Business health check

The other half: a two-minute health check for your trade business

Ten yes-or-no questions about the half of the job nobody trained you for — winning the work, pricing it, the evenings, getting paid, knowing what it made. Scored by area, so it tells you which one is leaking and what to do about it first.

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  1. 1When an enquiry comes in while you're on the tools, does something go off in your pocket?
  2. 2Do most written enquiries get a reply from you within the hour?
  3. 3Have you ever worked out the hourly rate the business actually needs, rather than picking a number that sounded right?
  4. 4Has your rate gone up in the last two years?
  5. 5Does the quote usually go out before you've left the site?
  6. 6Do you do the week's invoicing at night or on a Sunday?
  7. 7Does the invoice go out the day the job finishes?
  8. 8Is there an invoice more than a fortnight overdue right now that nobody has chased?
  9. 9Could you say what last month made, to the nearest thousand?
  10. 10Do you know which of last year's jobs lost money?

Why these ten

Running a trade business is two jobs, and only one of them came with four years of training. The other half — the enquiries, the pricing, the paperwork, the chasing, the numbers — nobody teaches, and it's the half that decides whether the business is a good one to own. These ten questions are about that half only.

  • They're specific. “Are you good at getting paid?” is a question anybody answers yes to. “Does the invoice go out the day the job finishes?” is one you answer honestly.
  • Some want a no. A list of ten questions that all want a yes is a quiz you pass by nodding.
  • Two per area, five areas. Enough to tell a solid area from a leaking one; not enough to pretend to precision we don't have.

There is no score out of a hundred and no benchmark against other tradies, because we don't have that data and won't invent it. What the check tells you is which area is leaking and what to do first, which is the only part that's actionable anyway.

What solid looks like

Most tradies score solid on two or three of the five, and the shape of the leak is nearly always the same: the work is done well and on time, and the paperwork around it happens at nine at night, a week late, or not at all. That isn't a work-ethic problem — a tradie doing the paperwork at nine at night is working harder than anyone — it's a setup that was never built for the business half.

Each leaking area on this page links to a free tool for it: the charge-out rate calculator for pricing, the invoice generator for the evenings, the payment reminders for getting paid, the profit margin calculator for the numbers, and the quote generator for winning the work.

Common questions

Business health check, answered.

The owner of a trade business who does the work themselves — a sparky, a plumber, a chippy, a landscaper — with a crew of nobody to a handful. If you employ an office, most of these questions are somebody else's job and the check will read as easier than your business is.

Then the other half of the job is handled, which is rarer than you'd think and not luck. The thing worth checking next is whether it's handled by a system or by you personally — if it stops the week you're on holiday, it's the second one.
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