Quote-to-invoice fixed at an Eschborn electrical contractor

Situation

A family-run electrical installation firm in Eschborn, 38 staff, about €5.2 million revenue per year, second generation in charge. Jobs ranged from €800 service calls to €400,000 fit-outs for office buildings. The work itself ran well. The paperwork did not. Invoices went out on average 21 days after a job was finished. The office manager spent her Fridays chasing site leads for material lists and hours. The bank line was drawn for most of the month even though the order book was full.

The owner suspected the delay sat somewhere between the quote and the invoice. He did not know where.

Approach

We ran the lower tier of our operations and process improvement service: one process mapped end to end, quote to paid invoice, over four weeks.

Week one: we walked the process with the people who run it. Two days on site, eight conversations, from the estimator who writes the quote to the bookkeeper who posts the payment. We pulled 40 closed jobs from the last twelve months and timed each step from the system timestamps.

Week two: the map. Fourteen handovers between quote and invoice, three of them on paper. The site lead recorded hours in a notebook and typed them up at the end of the month. Material deliveries were matched to jobs by hand from supplier invoices. The estimator’s quote structure did not match the invoice structure, so the office manager rebuilt every invoice from scratch.

Week three: we measured where the 21 days went. About 12 days waited for the monthly hours upload. About 6 days waited for material matching. The rest was rework and queries. We priced each delay in cash tied up, using the firm’s own revenue per day.

Week four: a ranked fix list of 14 items, each with the effort to implement, the days it removes, and who owns it. The first five needed no new software. Weekly hours upload from the site lead’s phone. Quote line items copied into the invoice template. Material deliveries booked to the job number at the gate. A Tuesday invoicing slot. One person who signs off each invoice.

Result

In this scenario the firm implemented the first five fixes within a month of delivery. Three months on, invoices went out on average 6 days after job completion. At the firm’s revenue of about €14,000 per working day, that shift took about €150,000 out of unbilled work and into the bank account, and the credit line stayed undrawn for the second half of each month.

The office manager gained about 30 hours per month, which she now spends on purchasing. The remaining nine fixes on the list sit on a timeline the owner controls.

What it cost

€3,900, quoted as a fixed price before the work started. It bought two days on site, eight conversations, a timed process map built from 40 real jobs, and a ranked list of 14 fixes with effort, effect, and owner for each. The work is covered by our 100% money-back guarantee: full refund on request within 14 days of delivery.

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