How to track customer job history

“When did you last service our boiler?” is a question that used to mean twenty minutes digging through old texts, a carbon-copy invoice book and last year's diary. With a proper job history, it's a ten-second glance at the customer's record while they're still on the phone.

This tutorial shows you where a customer's history lives in TradePlanr, and the three things it's worth most for: quoting repeat work with confidence, timing annual visits like boiler services and gas safety checks, and settling disputes with dates and documents instead of memory.

1. 1. Open a customer to see their timeline

   Open any customer from the Customers tab and you'll see everything you've ever done for them in one place — jobs with their dates and notes, quotes sent, invoices and whether they're paid, and any certificates you've issued at the property.

   There's nothing to set up here. As long as you attach the customer when you create a job, the history builds itself — every invoice, photo and certificate files itself under the right name automatically.

   A customer's record in TradePlanr showing a timeline of past jobs, invoices and certificates

2. 2. Check the history before you knock

   Make the customer record the first thing you open on the way to a repeat visit. What did you fit last time, what did you quote, what did the notes say about access and parking — thirty seconds of reading and you walk in sounding like the engineer who remembers them, because effectively you are.

   It cuts callback arguments off early too: if a customer says “that's the thing you fixed in March”, the March job is right there with its notes and photos, and you'll know in seconds whether they're right.

3. 3. Quote repeat work from the record, not from memory

   When a past customer asks for more work, the history tells you what you charged last time, how the job went and whether they paid on time — all before you put a number on the new one. No more undercutting your own previous price because you couldn't remember it.

   The history also shows you who your best customers actually are. The landlord with six properties and a clean payment record is worth a callback within the hour; the address with three disputed invoices might not be.

   A past job's details in TradePlanr showing the previous invoice amount and payment status

4. 4. Turn history into annual reminders

   Every dated job is the trigger for next year's work. A boiler service in October means a customer worth contacting next September; a CP12 issued in May means a landlord who legally needs you back within twelve months. Work through a customer's history and you're looking at a pipeline of bookings competitors would pay for.

   Schedule next year's visit in the diary while you're closing out this year's job, and the reminder takes care of itself — the work comes back to you by default instead of going to whoever the customer finds first.

   The TradePlanr diary with next year's boiler service booked in from the customer's job history

   Tip

   Pair the booking with an SMS appointment reminder and the customer gets a text before the visit — annual work that renews itself without a single phone call from you.

5. 5. Settle disputes with records, not recollections

   When a customer disputes what was agreed, what was done or what was paid, the history is your evidence: dated jobs with notes and photos, the quote they accepted, the invoice as sent and the payments against it, plus any digitally signed sign-offs. “Let me check the record” is a far stronger position than “I'm fairly sure”.

   For certificate work it's more than convenience — if anyone ever questions a gas safety record or an EICR years later, the document, the date and the property it belongs to are all still there.

   Tip

   Photos are the quiet hero of a dispute. A picture of the finished work taken before you left site ends most “it was never done properly” conversations on the spot.

None of this needs maintaining — attach a customer to every job and the history writes itself. The payoff arrives quietly: fewer arguments, sharper quotes, and a diary that fills up each year with work you did twelve months ago.