lighting and access control, where the certificate is the deliverable and each certificate lives in whichever system it was bought for.
Where it breaks
A small sample of the problems we hear most often in fire and security systems. Not a complete list, and not all of them will be yours.
- 01
The same visit is entered in four places
One platform holds the customers, another the alarm servicing, another the door inspections, another the electrical certificates. Each one does the job it was bought for. The engineer's visit exists in all of them, agrees with none of them, and the person keeping them in step is doing it by hand.
- 02
The certificate goes to the office before it goes to the client
The engineer fills the sheet, the office checks it, converts it and sends it. Days pass between the work being done and the client holding the document that proves it. The client's own compliance deadline is running through all of them.
- 03
Work gets done and never invoiced
Jobs sit open for years with labour booked to them and parts issued against them, and no invoice ever raised. Nobody decided not to bill them. The job left the board when the engineer finished and the billing was somebody else's step.
- 04
The remedials come out as a report rather than an order
An inspection exists to find things wrong, and each finding is chargeable work on a building you were already standing in. It gets handed over as a list of defects, the client files it, and the works are never ordered. Your own rates already price most of it: a hinge set, a strip and seal, thirty doors.
- 05
A client rings for a certificate from three years ago
Fifteen minutes each time, finding which system it was issued from and which visit it belonged to, and the client waits. It is work you do not bill, on a document you already produced, for a client who should be able to fetch it themselves.
- 06
The dates that carry the money live in a calendar
Service intervals, contract renewals and a four-hour response promise on a callout. Reminders somebody has to see, in a calendar nobody owns, against contracts whose renewal date is the single most valuable date in the business.
What we'd build
A small sample of the kind of thing we build. What we'd actually scope depends on which of the problems above is costing you most.
The visit recorded once
The engineer works through tick boxes, dropdowns and photographs rather than free text, and that one record populates the certificate, the asset history, the job costing and the invoice line. Nothing is re-keyed into a second system afterwards.
One entry instead of four, systems that agree with each other, and admin hours back per engineer.
The certificate leaves site with the engineer
Issued from what was recorded, checked against the standard it has to meet, and with the client before the van has left the car park. The office step becomes an exception queue for the ones that fail the check rather than a gate every job passes through.
Clients holding the document the same day, and the office step reduced to an exception queue.
Remedials priced off your schedule of rates
Defects come out of the inspection already costed against your own rates, with the photographs carried through, so what reaches the client is a quote to accept rather than a report to file. Anything not accepted gets chased on a schedule.
Found work turned into ordered work, on buildings you were already standing in.
Nothing closes without being billed
Labour and parts booked to a job with no invoice against it get raised as a flag while the work is recent, and open jobs are aged the way a debtor ledger is. Revenue you have already earned stops depending on somebody remembering it exists.
Revenue you have already earned invoiced, instead of ageing quietly on an open job.
Certificates the client can fetch themselves
Every certificate and report held against the client's own buildings and assets, reachable by them without ringing you. The fifteen-minute lookup stops, and the thing a client sees between visits is a record of what you have done for them.
Unbilled lookup time gone, and something the client sees from you between visits.
Service dates and response clocks that arrive
Next service raised from the date of the last one, renewals surfaced far enough ahead to be a conversation rather than a lapse, and a contracted response time measured against what was promised so the number in the tender is a number you can show.
More renewals kept, services booked on interval, and a response time you can evidence in a tender.
Recognise any of these?
Thirty minutes with a founder. Walk us through the problems your team lives with and we'll talk about whether any of it has to stay that way.