Way back in around 2010 or so we publicly demonstrated what we called the "contract calculator" spreadsheet at the annual Whitegoods Conference.

This was a simple spreadsheet that allowed a repair company to enter all the business costs and contract details in order to ascertain if the contract was profitable or not.

Needless to say we've been asked for this by several people over the years but we didn't release it for several reasons, the main one being that it was designed purely for internal use and was intended to demonstrate that such an equation was possible and, it only worked in Numbers on a Mac due to the structuring of the formula etc.

In 2017 we decided to introduce this feature exclusively into rapport.

We built it right in.

Then went farther with it, because knowing your costs and controlling them is vital to your business.

contract calculator

It's tough to figure out what contracts are worth having, which aren't, what ones make money, which don't and even if some are worth the time and effort.

Worse, it's hard to confidently show clients, openly and transparently, what the position is.

For many repair companies it's been largely guesswork when negotiating rates and while we cannot say that you will get a "to the penny" answer from the contract calculator function, you will get a very good idea of where you are at with a given contract financially and be able to demonstrate that to clients.

If you want to of course.

If you don't, only you will have access to this data.

For a change, the small service business has the upper hand by knowing what it costs you to attend a call, what impact having spares or other materials to hand are, the cost of double visits and so much more.

how it works

It's easy to setup and use this feature to see your running costs.

Simply enter your costs.

Rapport then calculates your running costs and your cost per call made for you. In real time!

The cost per call you see is live, based on the work your doing right now.

is the contract worth it?

Almost anyone in the repair business and probably most businesses have taken on works that really, turned out not to be as good as they might have appeared to be. Often this is with contract work and small business owners struggle to figure out why, if they have all this work, they're not making any money.

The contract calculator was designed to help you work out why that might be.

Plug in the rates for the contract, a few other little details, press a button and rapport will tell you based on your running costs whether that contract is making you money, not really worth it or losing you money!

The question you should ask yourself is this; can you afford not to know all this?

outstanding

Also in 2017 we have introduced a new dashboard element that calculates the amount of monies you have outstanding based on your calls in rapport.

It's really easy to see, right on your dashboard and gives you an instant idea of how much cash you have outstanding.

No maintenance, you don't need to do anything, the system just works it out for you.

better business picture

All these tools that we have built into rapport are designed to allow you more and better insight into the health of your business, improve your profitability and to make your life easier as we've automated it all.

All this live and relevant information about your business is a couple of mouse clicks away at all times.