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For electricians
Certificates, compliance and callbacks, without the paperwork night.
The wiring takes an hour. The certificate takes the evening.
Electrical work has a strange shape to it. The skilled part, the part you trained years for, is often over quickly. Then there is the testing, and after the testing there is the writing up, and the writing up regularly takes longer than the job. An EICR on a three bedroom house can be a morning on site and most of a Sunday afternoon at a laptop, transcribing readings from a clipboard into a form that will be read once and filed forever.
On top of that sits a quieter kind of admin: knowing what you did where. A customer rings about a circuit tripping and mentions you were there in 2023. Somewhere in a box or an old email account is the schedule of results that would answer the question in thirty seconds, and instead you drive over to look. Meanwhile the periodic inspections that are genuinely due, the recurring work you already earned, exist only as a vague sense that some of those landlords must be coming up soon.
None of this needs a big change of habit. It needs the information you already write down once to be captured in a form that produces the certificate, files itself against the address, and remembers when it is due again. That is most of the paperwork night gone, and a stream of repeat work that arrives without anyone chasing it.
Sound familiar?
- EICRs and certificates taking longer to write up than to carry out
- No quick way to find what you did at an address three years ago
- Test results retyped from paper into a computer
- Reminders for periodic inspections that only exist in your head
What we do about it
- Certificates generated from what you enter on site, once
- Full history for every property, searchable by address in seconds
- Automatic reminders when an inspection is due, so recurring work arrives without chasing
- Everything filed where an insurer or a client can be sent it instantly
A day that probably looks like yours
Nothing here is a disaster. That is rather the point: this is an ordinary day, and the cost is spread so thinly that nobody ever adds it up.
- 07:45A landlord asks whether last year's EICR covered the outbuilding.You cannot answer from the van, so you promise to check and then forget.
- 09:30Testing starts and the readings go onto a paper schedule on a clipboard.Every one of those numbers will be typed a second time tonight.
- 12:15A call comes in mid test with the board open and the power off.It goes unanswered, and a small rewire enquiry goes to the next name on the list.
- 15:00Photos of the consumer unit and the meter go into the camera roll.By next month they are buried under two hundred other pictures.
- 17:30A customer asks for the certificate for their mortgage adviser, today.It is not written yet, so the evening is spoken for whether you like it or not.
- 20:40Certificates typed up at the kitchen table from the clipboard.Two or three hours of unpaid work, and mistakes creep in when you are tired.
Enter it once, on site, and let the certificate build itself
The single biggest saving in electrical work is not doing the same job twice. Readings written on paper and typed up later is two passes over the same data, and the second pass happens when you are tired and least accurate. Entering results on a phone or tablet at the board, from a form that already knows the property and the circuits, means the certificate is effectively finished by the time you pack up.
It also removes the small errors that cause real trouble. A transposed reading or a circuit description that does not match the board is the kind of thing that surfaces months later in front of somebody who is not in a forgiving mood. Capturing at the point of test, with the board in front of you, is simply more accurate than remembering at nine in the evening.
The output should be something you can send immediately, in a form a letting agent, a solicitor or an insurer will accept without a conversation. Most disputes about paperwork are really disputes about speed. The firm that sends it that afternoon rarely gets asked twice.
A searchable history for every address you have ever worked on
Electricians accumulate something genuinely valuable and usually throw it away: a record of what is behind the walls of hundreds of local properties. Which board, which circuits, what was recommended and declined, what was left as a code two for someone else to argue about later.
Held properly, that history answers the phone for you. A customer rings about a tripping circuit and within seconds you can see the schedule of results, the photos of the board and the note you made about a suspect run to the garage. Very often you can advise on the call, and when you do need to attend you arrive knowing what you are walking into instead of finding out.
It is also what protects you. If somebody else has been in and made a change, being able to show the condition you left the installation in is worth a great deal. That is not paranoia, it is just the reality of work that stays in a building for thirty years after you have left it.
Reminders turn periodic inspections into a business you do not have to sell
Fixed wiring inspections, landlord safety checks, emergency lighting and PAT rounds all repeat on known cycles. That is a rare gift in a trade where most work is unpredictable. The catch is that the cycle only turns into revenue if somebody remembers, and in most small firms the somebody is a person with a very full day.
When the due date lives on the job record instead of in your head, the reminder goes out on its own. A short, plain message a month or two ahead, offering a slot. It does not feel like selling because it is not selling. It is telling somebody a thing they are obliged to do is coming up, and offering to handle it.
The effect on the diary is what matters. Booked, predictable work in the quieter weeks is what lets you say no to the jobs you do not want, price the ones you do properly, and stop living entirely off whoever rang this morning.
