Electrical contractor workflows: from enquiry and work order to billing and payment follow-up

The work is finished and the supply is on. Three weeks later the bill has still not gone in. The measurement sheet is in a supervisor's bag, the material return has not been reconciled, and nobody is certain which revision of the order applies. Meanwhile wages and suppliers have been paid from the firm's own pocket.

Electrical contractors rarely lose money on the wiring. They lose it between the job and the payment: extra work that was never billed, material that cannot be accounted for, bills returned with queries, and security deposits nobody remembered to claim. Registers, spreadsheets and phone messages can run a small firm, but they cannot answer the two questions an owner needs answered every morning: what is unbilled, and what is unpaid?

This guide walks through the workflow from enquiry to payment, says what to record at each stage, and then answers the practical question of which part to digitise first. It is written for contractors and vendors in West Bengal, including those who do department and board work, and the method applies to any contracting firm.

The enquiry-to-payment workflow

Every job passes through the same stages, whether it is a factory shed for a private client or line work for a department. The paperwork has different names. The stages do not.

Enquiry: one list, not three phones

Enquiries arrive by call, by message and through people you know, and they are remembered by whoever took them. Put them in one list with the client, the site, the nature of the work, where the enquiry came from, who is responsible and the date of the next action. Give each a status: new, visited, quoted, won or lost.

Record why a job was lost. After a year, that column is the most useful market research a contracting firm can have, and it costs nothing.

Estimate: priced from a rate list you maintain

• Itemise every estimate: material, labour, quantity and rate. A lump sum cannot be checked later.
• Keep your own rate list with the date each rate was last updated. Cable and copper prices move. An estimate built on last year's rates gives away the margin.
• Number each revision and note what changed. "Rev 3" should never be a guess.
• State the validity period, the taxes and what is excluded.
• For a tender, keep the figures you submitted with the job, so the bill can be checked against them.

Work order: the anchor for everything after

Once the work is awarded, the job gets a number, and every later record carries it: purchases, material issues, site reports, expenses, measurements and bills. Without that number, you can add up what a job cost only by hunting through registers.

• Record the scope, the value, the start and completion dates, the payment terms and the percentage held back as retention or security deposit.
• Attach the documents: letter of intent, purchase order, drawings and any amendment.
• Record variations when they happen. Extra work requested verbally on site is the largest source of unbilled work in contracting. Note who asked, when and for what, and get it confirmed in writing the same week.

Materials: issued, used and returned

Material is the largest cost on most jobs and the least well recorded. The aim is one statement per job that anyone can read: what came in, what was used, what went back, and what is left to explain.

• Buy against a job number, so each supplier bill lands on the right job.
• Record what leaves your store for each site, and what comes back.
• Where a department issues material from its own store, keep its receipt and return documents with the job. At final billing the department will reconcile what it issued against what was used and returned, and shortages become recoveries from your bill.
• Reconcile during the job, not at the end. A difference found in week two can be explained. In month six it cannot.

Site updates: daily, short and from the phone

A site report does not need to be long. It needs to exist every day and be attached to the job. Five things are enough: what was done, how many workers were present, what material was consumed, what was spent in cash, and what held the work up.

The last item matters more than it looks. When a job runs late because the site was not handed over, a shutdown was not granted or material was not issued, a dated record made at the time is your evidence. Photographs help, provided they are filed by job and date. In a chat group they are lost within a month.

Documents: one folder per job, and a list of expiry dates

Two kinds of document need different treatment. Job documents belong with the job: the order, drawings, measurement sheets, test reports, the completion certificate and correspondence. Company documents carry expiry dates: licences and certificates, registrations, insurance policies, and the guarantees and deposits you have lodged, each with the date it can be released.

Keep the company documents in one list, sorted by date, with a reminder well ahead of each expiry. An expired document discovered while preparing a tender is an avoidable way to lose it.

