What tasks should the owner never do?

Hitting £30k a month means the business needs you on the right problems. From here, your time is worth more building systems, people and pipeline than chasing emails or picking up every call. Use this list to decide what to drop, who should take it, and how to hand it over without chaos.

Non-negotiables to stop doing

• Phone and inbox: Answering the main line, call-backs, diary juggling, “are you still coming” texts, inbox triage, quote chasing, review requests.

• Admin:Data entry into CRM, job creation, sending Ts&Cs, CIS submissions, payroll prep, receipt hunting, photo filing, progress updates to clients.

• Scheduling and logistics:Daily rota changes, route planning, booking surveys, ordering skips, material runs, supplier hold music.

• Estimating and quoting:Formatting every quote, measuring every small job, rewriting boilerplate, attaching certificates.

• On the tools: Call-outs, snag lists, warranty visits, tool repairs, picking up consumables.

• Marketing busywork: Posting to social, fiddling with the website, manually updating Google Business Profile, editing photos and thumbnails.

• Bookkeeping: Raising all invoices, reconciling bank feeds, debt chasing.

Who should do it instead

• VA or Office Coordinator (first hire): phones, inbox, booking surveys, calendar control, document packs, review requests, job set-up in CRM, quote follow-up, debt chasing to script.

• Ops Coordinator / Scheduler: rota, route plans, supplier orders, skips, H&S packs, RAMS circulation, daily start board.

• Estimator: site measures, specifications, pricing from your matrix, proposal assembly, hand-over to ops.

• Lead Installer / Foreman: site diaries, photo uploads, snag capture, toolbox talks, client day-end updates.

• Bookkeeper: invoices, receipts, VAT, CIS, payroll liaison, aged debt.

• Marketing VA: GBP updates, blogs from transcripts, case studies, photo curation, monthly report.

What the owner should keep

• Hire and fire decisions, one-to-ones with leads, culture and standards.

• Pricing architecture, approved discounts, final sign-off on large or strategic quotes.

• Weekly finance review, cash decisions, scorecard review.

• Partnerships, supplier terms, marketing message and offer testing.

• Escalations and key clients only.

Simple handover toolkit (use these to get out fast)

• Call triage script with booking rules and red flags.

• Pricing matrix and option menu for standard jobs.

• Quote template with inclusions, exclusions, payment stages and variation clause.

• Materials order sheet and approved suppliers list.

• Change-order form and “extras” script.

• Snag and handover checklist with photo naming rules.

• Debt-chase script with 3-step cadence.

Your 90-day offloading plan

Weeks 1–2: Time audit. List repeatable tasks. Write the top 6 SOPs above.
Weeks 3–4: Hire a VA 15–20 hrs/week. Route all calls to the VA. Owner phone becomes internal only.
Weeks 5–6: Estimator takes all sub-£5k surveys. Owner keeps only high-value or strategic.
Weeks 7–8: Ops Coordinator owns the diary and supplier orders. No one books the owner’s time without the Ops gate.
Weeks 9–10: Bookkeeper takes invoicing and debt chasing. Owner reviews aged debt weekly for 15 minutes.
Weeks 11–12: Marketing VA publishes one case study and two GBP updates per week from site photos and transcripts.

Scorecard the owner reviews weekly

• Leads by source, average response time, survey bookings, quote turnaround time, quote win rate, average job value.

• Gross margin by job, re-work rate, jobs delivered on time, WIP.

• Cash in bank days, aged debt over 30 days, pipeline value next 4 weeks, utilisation of crews.

Guardrails that protect your time

• No customer has the owner’s mobile. All traffic through office number or CRM chat.

• No site visits without a clear brief, budget range and decision maker attending.

• No discounts outside the written pricing policy.

• The diary is owned by Ops. Colleagues cannot book the owner directly.

Quick wins this week

• Turn phone to office first. Add a 15-second greeting that sets expectations and routes by option.

• Publish one page “How we work” with process, payments and warranty. It cuts repetitive client questions.

• Put response SLAs on the wall: new leads replied to in 10 minutes, quotes in 48 hours, snag acknowledgement same day.

• Create three email snippets: booking confirmation, quote cover note, polite debt reminder. Let the team use them.

Recommended light stack

• CRM/Job management: Tradify, Jobber or ServiceM8.

• Sales and follow-up: GoHighLevel or HubSpot Starter for pipelines, text and email sequences.

• Finance: Xero or QuickBooks with Dext, bookkeeper runs it.

• Scheduling: Google Calendar shared, Ops controls edits.

• Automation: Zapier or Make to push forms into CRM, create jobs, start follow-ups.

• Reviews: NiceJob or Cloutly, run by the VA.

Stop-doing checklist (print this)

• I do not answer the main phone.

• I do not manage the diary.

• I do not format quotes.

• I do not chase payments.

• I do not do material runs.

• I do not post to social or update GBP.

• I only attend surveys above £X or strategic jobs.

• I spend 60–90 minutes each week on scorecard and cash, 2 hours on people, 2 hours on partnerships.

Use this as your line in the sand. The moment you stop doing low-leverage tasks, the business starts behaving like a business, not a job with helpers.