Your Roofing One-Stop Shop

Roofers are busy people. If you run your own roofing business, you’ve got a thousand and one things to juggle, remember, plan, research, learn, schedule, negotiate, navigate, and manage.

You’ve got homeowners to soothe. Employees to prod. Books to balance. And that’s just on Day One. It’s rinse and repeat every single day, six and sometimes seven days a week.

How do we know that? Because we’re roofers, too. We’ve had roofing companies in Dallas, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, and we’ve done the whole grind day in and day out. Learned things the hard way. Paid our dues. And lived to tell the tale.

These days what we’re about is a little different. We’re now focusing on two things: 1) ways to help fellow roofers make more money, and 2) ways to help fellow roofers run their businesses more easily.

Which brings me to what I’m calling the roofers’ one-stop shop: The Roofing Rolodex, a compilation of 38 solid, must-have resources that will make your life so much easier.

What is a Rolodex, Anyway?

The iconic Rolodex, invented in 1956 before PCs and smartphones, was a way to keep contacts organized and easy to access. It sat on your desk where you flipped through contact cards alphabetized by client or category.

Our Rolodex is obviously digital, but it’s the same idea—it’s a collection of 38 links to tools, apps, and solutions.

How Our Rolodex is Organized

The 38 resources we’ve listed in our Rolodex fall into four categories:

1. Sales and customer management software/web apps
2. Business management apps and tools
3. Roofing tools
4. Professionals and Service Providers

How to Use the Resources

We recommend skimming through the six pages and getting a bird’s-eye view of what’s in the Rolodex. Probably the solutions to your current pain points will jump out first. Start with those and explore other items later.

Some of the items are simple and straightforward, like professional recommendations. Need a CPA, roofing attorney, or roofing supplier? Grab the contacts and go.

The tools are apps that you’ll download and learn how to use. Some have specific functions, like measuring roofs, tracking hail, registering mileage, or taking a photo and turning it into a PDF.

Sales/customer management and business management apps and software contain suites of services. Consider these bad boys if your business lacks a comprehensive system for corralling all the sheep, so to speak. These are the solutions for getting your workflows, communications, and accounting under control.

No Time to Learn New Apps?

“My business is disorganized and I’m afraid that something is going to fall through the cracks, but I don’t have the bandwidth to learn a complicated software system!”

If this is you, be assured that you’re in good company.

If you’re happier on a roof than behind a computer, you’re also in good company.  

Let me encourage you by saying that most of the software systems we’ve supplied links to have basic plans (some free) that are accessible to anyone. If you can put a couple of hours into exploring the basic setup, that much knowledge alone will make a big difference.

Remember that you don’t have to use every single function of a software system or a web app. Start small and use it for one thing—like inputting customer information. Get that down and then learn how to use it to create invoices. After that, explore its scheduling capabilities.

Before you know it, you’ll be using it for several applications. Imagine how you’ll feel when those things are organized and under control! No more fires to put out! (Well, let’s not get carried away. Fewer fires to put out!)

This is Your Resource Kit

We’ve put everything in this Rolodex that we think you’ll need. That doesn’t mean you have it use it all, of course. Obviously, you will not need four different software programs to manage workflows and keep track of clients. One or maybe two will be enough.

In the same way, you’ll only want a couple of measuring apps, not six.

Pick and choose what you want. Use what you need and leave the others in the Rolodex for later, or never.  

If even just one of these tools scratches an itch, fills a gap, meets a need, then great. Hopefully you’ll find a bunch of them valuable, and you’ll see your productivity and profitability soar!