Being findable when somebody searches at nine at night
Most domestic electrical enquiries now start on a phone, often out of hours, and often with a fairly panicked search. Whoever appears in the local map results with recent reviews and a page that loads quickly gets the call. That is a decision made in about eight seconds, and it is decided before anyone has any idea how good your work is.
A Google Business Profile that is complete, active and honest about your service area does a lot of that heavy lifting, and it costs nothing but attention. Reviews matter more here than in almost any other trade, because the customer is inviting a stranger into their home to do work they cannot check.
The website behind it only needs to do three things: load fast on a phone with poor signal, say clearly what you do and where, and make the phone number the easiest thing on the screen to press. Everything else is decoration. Local SEO is published at £500 to £1,200 a month and a site build at £4,000 to £8,000, and for many one van firms the profile work alone is the sensible place to start.
Real examples
Illustrative cases drawn from the kind of work we do. Tap one to see what happened and what could have been done. We do not name clients without their permission.
The Sunday that ate the weekend
The case
A sole trader carries out four EICRs across a week, writing results onto paper schedules as he goes. Sunday afternoon is set aside for typing them up. It takes closer to five hours than the two he expected, because two of the property descriptions no longer make sense to him and he has to ring the customer to check. The certificates go out on Monday evening, four days after the work.
What could have been done
Entering the results at the board on a tablet, from a form that already holds the property and circuit details. Each certificate is finished before he leaves and sent the same afternoon. The weekend is his, the descriptions are right because the board was in front of him, and the customer who wanted it for a mortgage adviser gets it in time.
The rewire enquiry that arrived during a test
The case
A call comes in while the electrician is mid test with the power off and the board open. It goes to voicemail. It was a full house rewire, quoted at several thousand pounds by whoever picked up second. He does not find out for a fortnight, when he sees another firm's van outside the property.
What could have been done
A missed call text back that goes out immediately, explaining he is mid test and asking for the address and a short description. Larger jobs almost never need an answer in that exact minute. They need to know they were heard, which a text does and a voicemail beep does not.
The inspection nobody remembered was due
The case
A small commercial landlord had fixed wiring inspections done across six units. Five years later the firm has no record that they are due, so no reminder goes out. The landlord's insurer asks for current certificates, the landlord searches online, and a competitor picks up all six.
What could have been done
Recording the due date against each property when the original work was done, so a reminder goes out a couple of months ahead offering to book the round in. Work that is already yours is the cheapest work in the trade, and it is usually lost to forgetfulness rather than to price.
What electricians usually ask us for
Custom CRM and business systems
The system you actually need rather than the one you can rent. Built around your process, integrated with what you already use.
£20,000 to £40,000
VoIP and cloud telephony
Business phone systems that follow your team anywhere. Number porting, call routing, voicemail to email, and call recording where you need it.
£18 to £35/user/month
Local SEO and Google Business
Get found by the people down the road who are ready to buy. We fix your Google Business Profile, get your Name, Address and Phone matching everywhere, and win the map pack that sits above the normal results.
£500 to £1,200/month
Website design and build
Fast, accessible sites that load in under two seconds and read well on a phone. Built to be edited by you, not held hostage by us.
£4,000 to £8,000
Document processing
Invoices, delivery notes, timesheets and forms read automatically and filed where they belong, with a person checking the edge cases.
£800 to £1,500/month
Common questions
How much should a one van electrician expect to spend?
Usually less than people fear. Cloud telephony is published at £18 to £35 per user each month and local SEO at £500 to £1,200 a month, and for a lot of sole traders the honest first step is the Google profile and the missed calls, not a system. A full website build is £4,000 to £8,000 and a bespoke platform is £20,000 to £40,000, which is genuinely not where a single van should begin.
How long does the certificate side take to set up?
Getting your certificate templates and your usual circuit descriptions loaded is normally a short piece of work measured in days, and the awkward part is agreeing what your standard wording should be rather than any of the technology. We would rather do one certificate type properly and let you run it on a real job before touching the rest.
Do I own the records, or are they locked in your system?
They are yours and you can export them in full at any time. Certificates and job history are records you may need for many years, so being able to take them with you is not negotiable. The domain and the phone numbers are in your name too.
Will it talk to my accounts software?
Jobs and invoices should push into Xero, QuickBooks or Sage rather than being typed again. Certificate data usually stays on the job record because your accountant has no use for it. We will check what your particular setup can actually connect to before you commit, and tell you plainly if the answer is not much.
I am not very good with computers. Is this going to be a problem?
Only if somebody sells you something built for an office. On site it should be a form on a phone that behaves like a form, works with no signal in a cellar and syncs when you come back up. We set it up with you on a real job rather than handing over a login, and you can ring a person when something is not obvious.
Not quite your trade?
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Admin Rescue for electricians
A job management system built around how you actually work. Missed calls text back automatically, quotes go out in minutes, and everything lands in your accounts software without you retyping it.
from £2,400 setup then £150/month