A CRM that holds a job from the first enquiry to a service call years later

Enquiries were written onto a sheet: town, floor area, insulation thickness, window type, year built. The figures a technician needs before a site visit — and the ones an ordinary sales CRM has nowhere to put.

The boxed system they tried handled contacts and a sales funnel. It did not handle stock, service years later, or partners trading under their own name and logo. So part of the work stayed where it was: alongside.

Enquiry, site visit, quote, contract, subsidy, installation, commissioning, inspection, service. Twenty action types, each with a date and the name of the person who owns it.

The list itself says what is urgent: due today is green, tomorrow amber, overdue red, and priority actions are pulled to the top of the row. Nobody has to open a record to find out what slipped.

Partners and suppliers work in the same system under their own name, logo and colours — including the quotes and PDFs that reach the customer from them.

A quote watches its own expiry and asks for feedback once the work is done. When a warranty milestone approaches, the service reminder goes out without anyone remembering it.

Stock, SLA, the wiki and the heat-pump payback calculator were all added while the system was live — it grows around whatever the business is dealing with.