You tell us the four questions you ask every week
Not the ones a consultant says you should ask. The ones you actually ask your office manager.
See what is happening
One page that tells you where the business actually stands
Work finished and not yet invoiced is usually the largest pile of quiet money in a service business, and most owners cannot say what it is this morning.
For a lot of them that number is the overdraft in disguise. Nobody has to capture anything new for this. Your team's day does not change by one minute. We read the places the numbers already sit and put the answers on one page you open on your phone. From R15,000.
01
What goes on it
- Money in and money owedWhat is landing this month, what is overdue, who owes the most and for how long they have owed it.
- Work in progressJobs finished and not yet invoiced, with a name against each one.
- The pipelineQuotes out, quotes gone quiet, what closed and what did not, without anyone updating a spreadsheet by hand on a Friday.
- Your own operating numberTrucks loaded, classes filled, hours billed, tables turned. Whatever you personally judge a week by.
- The call listThe three or four names where a phone call today changes the outcome. This is the part owners open daily, and it is the reason the rest gets looked at.
We build the four you will open on a Tuesday morning. Everything else is left off on purpose, and added later only if you ask twice.
02
Where the numbers come from
From what you already have. That is the whole point.
Your accounts package. The spreadsheet the office manager keeps. The booking system. The job sheets. The enquiries off the website. In most businesses these numbers exist and are simply sitting in five places, so putting them side by side eats a morning of somebody's week, which means it happens once a month at best and nobody trusts it when it does.
We read those places on a schedule and put the result on one page. If a number does not exist anywhere, we say so plainly, and then you decide whether it is worth capturing. If it is, we make capturing it a two-second job for whoever is closest to it, not a new admin task for someone who already has one.
03
How we build it
We find where each answer lives, and tell you which ones can be read as they are and which need tidying first, with a price on the tidying before you commit to it.
We build a first version fast, usually inside two weeks, and it is deliberately rough.
You live with it for a week
We see which numbers you open and which you never touch, and we cut the second group rather than defend them.
We set the refresh and decide who sees what
Your foreman does not need the profit figures. Your bookkeeper does not need the sales pipeline.
04
What it costs
| What you are building | Typical range |
|---|---|
| One page, four numbers, two sources, refreshed overnight | R15,000 to R30,000 |
| Five or six sources, a separate view per role, refreshed hourly | R30,000 to R70,000 |
| Live figures, where the decision depends on the last hour | From R70,000 |
| Tidying a source before it can be read reliably | Quoted per job, and you see the number before anything starts |
| Running it | The tool itself is usually free or a low monthly fee you pay the provider directly. Watching it after go-live is quoted per job, and you see the number before anything starts. |
What pushes you up the range: how many separate places the numbers live, how far apart they currently disagree, and how many people need their own version of the page.
What brings it down: two sources instead of six, and settling on four numbers instead of fifteen.
What we read, and what we never touch
A dashboard means letting us look into the places your numbers sit, so here is exactly what that means.
- Read-only wherever read-only exists. For most accounts packages and booking systems it does, and we use it. We are looking at numbers, not changing them.
- A login you create for us, inside your own account, with your bookkeeper's approval where the accounts are involved.
- Named spreadsheets, not whole drives. We ask you to share the specific files, and we say which ones in writing first.
- Revocable by you in one click, in the same screen you granted it in.
We do not touch payroll unless a payroll figure is one of your four numbers and you say so.
The dashboard runs on accounts in your name. If we stopped existing tomorrow, it keeps refreshing, and the written notes on how it is put together sit with you, not with us.
06
See it on your own numbers first
There is an example dashboard on this site running on sample data, clearly labelled as sample. Click around it for two minutes and you will know whether this is for you.
For your own numbers, send an export from your system and we load it into a private copy that only you and we can open. Your file is deleted after seven days at the latest. That is the first question a sensible owner asks, so we answer it before you have to.
07
Two things worth settling before we build
- Would two of your managers count a finished job the same way? If they would not, that is worth settling first, otherwise both of them will argue with the screen instead of using it. We can help with only that part, and it is a small job.
- Do you trust the numbers going in today? If they are captured late or captured twice, a dashboard delivers the same numbers faster and with more confidence behind them, which is worse than not having one. Fixing the capture usually costs less than the dashboard, and we would do that first.
And if only one number really matters to you, a short WhatsApp message every Monday morning beats a page you have to remember to open. We build those too, and they cost a fraction of this.
The numbers, in one place
- From R15,000 for one page, four numbers and two sources refreshed overnight.
- Several sources with a separate view per role is R30,000 to R70,000.
- Bands below.
Straight answers
Questions owners ask us
Usually not. We build on tools that either come with what you already pay for or cost a small monthly amount, and you get that number before you commit, not after.
You choose. Once a night suits most businesses and costs the least to build and to run. Hourly or live is possible where it genuinely changes a decision, and it costs more on both.
Yes. Views are separated by person or by role, so a branch manager sees their branch and not the payroll.
No. Spreadsheets work fine as a source as long as the same column means the same thing every week. If it does not, we find that in week one, and finding it is worth something on its own.
That is the right question to ask about a dashboard. The call list is what makes it a daily habit rather than a monthly one, because it tells you who to phone rather than how the quarter went. If after the first week you are not opening it, we cut it back until you are, and that is part of the build, not an extra.
It is built for the phone first, because that is where it gets opened. On a laptop you get more detail on the same page.
The next step
Tell us the four questions you ask every week and where you go today to answer them.
Or just send last week's spreadsheet, whatever state it is in. WhatsApp or call +27 73 932 6852, email [email protected], or take twenty minutes and we will sketch the page with you on screen and tell you what it lands at.
Or email [email protected]. No slides, and no invoice for the conversation.