Seven signs your shred company has outgrown spreadsheets

Spreadsheets, a wall calendar and a stack of paper tickets can run a one-truck shred company surprisingly well. The problem is that they don't warn you when they start to fail. Here are the signs we hear most from owners who made the switch.

The signs

1. 1A recurring stop got missed, and you found out from the client.
2. 2Certificates go out days after service because someone has to type them up.
3. 3Invoices wait until the weekend, or until month-end, because billing means collecting paper tickets first.
4. 4Only one person really knows the schedule, and a sick day means chaos.
5. 5You can't quickly answer 'how many bins do we have at that site?'
6. 6A client asked for last year's certificates and it took an afternoon to find them.
7. 7You've said no to a new account because you weren't sure the routes could take it.

What switching actually costs

The real cost of switching is time: getting your data in and getting drivers comfortable. With your spreadsheets in hand, a small company can usually be running live routes within a week. Compare that to the hours each month spent retyping, chasing and fixing.

Next steps

If three or more of these sound familiar, it's time. Our one-week switching checklist walks through the move day by day, and Trakro's free trial lets you import your own spreadsheets and run a practice route before you commit.