A crew app that shows prices is a leak, and one that shows nothing useful is a paper checklist with a battery. The line between them is simple: everything about the work, nothing about the money.
Edvinas BernatavičiusFounder of Helmar.AI · runs MB Helmar2 September 20263 min readSite & crew
The first tool most crews get is a WhatsApp group. It works for a week. Then the gate code is forty messages up, the photos of the finished terrace are mixed with the photos of someone’s lunch, and the hours are written on the back of a receipt. The second tool is usually an app that shows the crew everything, including the price, which is how a customer once heard our margin from the man laying the boards.
Everything about the work. Nothing about the money. That is the whole design rule, and it survives every edge case we have met.
| The crew sees | The crew never sees |
|---|---|
| Their own jobs for today, the address, what to bring | Prices, margins or the estimate total |
| The scope and the customer’s notes | Invoices and what has been paid |
| Checklists with the required photos | Other crews’ jobs |
| Before and after photos, saved with the job | Where they are: hours per job are recorded, a location never is |
| A timer per job: start, pause, stop | Anything the office has not approved |
One exception, and you control it: a crew lead with the Collect payments permission sees the amount due at the handover, so they can show a QR code at the walkthrough instead of sending the customer home to pay later.
Half of our sites have one bar of signal or none. An app that needs a connection to open a checklist gets abandoned by the second job. Today’s jobs, the checklists and the photos have to be on the phone before the crew leaves in the morning, and whatever they do on site has to be kept on the phone and sent when it is back online. If that is not true, you will get the paper back.
Hours per job
A timer the crew starts and stops, and a week the office approves. Approved hours go into the job margin at your hourly cost. Nothing to transcribe.
Extra work, before it is done
The crew sends a photo and a note. The owner turns it into a change order the customer accepts on the link before the work starts. Hidden damage stops being an argument at the invoice.
The handover
The customer signs the handover checklist on the phone, the completion act follows, and the final invoice is issued from it. The warranty dates start there too.
The crew app in Helmar.AI follows the line above: today’s jobs with the address, scope and notes; handover, safety and inspection checklists with required photos; before and after photos shown to the customer when the work is done; a timer per job that the office approves; extra work reported with a photo and turned into a change order; everything kept on the phone without signal and sent later. Installed from a link by SMS, no app store, and crew app users are free on every plan. Prices, margins, invoices and other jobs never appear, and location is never tracked.
Edvinas Bernatavičius
Founder of Helmar.AI · runs MB Helmar
Runs MB Helmar, a Vilnius contractor that builds pergolas, verandas and awnings, and built Helmar.AI out of his own quoting.
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