Cut invoicing from a Sunday night chore to one tap after each job for a two-van removals company
Client snapshot
A two-van removals company in Brisbane: the owner, one other driver and a part-time helper. Around 15 jobs a week, mostly house moves, with some regular furniture delivery work for two local shops. The owner quotes, drives, and does the books, almost entirely from a phone.
The problem
Jobs lived in a notes app and a paper diary in the van. Invoices were built on Sunday nights in a Word template, one at a time, with the GST worked out by hand. Some jobs were quoted including GST and some excluding it, so every few months an invoice went out with the wrong amount and had to be reissued. Customers often paid a week or more late simply because the invoice arrived a week after the move.
What we built
A small Airtable base the owner runs from a phone, with an invoice button on every job.
The base has three tables: customers, jobs and invoices. Each job holds the customer, pickup and drop-off addresses, date, hours or fixed price, extras like stairs or packing materials, and whether the price was quoted including or excluding GST. Formula fields work out the GST at 10% both ways, so an inclusive quote is split correctly and an exclusive one is grossed up, and the totals always add up to the cent.
Everything is used through an Airtable Interface laid out for a phone: today's jobs at the top, a big "mark complete" button, and a form for adding a new job in under a minute between moves.
When a job is marked complete, one tap on "Create invoice" runs an Airtable automation. It fills a Google Docs invoice template through DocsAutomator, saves the PDF back onto the job, and gives it the next invoice number. The template carries what a valid tax invoice needs: the words "Tax invoice", the business's ABN, the date, the customer, a description of the work, and the GST amount shown separately. The owner shares the PDF straight from the phone.
Results, 90 days in
- Time from a finished job to a sent invoice: about 5 days → the same day, usually before leaving the driveway.
- Owner time spent on invoicing: around 3 hours a week → under 30 minutes.
- Invoices reissued because of a GST mistake: a few a quarter → none.
- The two shop accounts now get one invoice per delivery instead of a monthly pile.
Quote
"I finish the job, press the button, and the invoice is on their phone before I've closed the van." Owner
Build snapshot
- Timeline: 4 business days
- Stack: Airtable, Airtable Interfaces, Airtable Automations, DocsAutomator, Google Docs
- Investment: $900
- Who owned it: the owner keeps the price list and the invoice template up to date.
The pattern
Not every fix needs a full engagement. This one was a single base with one document integration, sized to a business that runs from a phone. If your jobs live in a diary and your invoices in a Word template, the build is the same, with your tax rate and job details swapped in.
This is an illustrative composite drawn from operator engagements. Names, identifying details, and exact metrics are anonymised. The workflow, stack, and approach are real.
Looks like your situation?
A 30-minute call tells us whether the same pattern fits your operation, and what it would cost to ship it.