What are non-billable tasks and why do they matter?
Non-billable tasks are things you pay your staff to do that you cannot directly charge the client for. Going to the wholesaler is the clearest example. You pay the wages, the client does not pay the bill, so every minute spent there comes straight off your margin.
Greg found this out when his wholesaler sent him a video of four of his staff playing darts. He was paying all four of them at the time. That one game of darts cost him around 500 dollars. It was the moment he changed how his business handled materials.
How do you keep field staff off non-billable runs?
The answer is to take the materials decision out of the field staff's hands entirely. In Greg's business, field staff leave a materials list on site and send it to the project coordinator. The coordinator organises what is needed. The field staff stay on the tools.
The coordinator can go to the wholesaler if required. That is part of their role and their time is managed differently. The key is that your billable staff are not the ones making the run.
How do you use a schedule of works to keep jobs on time?
If you price a job at 100 hours and it takes 150, you lose money. The problem is that without short milestones, field staff tend to assume everything is fine until the last day, then panic.
Break the job into weekly targets instead of one end-of-project deadline. Tell the team what needs to be done by the end of week one, week two, week three, and so on. This is not about pressuring staff. It is about giving them shorter horizons so problems surface early, not on the last day.
Greg also builds in a 25% buffer. He plans field staff at 75% efficiency, which leaves around 10 hours in a 40-hour week for non-billable tasks, client communication, and the unexpected. That way the schedule is realistic and the team has room to build the client relationship on site.
How do you incentivise staff to keep material costs down?
Greg's approach works in two layers. First, vans are stocked to a set list and field staff cannot buy outside that list at the wholesaler. The project coordinator orders project materials separately and tends to order conservatively, waiting to be asked for more before sending the second drum.
Second, every purchase at the wholesaler is logged under the staff member's name, the month, and the vehicle. At the end of the month, the operations manager reviews all purchase orders, flags anything outside the approved stock list, and identifies the field staff member with the smallest purchase order. That person receives a gift voucher as a bonus for keeping costs down and relying on the coordinator instead of making their own runs.
How do you incentivise staff on overall job efficiency?
For field staff, Greg tracks a productivity score as part of a broader performance review. The formula is straightforward: billable hours divided by actual hours, multiplied by 100, gives you an efficiency percentage. That figure feeds into how field staff are rated and rewarded.
For the coordinator or site supervisor level, the incentive is tied to company gross profit. Greg calls the people at this level the hierarchies. Five per cent of gross profit is shared across them. Because their bonus grows when the business runs more efficiently, they are motivated to reduce callbacks, control material spend, keep field staff on schedule, and make sure admin is delivered on time.
What do you do when a job starts falling behind?
When Greg can see a job is behind schedule, he sends the coordinator or site supervisor out to look for upsell opportunities on site. If you are already working in a client's property, they are unlikely to bring in another trade. Your conversion rate on extras is high because you are already there.
Pricing and converting additional work on site increases billable hours, which helps recover the cost of the hours you have already lost. Greg says the money is not just in winning the job at the quote stage. It is in how efficiently you run the project from the first day to the last.
Why does office management matter more than field speed?
Greg is direct about this: the doing happens on site, but the profit is made in the office. Workflows, scheduling, materials coordination, and tracking are what determine whether a job makes money. A business turning over the same revenue as a competitor but running at higher efficiency will produce significantly more profit. That extra profit is what funds growth, team investment, and the time freedom most trade business owners are working towards.
