Before: the back office ran at 9 PM in the truck
Every proposal Joey sold had to be built by hand in Prodeo, SavATree's estimating system, and they were not simple documents. Species names cleaned up. Pruning customized instead of picked from a dropdown. Removals written as a takedown. Hazards pulled from that account's own list. Hours tuned to his day rate. Each estimate then checked line by line against the total before it went to the client. Scheduling was a second pass through two systems at once, SAT Command and TeamUp, with the tribal rules held in his head: which crews are city and which are county, that Billy is stump only, which Saturdays are reserved, which foreman meetings block a morning. On top of that sat a running memory test. Which approved work orders had not been scheduled yet. Whether the office had cut a work order on a job he sold. What next week looked like across every crew and every dollar.
After: the proposal is built before he gets home
Joey dictates what he sold from his phone, in whatever shape it comes out. Kayla checks the account first, because duplicate accounts exist and the wrong one wastes a day, then builds the GTC and PHC lines in his format rather than the system default: species cleaned, pruning customized, removals written as takedowns, hazards taken from that account, one line for a multi-area prune, PHC priced by DBH, gallons or units. She tunes the hours to his day rate and saves it. Then she re-reads every line, the hours, and the total against what she intended, and reports back. She never sends a proposal and never emails a price. Those stay with Joey, who reviews at the end of the day and sends. In his words: "I have not hand built a proposal since we started."
The calendar: two systems, one pass
Kayla books the job into SAT Command and TeamUp in the same pass, with SAT Command as the authority. She checks real crew availability before offering a date, so the date she offers is one that works. She picks the crew, sets the arrival window, adjusts hours to fit the rate, and confirms there is no double booking. When something cancels she converts the event in place instead of deleting it, so the calendar keeps its history. She drafts the client notice in Joey's three line format, and he sends it. Joey approves the date before anything is booked. "I say schedule Elena for the 24th with Noel, and it is done in both systems before I set my phone down."
The watches: work that used to depend on his memory
Three scheduled jobs do the checking. At 7:10 every morning she scans Prodeo for work approved but not yet scheduled, sends Joey the list, and adds the next available date under his preferred crews with a client draft attached. Every 30 minutes from 6 AM to 8 PM she checks for work orders being cut on jobs he has sold. When the office issues the WOIN she pulls it, moves the job into SAT Command, and swaps the account number for the WOIN in the title so the calendars stay clean. Friday at 7:15 she sends next week laid out: every job, every date, every crew, every dollar.
The number: two to three hours a day
Joey's own measure, given on a call two weeks after Kayla went live: it was saving him at least two to three hours a day. That is 10 to 15 hours a week, most of a working day and a half returned to selling. He is specific about where the time comes from, and it is not typing speed. "It is not the typing. It is the remembering and the checking. She does not forget to look. She does not skip the account check because she is in a hurry. She catches the thing I would have caught at 9 PM in the truck."
What it took: rules in plain English, and a human who signs off
Kayla runs on a small computer in Joey's house and talks to him through Telegram, the same way a person would text. There is no dashboard to learn. What made her useful was not the model. It was Joey telling her his rules in plain English as he went, and those rules being written down so she keeps them: his GTC text format, his PHC pricing rules, his crew rules, his hazards list, his day rate. The boundary was set on day one and has held since. She proposes, drafts, and reports. He reviews and sends. "The more specific you are about how you want things done, the less you correct later."
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