How many apps does it take to run a small business?

The usual stack

Talk to a trades, transport or field-services business with between five and fifty people, and the tool list is nearly always the same shape:

• A roster app for who is working when.
• A timesheet or clock-in app, often a different one, for what actually happened.
• A jobs spreadsheet or a whiteboard for what is quoted, in progress and done.
• An accounting package such as Xero or MYOB for invoices and the ledger.
• A payroll tool, sometimes inside the accounting package, sometimes not.
• A shared drive for licences, inductions, SWMS and signed documents.
• A group chat for everything that falls between the gaps.

None of these tools is bad. The problem is that the business lives in the gaps between them, and a person is the integration.

What the stack actually costs

The subscription fees are the small part. The real cost is the handovers, and there are at least four of them every week:

1. Roster to timesheet. Someone compares what was rostered with what was clocked, and chases the differences.
2. Timesheet to payroll. Hours are re-keyed or imported, then checked against awards and allowances by hand.
3. Job to invoice. Hours and materials are pulled from the spreadsheet and typed into the accounting package. Anything not written down is not billed.
4. Job to margin. Usually never done, because the numbers live in three places.

A business of twelve people typically spends four to six hours a week on these handovers, and that is when nothing goes wrong. The expensive moments are the ones that do: an overpaid shift, an unbilled Saturday, a licence that expired because the reminder lived in a spreadsheet nobody opened.

Five signs you have outgrown it

• You cannot say what last month's jobs made without an afternoon in spreadsheets.
• Payroll takes a day, and someone dreads it.
• Staff ask the office for things they could look up themselves: their shifts, their leave balance, a document they signed.
• The same person's details are typed into three systems when they start, and are still in two of them after they leave.
• A site issue is reported in a group chat, and nobody can later show who fixed it or when.

What one connected system looks like

The test is simple. Enter something once and watch where it goes.

• A worker clocks in on their phone. A timesheet exists. When it is approved, the pay run is ready. Nobody re-keyed anything.
• A crew finishes a job. The hours and materials already logged against it become the invoice, and the job's margin updates the moment it is sent.
• A new hire is created. Their permissions are set, the invite goes out, and they are rostered to their first shift from the same screen.
• A site issue is reported with a photo. The right person is notified, it is assigned, and the audit trail is kept on the job.

Two things make this work. The modules have to share one set of data rather than talk through integrations, and the people who only need to see their own shifts and documents should not cost a seat. In RovrDS the base plan covers Personal, People, Work and Scheduling for everyone, and modules like Finance, HR or Sales are seats you buy only for the people who run them.

How to switch without a big bang

You do not have to move everything in a weekend. The order that works for most businesses:

1. People first. Load the team, roles and permissions. This is the backbone everything else hangs off.
2. Rosters and time cards next. Run one pay cycle in parallel with the old method, then cut over.
3. Jobs after that. Start with new jobs only. Let the old spreadsheet finish out what is in it.
4. Money last. Keep Xero as the ledger and connect it, so billing comes from logged hours but your accountant sees nothing unfamiliar.

Done this way, each step pays for itself before the next one starts, and nobody has to learn everything at once.

Questions people ask