Guide
Most shops start on a spreadsheet or a shared doc, and for a while, that's genuinely fine. Here's how to tell when it isn't anymore, and what to actually look for once you're ready to move.
Where a spreadsheet actually works
One person tracking a handful of jobs, low volume, a single location — a spreadsheet is fast, free, and nobody has to learn new software. There's no shame in starting there, and plenty of well-run shops never need to leave it.
The signs you've outgrown it
Version conflicts, overwritten changes, nobody's fully sure which tab is actually current.
Vendor quotes live in a dozen different threads, and nobody can find the one from three weeks ago when it actually matters.
Can't answer "what's our total open pipeline worth" or "what's our win rate" without hand-counting rows.
Gate codes, who to ask for, what was said on the last call — none of it written down anywhere searchable.
What to actually look for
If you regularly request pricing from more than one supplier per job, this is usually the single biggest time-saver.
Not a separate tool you have to re-enter the same numbers into by hand.
Pipeline value, win rate, average job size — the numbers you'd otherwise build a separate spreadsheet just to see.
Jump straight to a job instead of scrolling a list — built for someone juggling forty open jobs at once, not four.
Off-the-shelf vs. built for your process
Off-the-shelf trade CRM software is faster to start and typically runs $100–500 a month — a real, legitimate option, especially if your process is already fairly standard. The tradeoff is you're bending your workflow to fit the software, and paying for it every month indefinitely. A custom-built CRM costs more upfront and takes longer to stand up, but it's built around your actual process instead of the other way around, and there's no subscription running in the background once it's done. Which one's right mostly depends on how close your process already is to "standard," and how many jobs you're running through it.
Tell us your trade, your average job value, and how many calls you think you're missing — we'll send back roughly what that's costing you, no pitch attached.