A practical guide to finding the delay
Follow one job from completion to invoice. Find what is missing, who is chasing it and what needs to change before buying another tool.
This fictional example shows where a job can get stuck. For each step, check the information, the person responsible and what needs to happen next.
Illustrative job · J-1042
Record time spent chasing information separately from time spent waiting. They are different problems.
Start when the team marks the job complete. Finish when an accurate invoice is issued. Ask the people involved to walk through recent examples together.
Include ordinary jobs and ones that needed correction. A few examples can show where to look. They do not establish an average for the whole business.
Use existing records where possible. Make clear what you observed, what someone told you and what you estimated. For each job, record:
| Record | What to capture |
|---|---|
| Start and finish | Job completed, ready for invoicing, and accurate invoice issued: the date and time of each event. |
| Time spent doing the work | Minutes spent by each person gathering, entering, checking and correcting information. |
| Waiting | When the job stopped moving, what was missing, and who or what could unblock it. |
| Corrections | What was returned or changed, why, and how much extra work it created. |
| Records and systems | Where the team found each piece of information and where they copied it next. |
| Who was responsible | Who owned the next action and whether that was clear to everyone involved. |
Measure time spent doing the work, time waiting and time correcting errors separately. When estimating time saved, include the cases that still need manual work, whether people use the new process and the effort to keep it running.
Decide whether a fix is worth it
How many jobs are involved? How much effort do they take? What still needs a person? Write down the assumptions so the team can challenge them.
Manual record entry · one month
Time spent entering records today
800 records × 6 minutes ÷ 60Estimated time after the change
Includes manual cases, review and upkeepTime available for other work
Time available for other useful workThis is a fictional planning example, not a client result or savings promise. Time becomes a cash saving only when an expense falls. Include build and software costs before deciding.
Assume 75% of the 800 records can use the new process, and people use it for 80% of those: 480 records. Each takes 2 minutes of human work, including review and corrections. The other 320 still take 6 minutes. Add 4 hours a month for upkeep.
After: (480 × 2 + 320 × 6) ÷ 60 + 4 = 52 hours. Difference: 80 − 52 = 28 hours.
Use real volumes and observed work before applying this estimate to your business. Include difficult cases and check that the resulting work is still correct.
Find the cause first. The team may need a clear owner, a shared record or a connection between tools. Missing or inconsistent details may need cleanup before automation helps.
Compare the build, software and upkeep costs, plus the time your team will need to spend. If the likely benefit is small, a smaller fix may be enough.
Let operations and finance correct the picture before committing. Both teams should agree what is happening and how they would recognize an improvement.
A repair-system project shows how I worked with a wider team and trained the client’s developer.
Separate time spent preparing the invoice from time spent waiting for an approved rate. Those are different problems and need different fixes.
Bring one completed job that waited for an invoice. We’ll discuss what was missing and where to look.
Free, 30 minutes. Bring one example. No technical brief needed.
Follow one customer change
This fictional example follows a customer request through the agreement, delivery plan and billing details.
Illustrative scenario. This shows a possible process, not a client result or a live system.
Agreement · Current handoff
Agreement · Possible improvement
Change · Current handoff
Change · Possible improvement
Delivery · Current handoff
Delivery · Possible improvement
Billing · Current handoff
Billing · Possible improvement
These are invented records used only for this illustration.
AI could help extract the requested changes. A person approves the commitment, and the resulting records still need checking.