Signs You're Ready
- You're turning work away, or quoting lead times you know are too long.
- You spend evenings on work someone else could do: sanding, deburring, packing and cleaning.
- Your billable hours are full, and the admin waits until the weekend.
- The work has been steady for months, not just one busy week.
If the work comes and goes, start with part-time hours or a helper for specific jobs.
What a Helper Really Costs
The wage is only the start. Add:
| Cost | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Payroll costs | Employer contributions, workers' compensation and vacation pay, depending on your province or state |
| Training | Your hours spent showing them, which no customer pays for at first |
| Tools and safety gear | Gloves, eye and hearing protection, their own hand tools |
| Insurance | Your policy may change once you have employees |
| Mistakes | Scrap and rework while they learn |
| Admin | Payroll, records and scheduling |
Employee or contractor? It depends on how the work is done, not on what you call it. The rules differ by province or state, and getting it wrong can be expensive. Check with your local labour or tax authority, or an accountant, before you start.
Will It Pay Off?
A helper pays off when their billable hours bring in more than they cost. Work it out before you hire:
- Add up their yearly cost: wages, payroll costs, and their share of tools and training.
- Estimate how many hours a year they'll spend on paying work.
- Divide the cost by those hours. That's what each of their billable hours costs you.
- Compare it with what you charge for an hour of that kind of work.
Then update your shop rate. More people usually means more pay and more overhead, spread over more billable hours. See How to Set Your Hourly Shop Rate.
Count your own time too. If a helper frees you to quote, sell and do the skilled work, that's worth a lot.
Track Time From Day One
Tracking time isn't about watching people. It tells you whether your quotes are right.
- Clock time to the job and the step, not just "at work." "3 hours welding the gate" is useful. "8 hours" isn't.
- Compare it with the quote. If sanding always takes twice what you quoted, fix the quote, not the helper.
- Make it easy. Start and stop on a phone at the bench. If it takes more than a tap, it won't happen.
- Check the odd ones. A timer left running overnight shouldn't count against a job.
Explain why you track time, so it doesn't feel like a test:
"We track time on each job so I can quote better. It's not about how fast you work. If something takes longer than I quoted, that's my number to fix."
Job Costing: What Each Job Really Made
Job costing compares what you quoted with what the job really used: hours, material and outside work. Do it on every job for the first few months.
| Quoted | Actual | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| 6 hours of welding | 9 hours | Quote welding higher, or look at how it's done |
| 2 sheets | 3 sheets | The waste allowance is too low, or there's a mistake to fix |
| $120 for powder coating | $160 | Update the outside cost |
When the numbers come back close for several jobs in a row, you can trust your quotes.
Set Them Up to Succeed
- Write down the steps for your common jobs, with photos.
- Give them a clear list each morning: which job, which step, and done by when.
- Check the first few pieces of each job before they run the rest.
- Show them the quoted hours for each step, so they know the target.
- Decide what they can see. A helper doesn't need customer prices or your margins.
- Set safety rules, and show them the first aid kit, the fire extinguisher and the shutoffs.
Pay attention in the first few weeks. Ask what's unclear, and fix the instructions, not just the mistake.
Do It in Customakr
- Accepted quotes become work orders on the Job Board. On every plan there's a time clock on each operation, with a warning before the quoted hours run out. Entries longer than 12 hours wait for an owner to review them.
- Open a job to see Estimate Against Actual. Add actual costs by type, or enter labour as hours for a department, and see where the job ran over.
- On Pro, send a work order or an estimate to a helper by email. They get a view-only link with no account. Work orders leave the prices off, and the link expires or can be revoked. Pro also adds job history with real profit, and Workflow Capacity, where each employee's weekly hours, work days and time off count against your open jobs.
- On Team, up to 5 people sign in with their own roles and clock their own time. Choose what each employee can see in Team Permissions, limit employees to your shop network and approved devices, and approve quotes before they're sent. Each open job's profit updates as the work is clocked.
Checklist
- The work has been steady for months, not one busy week.
- I know the full yearly cost, not just the wage.
- I've checked the employee and contractor rules for my province or state.
- I've updated my shop rate for the new hours and costs.
- Time is clocked to the job and the step.
- I compare quoted hours with actual hours on every job.
- The steps for our common jobs are written down.
- I've decided what my helper can see.