# What Office Tools Do You Find Helpful for Your Painting Business?



## Admin (Jan 4, 2010)

> If your New Year’s Resolution was to organize your painting business and make it more successful this year, now is the time to start. Small businesses are increasingly turning to digital methods of organization, advertising and more, and your painting company should not be the exception. *Top 5 Office Tools You Need (But Don’t Have)*


What office tools do you find helpful for your painting business?


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## RH (Sep 7, 2010)

I know a guy who is kind of a jerk (but pretty strong) who works in a local insurance office. I sometimes call him to help me carry doors in and out of the shop. 
Other than that, I don’t go in for any of the apps or programs that are out there. Just an age/generational thing I guess.


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## MikeCalifornia (Aug 26, 2012)

I find pens and paper to be pretty handy around the office and job sites.


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## RH (Sep 7, 2010)

I know this comes up occasionally and that quite a few guys here do avail themselves of some good estimating and accounting apps/programs. As I mentioned earlier, if I had a few more years to go with my business, and especially if I was starting out, I would be into some of those. As it is, I have my systems and procedures in place and they work well for me as is.


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## Paradigmzz (May 5, 2010)

Time keeping: Exaktime

Office platform for accounting & data management: Foundations

Estimating platform: OnCenter


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## Woodco (Nov 19, 2016)

I use pepcloud for estimating, and sending proposals, QB contractors edition, smart receipts, to take pics of my receipts for documentation/accounting, and store everything in my dropbox. Pen and paper is for gathering initial measurements, and scratchpad for bidding jobs only for me.


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## Mr Smith (Mar 11, 2016)

Woodco said:


> I use pepcloud for estimating, and sending proposals, QB contractors edition, smart receipts, to take pics of my receipts for documentation/accounting, and store everything in my dropbox. Pen and paper is for gathering initial measurements, and scratchpad for bidding jobs only for me.


I've used PEP too the last 4 years. I just started using their E-bid and should have done that years ago. I luv it.

I know they have QuickBooks integration for an extra fee. Maybe it's worth it? 

I've been looking for something to copy my receipts as my filing cabinet is stuffed with files & paint store receipts from previous years. I need a new system. I use Google Photos to backup all my job pictures.


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## Woodco (Nov 19, 2016)

I dont use the quickbooks integration myself. I just do the estimate, dial it in, save to PDF and email it to them. (They supposedly have an email option, but I cant get it to work). If they accept, I'll make an invoice in QB.

I use Smart Reciepts. You have to enter everything manually though. Some paid programs read it automatically.


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## lawsan (Dec 13, 2014)

I know I am a few months behind on this thread. Pepcloud is amazing unless you are within 50 miles of Daytona Beach. 

It did take awhile to get it dialed in. I am closing my target of 66% with e-bids. 

Couple ideas to try with it. Most of my work is in HOAs where I can get a good idea of what the neighbors home looks like. Collect the measurements off property appraisers website. Using a portable printer I can offer a sample bid. Post it on their door and invite them to check my work. Closing rate on these bounce between 15-20%

I use a laptop that folds into a tablet with a stylus pen. This allows me to get a contract signed on the spot. No solid statistics yet on this method but so far looks good.

Was just searching to see if others here used it and thought I would share.

Again this does NOT work withing 50 miles of Daytona Beach.


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## DeanV (Apr 18, 2007)

Spike by Ike for estimating exteriors. More of a field tool I guess. But it is pretty nice for most homes.


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## Mr Smith (Mar 11, 2016)

lawsan said:


> I know I am a few months behind on this thread. Pepcloud is amazing unless you are within 50 miles of Daytona Beach.
> 
> It did take awhile to get it dialed in. I am closing my target of 66% with e-bids.
> 
> ...


I use PEP cloud too but could never put together an e-bid on the spot after doing a quote. it's hard enough just talking to a client while snapping photos and taking laser measurements of each area. It takes me a good hour per quote to do an E-bid at my office.


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## Rbriggs82 (Jul 9, 2012)

I've been rocking PEP for a good three years now, love it. I don't do it on the spot, instead I go back to the office and work it up by the hour which I'm more comfortable with. 

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk


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## Mr Smith (Mar 11, 2016)

Rbriggs82 said:


> I've been rocking PEP for a good three years now, love it. I don't do it on the spot, instead I go back to the office and work it up by the hour which I'm more comfortable with.
> 
> Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk


I could never buy the garbage of doing a quote "on the spot" that people like Brandon Lewis & Steve Burnett encourage you to do. Those PEP E-bids can be up to 10 pages long. My customers are always super impressed by them. They blow away the competition.


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## Roamer (Jul 5, 2010)

ACT was our original customer tracking software and still is to a degree but is slowly being supplanted by Pipedrive. We still write all of our bids through ACT but we track our clients through Pipedrive.


I highly recommend Pipedrive for client follow-up reminders. You can also track which bids close best for you based on several criteria: location, referral source etc. I work in a tri-state area so this is important for me to track location. We also have a number of referral sources so it is important too to track which is the most successful.


By the way, I too was pulled kicking and screaming into Pipedrive. It helps in our office that our commercial sales guy that is very savvy around these various apps and he sold us on this one. It is nice that I can just poke my head in his door and have him fix anything or help me with any issues.




We use Quickbooks for all of our accounting.


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## lawsan (Dec 13, 2014)

Mr Smith said:


> I could never buy the garbage of doing a quote "on the spot" that people like Brandon Lewis & Steve Burnett encourage you to do. Those PEP E-bids can be up to 10 pages long. My customers are always super impressed by them. They blow away the competition.


By on the spot it still takes a few minutes. Sit in truck and have it done before I leave the area. Then start the email campaign next morning. 

Took me about a year of playing with it to get it all streamlined. I have e-bids that are only a few of pages max. And some that detail every surface. Trying to get better at using it on my phone now.

I never did any of their training so there may be options I am missing out on.

My suggestion would be brew a pot of coffee and sit down on a Sunday morning and make several e-bid profiles. Email them to yourself and view them like a customer. I have one that is short and sweet that only includes my midgrade paint for on the spot. And another that has good, better, best options with the ability to select options such as doors, trim etc. 

I do not bid to win I bid to lose 33% of my proposals. With this method I have raised my prices over 20%


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## woodcoyote (Dec 30, 2012)

Question, because I've seen this in Home Depot at the pro desk. 


Anyone use or are familiar with anything like Hover? Where you take a picture of an exterior of the home and it does simple measurements of it with the photo. 


I'm curious to hear if anyone has used it or something similar. Accurate? Useful? Pros/cons? 


As far as software:
Microsoft Word for propsals. Template + save to pdf, email. done. 

SquareUp for card payments (emailed link for customers).
QuickBooks for accounting and the GPS feature for vehicle tracking of miles, receipt photos, etc. 

Google Photos, for upload of jobsite proposal photos only.
OneNote with OneDrive integration for general note taking and sharing of notes from foreman. Inventory lists, job note reminders, etc. 

TSheets from QuickBooks (integrates) for time data of workers with integrated payroll and check generation (weekly). 



And ImageResizer. Batch resize of photos taken before/during/after of jobsites and other potential future issues that may arise. 

Facebook/Website to maintain a community presence and update of information (done weekly or bi-weekly).


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