Bill preparation: build it from the records

A bill prepared from memory gets returned. A bill built from the job's own records, with the supporting documents attached, usually passes the first time. Before a bill leaves the office, check these.

One tax point is worth raising with your accountant, because it turns a slow bill into a compliance problem. GST e-invoicing has been mandatory since August 2023 for businesses with an aggregate turnover above ₹5 crore. Since April 2025, businesses at ₹10 crore and above cannot report an invoice to the portal more than 30 days after its date. If either applies to your firm, billing discipline is no longer optional.

Payment follow-up: a date and a name on every bill

Submitting a bill is the start of collection. Every bill needs its amount, the date it was submitted, the stage it has reached, the date of the next follow-up and the person responsible. Then the weekly review is a list, not a conversation.

• Group unpaid bills by age: under 30 days, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and older. The oldest group is where attention goes first.
• Record part payments and deductions against the bill they belong to, and match them to the bank statement.
• Keep a separate register of retention and security deposits, with the date each becomes due for release. This is money you have earned and the client will not remind you.
• Write down what was said at each follow-up. The next call is easier when you can quote the last one.

If your firm is registered as a micro or small enterprise, the delayed-payment provisions of the MSMED Act, 2006 may be relevant. They limit an agreed payment period to 45 days and provide for interest on late payment, and the Ministry of MSME runs a portal for such disputes. Whether they apply to a particular contract is a legal question. Take advice before relying on them.

Permissions: who can see and change what

A register on a desk is open to everyone or to no one. Software can be more precise, and it should be.

Give each person their own login, and keep a record of every change to a bill after it has been submitted. When a figure is questioned months later, you will want to know who changed it and why.

What to digitise first

The usual instinct is to begin with enquiries and estimates, because that is where a job begins. We recommend the opposite. Begin where cash is delayed. A firm that can list every unbilled job and every unpaid bill by Friday has already recovered the cost of the exercise.

A realistic adoption plan

Software in a contracting firm fails for ordinary reasons: too much attempted at once, old records nobody had time to enter, and supervisors who were never shown why it matters. A plan that respects those limits looks like this. Treat the timings as a guide.

1. 01Weeks 1 and 2: the two listsWrite down every live job and every unpaid bill, with amounts and dates. A spreadsheet is fine. This step alone usually finds bills that were never submitted.
2. 02Weeks 3 and 4: one job, end to endTake one current job through the software from order to bill. Fix what does not fit the way you work before adding more.
3. 03Month 2: every new jobAll new work goes in from the start. Old jobs come in only if they are open or unpaid.
4. 04Month 3: materials and site reportsStart with the two supervisors most likely to keep it up. Others follow once they see it working.
5. 05After one billing cycle: close the old registersRun paper and software together for one full cycle, compare them, then stop the paper. Two systems kept indefinitely means neither is trusted.

• Make one person in the office responsible for the system. A system that belongs to everyone is maintained by no one.
• Do not enter ten years of history. Open jobs and unpaid bills are enough.
• Train people in the language they work in, on a phone, at the site.
• The owner has to use the reports. If the owner still asks for the register, the staff will keep the register.

Where Docket ERP fits

Docket ERP, formerly called ECM, is Techimpace's management software for electrical contractors. For firms that do department and board work, it follows the job as a chain of linked records: work docket, letter of intent or acceptance, Work Order and purchase order, SRN and SIRN material records, measurement, RA and final bills, and payment. It includes bill status tracking with follow-ups, on-site expenses recorded against the job, reconciliation of material issued from a department store, and document intake that reads the letters of intent, purchase orders and measurement sheets you upload.

Docket ERP works from the documents you receive and the measurements you record. Nothing in this guide suggests an official integration with, access to, or approval by any utility, electricity board or government department. If you need a specific format or connection, ask for it to be confirmed in writing in the proposal.

A first conversation is usually about one live job: how it is recorded today, where the bill gets delayed, and what a supervisor can realistically enter from the site. From there it becomes clear what to set up first.