1.Summary
This is a busy firm with good plumbers and a well-run ServiceM8 dispatch board. The scheduling works. The time and money go missing either side of it: enquiries that wait to be typed in, quotes nobody follows up, and invoices that are slow to go out and slower to come in.
The main finding
ServiceM8 and Xero are both set up well, but nothing moves between them, or into them, without a person. The office manager is the connection, and she is also the person answering the phone.
What we recommend, in order
- Get Paid first: quote follow-ups, a check for jobs never invoiced, and reminders that get firmer as invoices age. A Flow Sprint, $3,000 + GST.
- Enquiry to Quote second, once the first flow has had its 30 days of tuning. Another Flow Sprint, $3,000 + GST.
- Owner Dashboard last, once job times and materials are logged consistently. A fixed quote in the $3,500 to $6,000 + GST range.
What we would leave alone: an AI receptionist, a website chatbot, and anything ServiceM8 or Xero already does on its own. Reasons in section 5.
2.How work moves today
From the first enquiry to the money in the bank, as the owner and office manager described it.
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
| Stage | Where it lives | What happens now | Where it sticks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enquiries | Website form (arrives as email), shared inbox, texts to the owner, Facebook Messenger, phone | Office manager types each one into ServiceM8 as a job | Texts and Facebook messages wait until the owner passes them on. First reply is often the next morning |
| Quotes | ServiceM8 | Owner writes most quotes in the evening from site notes and photos | Quotes go out two to four days after the site visit |
| Quote follow-up | Nowhere | Nobody follows up. Customers ring back if they want to go ahead | No one knows the win rate. The owner guesses “under half” |
| Scheduling and jobs | ServiceM8 | Dispatch board, job cards, photos and forms on the app | Works well. Leave it alone |
| Job done to invoice | ServiceM8 to Xero | Office manager checks each completed job, adds missing materials, sends the invoice the next day | Some jobs marked complete are never invoiced. The owner finds them at month end, sometimes |
| Overdue invoices | Xero | Xero reminders are off. The office manager chases by phone once a month | Chasing gets dropped in busy weeks, which is most weeks |
| Numbers | Spreadsheet | Owner exports from ServiceM8 and Xero once a quarter | Takes half a day. Job profit by job type is unknown |
3.Top three opportunities
Ranked by dollars first, then hours. The estimates are the owner’s and office manager’s own numbers from the interview, not a time study, and in this sample they are illustrative. We use them to rank the work, not as a promise of what you will save.
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
| # | Flow | Owner’s estimate today | What you would count | Effort | Price | Running cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Get Paid | About $45,000 owed at month end, $15,000 of it over 30 days. Two or three finished jobs a month never invoiced. About 4 hours a week of chasing | Days to payment, dollars overdue, quote win rate | Low to medium | Flow Sprint, $3,000 + GST | About $30/month for the automation tool. No AI needed |
| 2 | Enquiry to Quote | About 40 enquiries a week across five channels. About 5 hours a week typing them in, and 6 hours of evening quoting for the owner | Time to first reply, quotes sent per week | Medium | Flow Sprint, $3,000 + GST | About $30/month, plus a few dollars of AI |
| 3 | Owner Dashboard | Half a day a quarter in a spreadsheet, and no view of job profit by job type | The report nobody builds by hand | Medium | Fixed quote, $3,500 to $6,000 + GST | Runs on the same automation account, plus a few dollars of AI |
Running costs are estimates for this sample. You pay tool and AI bills directly to the vendor, at cost, with no markup from us.
Why this order. Get Paid is about money already earned, it needs no AI, and it is the quickest to prove: you will see the overdue total move within a month. Enquiry to Quote saves the most hours, but it touches how the office and the owner work every day, so it goes better once the first flow has settled. The dashboard is only as good as the job data behind it, and that improves once the first two flows are live.
4.Each opportunity in detail
1.Get Paid
- What changes:
- quotes not accepted in ServiceM8 get two friendly follow-ups, then land on the owner’s list. A daily check catches any job marked complete with no invoice. Overdue invoices in Xero get reminders at about 7, 14 and 30 days, each a little firmer, then land on the office manager’s list with the history attached. Everything stops the moment a quote is accepted or an invoice is paid.
- AI or rules:
- plain rules. Dates, statuses and amounts don’t need judgement.
- Your time:
- about two hours across the sprint: a kickoff call, giving access, approving the wording, and a handover.
- Watch out:
- two commercial customers pay on their own monthly cycle. They stay off the reminder schedule.
2.Enquiry to Quote
- What changes:
- enquiries from the website form, the shared inbox, a forwarding text number and Facebook land in ServiceM8 as jobs, with the name, address and job type filled in, and checked against existing customers. The customer gets an acknowledgement in the firm’s wording. For everyday jobs, the owner’s site notes become a draft quote from the ServiceM8 price list, ready to check and send.
- AI or rules:
- AI reads the free-text enquiries and turns site notes into draft line items. Prices, job creation and messages follow fixed rules. Nothing goes to a customer without approval.
- Your time:
- about three hours: the same as above, plus an hour tidying job types and the price list in ServiceM8.
- Watch out:
- texts to the owner’s personal mobile can’t be connected. Customers need a business number that forwards messages, which means a small change to the website and the vans.
3.Owner Dashboard
- What changes:
- every Monday morning, one page in the owner’s inbox: job profit by job type, quote win rate, who owes what and for how long, and how busy each plumber was last week, next to the weeks before.
- AI or rules:
- every number comes straight from ServiceM8 and Xero. AI writes the few lines at the top that say what changed.
- Your time:
- a one-hour session to agree what each number means, then a review of the first two reports.
- Watch out:
- job profit depends on time and materials being logged on every job. Today about one job in five has no materials recorded, so fix that habit first.
5.Don’t automate this
Just as useful as the list above. Each of these would cost money and give little back.
- Booking confirmations and “on my way” texts. ServiceM8 already sends these from its own automated messages. Turn on the ones you aren’t using. No build needed.
- Sending invoices from ServiceM8 to Xero. ServiceM8’s own Xero connection already does it. The Get Paid flow only adds the check for jobs that never got invoiced.
- Bank reconciliation. Xero handles this well on its own. Leave it.
- An AI receptionist. The owner asked about one. The office answers the phone in working hours and the on-call plumber takes after-hours emergencies, which is what those customers want. The gap is small, and a person handles it better.
- A chatbot on the website. People who visit want a plumber, not a chat. A clear form and a fast reply (opportunity 2) do more.
- Gas certificates and anything a certifying gasfitter signs. That sign-off stays with a person.
- One-off jobs. Cleaning up six years of old customer records and the annual price review happen once. Do them by hand, or pay someone for a day. Automation pays off on work that repeats every week.
6.What happens next
We walk through this Flow Map together on a 30-minute call and you decide what, if anything, comes next. Nothing starts until you have agreed a fixed price in writing.
The Flow Map fee is credited. The $800 + GST comes off a Flow Sprint booked within 60 days. In this example, the Get Paid sprint would cost $2,200 + GST.
Live within 14 days, or half back. The flow is live within 14 days of kickoff, counted from when we have access to your accounts, or half the sprint fee comes back. It is a deadline guarantee, not a promise of results.
Built in your own accounts. Your ServiceM8, your Xero, your automation account. You get the logins and a plain-English runbook, so you are never locked out.
After the 30 days of tuning. Optional Flow Care keeps each live flow monitored and fixed when a vendor changes something, for $300/month + GST per flow. Month to month, 30 days’ notice.