Three numbers, two phone calls

1. Three numbers, two phone calls

Mick Hawes, who coaches builders through The ToolShed, wrote in September 2026 about two carpenters who plateaued after seven years on site and then grew for another seven. What turned it around, he says, “wasn’t a complicated spreadsheet. It was three simple numbers, tracked properly and looked at regularly.” The quote register: what is coming in, and your conversion rate on it. Work in progress: what you have won, and what it is actually worth. Cashflow: what is landing in the bank, and when.

He is right, and every builder coach in the country gives the same advice for the same reason. A builder who knows those three numbers can see six months ahead. A builder who does not is deciding this week on whatever is in front of them this week.

This paper is about the part the coaching stops short of. Tracking a number and moving a number are different jobs. Work in progress moves when your crews build. The other two move when somebody rings a client and asks a question the client has been avoiding: have you decided, and when are you paying. In most residential building companies that call belongs to nobody, and a register that is accurate and unworked is a neater way of watching the money not arrive.

2. The First Call: Your Quote Register

A quote register has two ends, and both of them are a phone call.

At the front end is the enquiry. Somebody fills in your website form, or rings from a directory listing, at twenty to eight on a Tuesday night. They have usually sent the same enquiry to two other builders. The one who rings back first, and sounds like they have read it, gets the site visit. That is not a sales technique. It is what an enquirer does when three builders look identical on paper. If the call back happens on Thursday, the site visit is already booked with somebody else, and your register records a lead that was never really yours.

At the back end is the quote itself. It went out, priced properly, on a Friday. It is now three weeks old. The client has not said no. They have not said anything. Your register shows it as open, and your conversion rate is quietly being decided by silence. Somebody needs to ring and ask a plain question: have you made a decision, and if not, what is holding it up. The answer is one of four things, and every one of them is better than not knowing. Yes. Ring me back in a fortnight. We went with someone else. Or a question that needs a builder to answer it.

3. The Second Call: Cashflow, and When

Hawes defines cashflow as “what’s landing in the bank and when.” The first half is arithmetic. The second half is the call.

A residential build is paid in stages: deposit, base, frame, lockup, fixing, practical completion. Each stage is invoiced to a homeowner who is paying more money than they have ever paid anyone, usually through a bank with its own idea of timing. The invoice is due in five or seven days. The subbies who did the frame are due on Friday regardless. That gap is where building companies get into trouble, and it is not because the homeowner is a bad debtor. It is because nobody rang on day two and asked: has this gone to the bank, and what date should I expect it.

A date is the whole point. “I’ll sort it this week” is a sentence. “Thursday the 24th” is something you can run a business on. An invoice confirmed with a date on day two changes what you tell your subbies on day three, and an invoice that gets a shrug on day two tells you a fortnight earlier than the bank statement would that a harder conversation is coming.

Variations are the other place a builder’s cashflow leaks. The client asked for the change on site, the supervisor said no problem, the work got done, and the price arrives with the next invoice as a surprise. In Queensland a variation on a domestic building contract has to be in writing and signed before the work starts. Most builders know that and still start on a verbal yes, because the paperwork is chasing them rather than the other way round. The call approves nothing and prices nothing. It confirms the client has the written variation, asks for the signature, and tells the site the moment it lands, so the work starts on a signed document instead of a nod.

4. Why the Calls Do Not Get Made

Three reasons, and they compound.

The third reason is the same structural failure that Outstanding items have no owner describes for approvals and consultant documents. Hiring an office manager fixes it for as long as the office manager is there, and then the register lives in their head. Most builders who track the three numbers well have solved the counting. Far fewer have solved the calling.

5. What It Looks Like When It Runs Itself

Five moving parts. None of them replaces your estimating software or your job board. They sit beside them and make the calls.

1. 1

   The enquiry is rung back before the client rings the next builder

   A form submission or a missed call gets a return call within about a minute, from a voice that has read the enquiry. It asks what you would ask: what are you building, do you own the land or the house, do you have plans, roughly when, and have you spoken to a broker. It records the answers and when they want a site visit, and you get the transcript before you have finished the cut you were making.

2. 2

   Every open quote gets asked for a decision

   Not a reminder email. A call, on a schedule you set, that asks the plain question and records one of four outcomes: accepted, call back on a date, gone elsewhere, or a question that needs you. The register stops saying open and starts saying what is actually true.

3. 3

   Every stage invoice gets a date

   Two days after the stage invoice goes out, a call confirms it has reached the client and asks what date the money will land. The date is written against the invoice in Xero, not left in a transcript, so on Friday morning you know which invoices have a date and which have a shrug.

4. 4

   Unsigned variations are chased before the work starts

   The written variation has already gone to the client with the price on it. The call confirms they have it, asks for the signature, and tells the site when it lands. It approves nothing and prices nothing. It makes sure the work starts on a signed document instead of a nod, so nothing on the next invoice is a surprise.

5. 5

   Everything lands where you already look

   Outcomes write back to Xero, and to ServiceM8 or Simpro if that is where your jobs live. Your estimating tool stays your estimating tool and your board stays your board. Nothing asks you to move anything. It fills in the column that has always been empty.

6. What Stays With a Person

Naming this is what makes the rest credible. The following do not automate, and a vendor who tells you otherwise has not built for a builder.

• Pricing. Every number on a quote and every variation price comes from you. The call reads a price; it never invents one.
• Tenders, and anything an estimator already owns. If a person chases it and knows the other side by name, leave it with them.
• The design conversation. A client who says they are not sure about the second storey needs a builder, not a follow-up call. The call's job is to notice that and hand over.
• Disputes. The moment a client says the frame-stage invoice is wrong, or the variation was never agreed, a person owns it from that sentence on.
• The decision to stop work. Whether to keep building on an invoice that has not been paid is a commercial call with your name on it and your subbies' wages behind it.
• How hard to push. A client you will see on site every day for five months is not chased the way a stranger is. A person sets the tone; the calls hold it.
• Anything under Security of Payment. Payment claims, payment schedules and retentions on commercial work carry statutory timeframes with the builder's name on them. They stay with the builder and their advisor, and the calls never touch them.

7. Where We Come at This

8. What It Is Worth

We are not going to give you a percentage, because we would be making it up and you would know. The figure that matters is yours, and you can have it this afternoon.

Three things to look for: whether the quote list is longer than you thought, whether any of the calls produces a decision on the spot, and whether an invoice is sitting with a bank waiting on one document nobody had asked for. None of that shows up on the three-numbers report. All of it moves the numbers.

9. Where to Start

In this order. The first three need no software at all.

1. 1

   Track the three numbers, the way your coach said

   If you are not already doing it, do that first, for a month. This paper is about the next step, and the next step is worthless without the first.

2. 2

   Add an outcome column to the register and a date column to the invoices

   Not a new system. A column. Open is not an outcome, and sent is not a date.

3. 3

   Make the calls yourself for a fortnight

   You will dislike it, which is the point. You will find out what the calls actually are, what clients say, and which ones you would never hand to anyone.

4. 4

   Then hand over the ones you would

   The enquiry call-back and the invoice date are the easiest to hand over and the first to pay. The quote decision call is next. Tenders and disputes stay with you.