Which number do you believe?
Most businesses do not have a data problem. They have three systems that were never asked to agree, and nobody with the time to sit down and work out how the place actually runs. That is the job.
- Accounting exportinvoiced
$1,284,900
- Job managementcompleted
$1,341,220
- The owner's spreadsheetcounted
$1,190,000
Illustrative. All three are “right” — they answer different questions.
- Regional Queensland
- Your systems, not a new one
- Plain answers
- Built to hand over
The answer is in the building.
Small and medium businesses are rarely short of data. They are short of someone with the time to sit down, work out how the place actually runs, and turn that into a handful of numbers worth looking at.
- 01
Everyone has their own spreadsheet
Three people maintain three versions of the truth, and each has a good reason for theirs.
- 02
The report nobody reads
Forty tiles, updated weekly, that have never once changed a decision.
- 03
Busy, but not better off
The work is there and the bank balance is not. Nobody can say which jobs are carrying the rest.
- 04
It lives in someone's head
One person knows how it really works. That is fine until they take annual leave.
None of this needs a new platform. It needs somebody to ask the questions nobody has had a spare day to ask.
Four ways to bring me in.
Most start with the first — one question, answered properly, tells you whether the rest is worth doing.
One question
You already know what you want to find out.
- Which jobs actually make money, and which only look busy
- Where the hours go between quote and invoice
- A written answer with the working shown
Set it up
Reporting that runs itself afterwards.
- Pull from the systems you already have — accounting, jobs, payroll
- One page that answers the Monday morning questions
- Fixed scope, fixed price, yours at the end
Ongoing
A day or two a month, on retainer.
- New questions as they come up
- Keeping the numbers trustworthy as things change
- Month to month — no lock-in
Training
So your team can do it without me.
- Practical sessions on your own data, not slides
- Spreadsheet habits that stop breaking things
- Handover notes people actually use
What the work is.
Part business analyst, part reporting. Understanding the process comes first — a dashboard built on top of a process nobody has examined only makes the confusion arrive faster.
- Find out what happens
- Sitting with the people doing the job and mapping how work really flows — not how the manual says it does.
- Make the numbers agree
- One definition of revenue, of a job, of a completed week. Most reporting problems are definition problems.
- Build the reporting
- From the systems already in the business. No new platform to buy unless there is a genuine reason.
- Specify before you buy
- What a new system actually has to do, written down, before a vendor demo decides it for you.
- Hand it over
- Documented and taught, so the reporting survives without me.
Fifty-seven days to get paid.
A constructed example of one job, start to finish. Four of these steps quietly cost money — tap the marked ones and see which.
- 01Enquiryday 0
- 02day 1–4
- 03Acceptedday 9
- 04day 10–12
- 05On siteday 14
- 06day 15
- 07Completeday 18
- 08day 26
- 09Paidday 57
Tap any of the four marked steps to see what it costs.
Then you should not need me.
The work ends with your team reading their own numbers. An analyst who becomes permanently necessary has built the wrong thing.
- 01
Listen
A day on site with the people who do the work. Most of the answer is already in the building.
- 02
Map it
How a job really moves from enquiry to paid, including the rework nobody counts.
- 03
Measure it
The few numbers that would change a decision. Not a dashboard with forty tiles.
- 04
Leave it working
Written down and handed over. If you need me every month to read your own numbers, I built the wrong thing.
Regional
Queensland.
Regional Queensland deliberately. These businesses run on the same systems as the capitals, with nobody whose job it is to ask what the numbers actually mean.
- On site
- Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Townsville and the Bowen Basin
- Why on site
- The first day is listening. That part does not work over a call
- Afterwards
- Most of the building and the follow-up happens remotely
Tell us what is going on.
One message is enough to start. We reply with a plain assessment and what it would cost — no obligation.
- hello@schmitt.au
- Phone
- TODO_PHONE
- Hours
- Mon–Fri, 8am–5pm AEST