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General business

Marketing a trade business from almost zero

We make Diract, software that keeps a trade business's quotes, jobs, invoices, website and customer list in one place. Plenty of good tradespeople have never done any marketing. They have no proper website. They have barely touched Google. They track nothing.

·4 min read

Recording why you lost the quote

Every business believes it loses on price. The ones that record the reason usually discover they lose on silence.

·4 min read

A CRM somebody will actually use in a van

The record gets written in the ten minutes between jobs, or it gets written from memory at nine at night. Those produce different records.

·5 min read

Checking that your data can leave

The question is not whether you will leave. It is whether leaving would cost you eleven years of history.

·4 min read

Where a trade enquiry should land

Three enquiries arrive three ways: a call, a web form and a text to somebody's mobile. Only one of them gets quoted.

·4 min read

Search only helps if it finds the thing

Nobody remembers the record's name. They remember the street, the amount, or the first three letters of a surname spelled differently.

·4 min read

When a business needs a table of its own

Every business keeps records that no product screen anticipates. The question is whether to bend an existing screen or build the right one.

·4 min read

Archive instead of delete, almost every time

The customer nobody deals with any more still appears on three years of invoices. Deleting them does not remove those invoices, only the name on them.

·4 min read

Choosing what belongs on a dashboard

Most dashboards fail by being complete. A screen with twenty numbers on it makes every one of them equally unimportant.

·4 min read

Plastering: scheduling around the drying

A plasterer controls when the work starts and not when it dries. Every trade behind them inherits that, and most schedules ignore it.

·4 min read

Quoting a roof before you climb on it

Climbing every roof you quote costs you an hour a job. Most of those hours buy you nothing you could not see from the ground.

·4 min read

Painting: pricing the preparation honestly

Two rooms of the same size can differ by a day in preparation. A price per square metre hides that difference until you are standing in the room.

·4 min read

Deposits and staged payments on a trade job

A deposit is not a favour the customer does you. It is how a job funds its own materials, and it is the cheapest test of whether the work is actually happening.

·4 min read

From quote to invoice without typing it twice

Nobody sets out to bill a different number from the one the customer accepted. It happens because somebody typed the invoice from memory a fortnight later.

·4 min read

Getting paid on site, before you leave

The gap between finishing a job and getting paid is mostly a gap in your own process. The cheapest way to close it is to take the money while you are still standing there.

·5 min read

Check in at the job, not the office

Geofenced check in was built for businesses where everybody comes to one building. For a cleaner or a plumber, the only place that matters is whichever site they have reached.

·5 min read

Assign work to someone who has not joined yet

A new starter exists in your business a fortnight before they exist in your software. That gap is where the roster gets written on paper and never makes it back.

·6 min read

A home screen that says what needs you

Most dashboards show you everything and rank nothing. A home screen earns its place by answering one question: what needs me today?

·5 min read

Monthly updates

Australian dates for your diary: September 2026

What is still due this month, what falls in October, and the two changes that started on 1 July. Payday super has taken the quarterly super date off the calendar, and only Queensland asks a principal to review the trust reconciliation.

·6 min readAustralia

Build a business app without coding: a 2026 guide

You do not need a developer to get an app shaped around your business. A proper plan, a real description of the business, and a careful read before anything gets built.

·9 min read

One login for every company that employs you

A group structure, a second entity, or a bookkeeper with several clients: all meet the same wall. One login per business. Diract does not work that way.

·2 min read

Law firms

Where the second matter really begins

The client's company review falls due in March. The firm learned that in February two years ago, and nobody recorded it.

·4 min read

Deciding which legal enquiries to take

The worst matter a small firm takes is rarely the one that lost money. It is the one that consumed the weeks a better matter needed.

·4 min read

Opening a matter so it closes cleanly

A matter opened in ninety seconds costs hours later. Everything missing at opening gets chased at the worst possible moment.

·4 min read

The register of powers and estates

Rule 60 requires a register of the powers and estates your practice acts in for trust money. It is short, it is easy to miss entirely, and an examiner asks for it by name.

·6 min readAustralia

Time recording that survives the bill

Time left until the end of the week loses half its hours. How to record it the same day, and write entries that survive the partner's review and the client's reading.

·4 min read

Property developers

Consultant fees: the budget line that creeps

Nobody budgets for their twelfth consultant. The line grows one reasonable engagement at a time, and it grows fastest before a project earns anything.

·4 min read

Cafes and hospitality

Delivery platforms: what they cost a cafe

Commission is the obvious cost of a delivery platform. The packaging, the kitchen disruption and the discounting are the ones that decide whether it pays.

·4 min read

Changing a cafe menu without losing money

A cafe usually prices a new menu from the old one's habits. That is how a cafe launches a dish that sells beautifully and earns nothing.

·4 min read

Run two venues without switching companies

A second site is not a second business needing its own login. Rostering, routes, pay and the staff list all follow a chooser at the top of the screen instead.

·6 min read