JunkBossPro Blog — Running a Junk Removal Business

Moving a Junk Removal Business Off Paper and Spreadsheets

A lot of junk removal businesses run on a notebook in the truck, a calendar on the owner's phone, a spreadsheet of customers and a pile of dump tickets in the glovebox. It works, mostly. But somewhere in that pile are callbacks that never happened, invoices that never went out and jobs that lost money without anyone noticing. Moving off paper is less about technology and more about not losing track.

Quotes Are Only the Start

Phone Quotes or On-Site Estimates: How a Junk Removal Business Decides covered how jobs get priced. On paper, that quote gets written on a pad, the job gets added to a calendar, the dump ticket gets stuffed in a visor, and the invoice gets typed up later, if someone remembers. Each handoff is a place for something to slip.

What Breaks on Paper

Paper and spreadsheets tend to fail in the same few places:

• Lost requests. A call taken mid-load and written on a receipt that blows away.
• Missed dump fees. Tickets that never get matched to jobs, so overages are never charged.
• Unbilled work. Jobs done but never invoiced, especially on busy days.
• One person knows everything. If the owner is out, nobody can find the schedule or the gate code.
• No history. When a customer calls back next year, nobody remembers what you did.

If any of those sound familiar, paper is costing you money.

What to Move First

You do not have to move everything at once. A sensible order:

• Customers. Get your customer list in first, since everything else hangs off it.
• Service list. Put your load sizes, single items and cleanout prices in one place.
• New requests. Start logging every new call and website request in the software.
• The schedule. Move the calendar onto the dispatch board.
• The crew. Put the crew on the crew app, with dump tickets and photos on each job.
• Billing. Invoice from completed jobs and start collecting cards on file.

Bringing In Your Customer List

If your customers are in a spreadsheet, you are in good shape. JunkBossPro has CSV import for clients and addresses, and imported addresses are placed on the map automatically. Clean up the spreadsheet first: one row per customer, a clear column for each piece of information, and duplicates removed.

If your customers are in a notebook or a phone's contacts, start with the ones most likely to call again: partners, landlords and recent customers. Add the rest as they come back. From the day you switch, every job builds on the client record.

Getting the Crew On Board

Crews are often the most nervous about new software. Keep it simple. In JunkBossPro, the crew app runs in the browser on iPhone and Android, with no app store download. Each person logs in with the company login and their own PIN. They see the day's jobs in route order with the load size, items and what is going on each card, tap navigation, and mark jobs Start, Skip or Complete.

Do a ride-along or two. Show them where the dump ticket goes and how to take before and after photos. Once they see that the app means fewer calls to the office, most crews prefer it.

Run Both for a Short While

For the first week or two, it is fine to keep the notebook in the truck as a backup. Just make sure the software is the official record: if it is not in the system, it did not happen. After a couple of weeks, the notebook usually stays in the glovebox on its own.

Try it first in the slow season if you can, when there is time to set things up properly. JunkBossPro has a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and a live demo of a fully-stocked sample junk removal company. The guide on Making It Through the Slow Season in a Junk Removal Business covers using quiet months to fix systems.

Pick one person to own the switch. Usually that is the owner or the office person. They set up the service list, handle the import, answer the crew's questions and decide when the notebook is retired. Without an owner, the switch tends to stall halfway, with some jobs in the software and some on paper, which is worse than either one on its own.

One Place for Everything

Moving off paper gives a junk removal business one place for requests, prices, schedules, dump tickets, photos, invoices and customer history. Nothing gets lost in a glovebox, and the business does not depend on one person's memory. Next up: choosing the software to move to. For every topic in this series, visit the running a junk removal business page.