THE SHORT ANSWER
You need seven fields: name, contact, job type, source, status, next action date and value. You need five statuses: new, contacted, surveyed, quoted, closed. And you need one view, sorted by next action date, that somebody looks at every morning. A shared spreadsheet delivers all of this. Dedicated software becomes worthwhile above roughly a hundred live enquiries or when more than three people need to update the same record.
Software is not the problem being solved here. Most contractors who buy a customer system abandon it within a quarter, not because the product was poor but because nobody agreed what would be recorded, by whom, at what moment. The abandoned tool then becomes evidence that systems do not suit this business, which is the expensive conclusion.
Start from the decision the system has to support. Every morning somebody needs to know which enquiries require action today and what that action is. Anything that answers that question reliably is a working system, whatever it is built in. Anything that cannot answer it before the first coffee of the day will be quietly abandoned within a month, whatever it cost.
The numbers, at a glance
Fields required: seven, and adding an eighth reduces the chance any of them get filled in
Statuses required: five, from new through to closed, with one reason code on closure
Views required: one, sorted by next action date, opened every morning
Point at which software pays: roughly a hundred live enquiries, or more than three people editing the same records
The seven fields
Name and address. Address matters more than most systems assume, because travel radius drives which jobs are worth taking.
Phone and email. Both, always, because channel rotation is the whole basis of an effective follow-up sequence.
Job type. From a fixed list of your trades, never free text, or the column becomes unsortable within a month.
Source. Where the enquiry came from, also from a fixed list. This is the field that later tells you what to spend money on.
Status. One of the five, and only one.
Next action date. The single most important field in the system. Never empty on a live record.
Estimated value. A rough band is enough. It is what lets you sort a busy week by what actually matters.
Why the next action date carries the whole system
A list of enquiries is a record. A list of enquiries sorted by what needs doing today is a working instrument. The difference is one column, and it is the column that fails first in every abandoned system, usually because it was optional at the point of entry.
Make it compulsory. An enquiry cannot be saved without one, and completing an action requires setting the next one before the record closes. That rule alone produces most of the benefit contractors expect from software, and it works identically in a spreadsheet. Without it you have a database that must be read in full to be useful, which means it will not be read.
Five statuses, and one reason code on closure
New, contacted, surveyed, quoted, closed. Five stages map cleanly onto how the work actually flows and produce a funnel you can count without additional effort. Resist the temptation to add stages such as warm or thinking about it, which describe a feeling rather than an event and are therefore never updated consistently.
Closure needs a reason from a short fixed list: won, lost on price, lost on timing, unreachable, not viable. Five words, chosen from a dropdown, and after sixty enquiries you have the diagnostic that tells you whether to change your follow-up, your pricing or your supplier. Free-text closure notes feel more informative and cannot be counted, which makes them close to worthless in aggregate.
When to graduate to real software
Three triggers justify the move. Volume, once roughly a hundred live enquiries make a spreadsheet slow to scan. Concurrency, once more than about three people need to edit records on the same day and version conflicts start appearing. And automation, once you want the follow-up sequence to fire reminders without a person remembering to create them.
When you do move, migrate the same seven fields and five statuses rather than adopting whatever the software proposes. The commonest cause of failed implementation is importing a vendor's process into a business that had a working one, then discovering that thirty mandatory fields have made the system too slow to update from a van.
Standing up a working system this weekend
Create one sheet with the seven columns and nothing else.
Make job type, source and status dropdowns rather than free text.
Set the rule that no live record may have an empty next action date.
Sort by next action date and make opening that view the first task of every morning.
Add the five closure reasons and start counting them from the first enquiry.
How Flock Leads prices this
A predictable monthly volume of enquiries is what makes a system like this worth maintaining, because a routine needs something regular to run on.
Starter - 10 leads for EUR 750, which is EUR 75 per lead
Growth - 25 leads for EUR 1,750, which is EUR 70 per lead
Scale - 45 leads for EUR 2,925, which is EUR 65 per lead
Pro - 70 leads for EUR 4,340, which is EUR 62 per lead
Max - 90 leads for EUR 5,400, which is EUR 60 per lead
No retainer, no contract term, and no lead sent to a second business. Unused volume rolls over under the Flock Lead Promise.
Want leads like this in your pipeline?
Flock runs the campaigns, screens the enquiries and hands you only the ones that match your service area, job size and capacity. You pay per lead, not per month.
Book a 15-minute fit check | See lead package pricing
Related answers
Frequently asked questions
Is a spreadsheet really enough?
For most businesses under about a hundred live enquiries, yes, and it has a real advantage: everyone already knows how to use it, so adoption is immediate. The constraint is concurrency rather than capability, and it appears well before the row count becomes a problem.
Who should be responsible for updating it?
Whoever spoke to the customer, at the moment they finish speaking. Updates delayed to the end of the day are updates that do not happen, and a system maintained by one person from other people's recollections is unreliable in exactly the way that matters.
What about job management software we already use?
If it holds enquiries as well as jobs, use it and skip the spreadsheet. Many scheduling tools only start at the accepted-job stage, which leaves the pre-sale pipeline unmanaged. Check where the tool's records actually begin before assuming it covers this.
How much history should we keep?
Everything, indefinitely, because closed enquiries are the raw material for revival campaigns and for measuring source performance over a full year. Storage is free and the second most useful report you will ever run compares this year's sources against last year's.
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