Operations · Playbook · 5 min read
The weekly office rhythm
A daily digest, a Monday briefing and Friday numbers — the simple cadence that keeps a trade business reviewed every week instead of every quarter.
01Every morning — the digest
One email or message before 7am: today's jobs and who's on them, leads waiting for a reply, quotes to follow up, invoices to check, anything overdue. If it's not in the digest, it doesn't exist — so the digest must be generated from your systems, not typed by hand.
02Monday — the briefing
- Last week's numbers: leads, quotes sent, jobs won, revenue, GP.
- This week's jobs, crews and subbies — gaps and clashes.
- Open issues: defects, disputes, late payments, compliance expiring.
- One improvement to make this week, with an owner.
03Friday — the numbers
- Every job completed this week with its GP.
- Quote-to-booking and lead response time for the week.
- Money in, money owed, bills due next week.
- Anything that looks wrong goes to the bookkeeper before Monday.
04The scoreboard
Pick five numbers and keep them visible: lead response time, quote-to-booking, revenue vs target, GP % vs target, and jobs in flight. Targets per trade — painting and cleaning run very different margins, so don't blend them.
05Write it down once
Every task that happens more than twice deserves a one-page SOP: what, who, when, and what done looks like. Anything repeatable after that is a candidate for automation.