When to Use Templates in Your Home Renovation Business
Repetitive or time-consuming tasks, such as building estimates and tracking project materials, could be good candidates
A home renovation or outdoor project has many moving parts, so, as a business owner, it’s wise to look for opportunities to streamline your work. We recently spoke to renovation pros to find out how they use templates to help them be more efficient in their businesses. Read on to find out what they shared.
Using templates to build estimates
Chris Hebert, owner of Advanced Millworks in Louisiana, created five spreadsheets in Google Sheets that he uses to build estimates for potential clients interested in his bespoke staircases.
One spreadsheet lists the staircase parts; another breaks down the materials and labour cost for creating each part; a third sheet calculates the cost of labour to install the staircase; a fourth lists the cost of optional add-on services, and the fifth sheet records the price for any stainless-steel railings included in the design.
Hebert fills in the specific details for each project, such as linear footage for the staircase and number of each stair part, and the connected spreadsheets then work together to come up with a total number. It took eight long months with many late nights to come up with these spreadsheets, he says.
Rather than build his own spreadsheets, Francisco Gomez-Palacio Jr of Integrated Home Improvement in Texas quickly builds estimates for his home renovation projects using the Houzz Pro business management software. He simply selects line items to include, previews the estimate, exports as a PDF and sends it to the client. “It’s really fast doing it the way I do it,” he says.
Curious About Houzz Pro? Watch a Quick Video Overview.
Chris Hebert, owner of Advanced Millworks in Louisiana, created five spreadsheets in Google Sheets that he uses to build estimates for potential clients interested in his bespoke staircases.
One spreadsheet lists the staircase parts; another breaks down the materials and labour cost for creating each part; a third sheet calculates the cost of labour to install the staircase; a fourth lists the cost of optional add-on services, and the fifth sheet records the price for any stainless-steel railings included in the design.
Hebert fills in the specific details for each project, such as linear footage for the staircase and number of each stair part, and the connected spreadsheets then work together to come up with a total number. It took eight long months with many late nights to come up with these spreadsheets, he says.
Rather than build his own spreadsheets, Francisco Gomez-Palacio Jr of Integrated Home Improvement in Texas quickly builds estimates for his home renovation projects using the Houzz Pro business management software. He simply selects line items to include, previews the estimate, exports as a PDF and sends it to the client. “It’s really fast doing it the way I do it,” he says.
Curious About Houzz Pro? Watch a Quick Video Overview.
When not to use a template
While templates and processes make a lot of sense for some administrative tasks in a renovation project, Charles Cairns recommends you don’t create templates “when it’s going to make your job boring and kill spontaneity and creativity”.
For instance, Micaela R Quinton doesn’t use templates for email. “All my emails are unique,” she says. “Sometimes I write my intro to a client where I say, ‘Send me your Houzz ideabooks,’ and sometimes I do go back and copy and paste from a former communication, but it’s only a couple of sentences.”
While templates and processes make a lot of sense for some administrative tasks in a renovation project, Charles Cairns recommends you don’t create templates “when it’s going to make your job boring and kill spontaneity and creativity”.
For instance, Micaela R Quinton doesn’t use templates for email. “All my emails are unique,” she says. “Sometimes I write my intro to a client where I say, ‘Send me your Houzz ideabooks,’ and sometimes I do go back and copy and paste from a former communication, but it’s only a couple of sentences.”
Tell us…
Do you use templates in your work? If so, what do you use them for and how have they helped your business? Let us know in the Comments.
Do you use templates in your work? If so, what do you use them for and how have they helped your business? Let us know in the Comments.
Every renovation or outdoor project is unique, but that doesn’t mean every step in the design and build process is, too. So when does it pay to make a work process more efficient by creating a template?
“When you resent the time it takes to do a repeating task,” says US-based Charles Cairns of CairnsCraft Design & Remodel in California. “Use templates to release you from the drudgery of repetition and free you to be more creative.”
Possible tasks that might benefit from you using a template include standardised emails you send to new clients, detailed estimates you build for each new project, and internal work processes you want your teams to follow.
“We have a lot of templates, mostly Excel spreadsheets,” says Micaela R Quinton, lead designer at Copper Sky Renovations, a design-build firm in Georgia. Quinton and the two designers she manages use a template for tracking each project’s selections, including product specifications, links to the product online, price and quantity. Once the client approves the selections, the selection worksheet becomes a procurement worksheet, which the team uses to track ordering and receiving of the products into its warehouse.
In addition to the selection and procurement worksheet templates, the design team also follows a template for naming folders and files for each project, so that everyone can easily find things. “Every document is saved in the same file path,” Quinton says.