Small Business Back-Office Rescue Kit

Job Cost Calculator, Customer Quote Form, and Labor, Materials, Invoice & Follow-Up Tracker for Trade and Service Businesses 

Know where your money is going before another job eats your profit.

You’re good at the work. The paperwork is another story. Hours end up in text messages, receipts pile up in the truck, and you don’t really know which jobs made money until tax time.

The Back-Office Rescue Kit is one Excel workbook that ties it all together. You type in your quote, log hours and receipts as you go, and record invoices and payments. The kit does the math for you: true labor cost, total job cost, profit, profit margin, and how each job compares to your estimate.

What it helps you do:

• Price with confidence. See your estimated cost, profit, and margin before the quote goes out.
• Send professional quotes. Pick a quote number and print a clean, one-page quote for the customer to sign, or save it as a PDF. It shows your price and never your costs.
• Find the jobs that ate your profit. Every job compares estimate to actual for hours, labor, materials, and rentals, and flags the ones that came in low.
• Use your crew’s true cost. Labor cost includes wages plus employer costs for each worker, so your profit isn’t overstated.
• Know who owes you. An invoice stays unpaid until you record the payment, and overdue invoices turn red.
• Never forget a call. One follow-up list covers quotes, late payments, review requests, and repeat work.
• Check your business in 5 minutes a week. Type Monday’s date to see hours, spending, money in, money owed, and what to do next.

Built for beginners. Yellow cells are where you type. Gray cells calculate on their own and are locked so formulas can’t be erased. Dropdowns keep names and job numbers matching, and every tab tells you in plain English when something is missing. A fully filled-in sample business shows you exactly how it works.

Who it’s for: owners of small trade and service businesses with about 1–10 people, such as fence, deck, landscaping, painting, remodeling, cleaning, handyman, HVAC, and plumbing businesses. No spreadsheet or accounting experience needed.

What’s included

1. Back-Office Rescue Kit – Blank Master (Excel .xlsx)
The ready-to-use workbook. Its tabs are Settings, Quotes, Quote Lines, Quote Form, Jobs (Job Cost Calculator), Labor, Materials, Invoices, Payments, Follow-Ups, Job Card, and Weekly Snapshot, plus a built-in Start Here tab. The formulas are already in place, with room for 300 quotes, 200 jobs, and 1,000 labor and expense entries per file.

2. Back-Office Rescue Kit – Sample Business (Excel .xlsx)
The same workbook filled in for a made-up fence and deck company. It has 6 quotes, 4 jobs, a ready-to-print customer quote, invoices, payments, and follow-ups. One job made less than planned, so you can see exactly how the kit catches it. Practice here before entering your own numbers.

3. START HERE Guide (PDF, 37 pages)
A plain-English, step-by-step manual. It includes:

• A 10-minute quick start
• Markup vs. margin explained simply
• How to figure true labor cost
• Instructions for every task, each with a worked example
• A walkthrough of one job from quote to closeout
• A case study of a job that lost profit, with the questions to ask
• Troubleshooting, FAQ, and a full formula reference

4. Printables (PDF)

• A handwritten customer quote for pricing jobs on site
• A job folder cover sheet
• A job closeout checklist
• A one-page quick-reference sheet

Each form comes as a blank copy plus a filled-in example. Print as many as you need.