The clients that make Countingup – Peterborough Gas

For many business owners, having flexible working hours is part of the attraction.

Fancy taking a day off mid-week? As long as you don’t have any deadlines looming, it’s no problem. Want to dedicate an entire day to working on your marketing? Cool, you can arrange the rest of your working week to make that happen.

But when your business could be classed as an emergency service (and with British weather we can safely call a broken down boiler an emergency), it isn’t so easy.

When you spend a lot of time on-call, when your customers are shivering in sub-zero temperatures, or haven’t had a hot shower in days, taking care of business is always going to take priority over, well, taking care of your business.

Dario, owner and Managing Director of Peterborough Gas, a specialist boiler installation, service and repair business, knows this all too well. A swift glance at his client testimonials shows customers rejoicing at the fact that he’s often able to respond to an emergency call-out within the hour, having their heating system up and running again before they’ve even had to take out their thermals.

So how does Dario manage to prioritise his customers without letting the day-to-day running of the business slide down the to-do list?

For him, it’s all about streamlining processes. It’s about taking advantage of the latest technology to make everything run more smoothly, especially his finances.

Dario says, ‘Before I was introduced to Countingup, I was using a high street bank along with some invoicing software. Clients would tell me that they’d paid me and then I had to go in and manually check the payment had gone through. Once I’d confirmed that, I’d then have to log in to my invoicing software and mark the invoice as paid.’

Luckily, Dario discovered Countingup and no longer has to dedicate as much of his valuable business admin time to updating his financial records. ‘Business has become easier since using Countingup’, he continues, ‘well, the financial side of it anyway. I can see at a glance my monthly and year-to-date financials. I now get notified as soon as I receive a payment and it automatically marks against the invoice — taking away any manual intervention from me.’

As a busy tradesman Dario spends much of his day on the move so switching his business accounting from the high street to the cloud has been a huge bonus — the software means that he can check his finances whether he’s en route to a job or in the office. ‘Using Countingup has officially made me streamlined and mobile. I’m very pernickety about things; Countingup has automated my accounting – meaning one less thing to worry about.’

Dario’s favourite thing about Countingup? He struggled to pick just one thing, ‘I can take pictures of receipts…I like the invoicing functionality…I like the fact it’s easy to share the info my accountant needs for my end of year accounts…’

The common theme here? It’s all about efficiency. It’s about freeing up Dario’s time from business admin so that when the phone rings with another emergency, he’s ready to rock.

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Are you one of the clients that make Countingup? Let us know if you’d like to feature your business here.

If, like Dario, you’re a busy tradesman who needs a more streamlined, mobile answer to your accounting , sign up to Countingup for free today.