The tool, in your browser
The bench list
One row per man. Every decent roofer whose name you can still come up with — who he is, his number, what he can run, where you saw him and who vouches for him — plus the last time you actually talked to him. The list counts the days since that call and flags CALL HIM once it’s been ninety, or when you never called him at all. Start it tonight from memory; you don’t find roofers in June, you collect them all year.
Free, and it asks for nothing. No email, no account, no sign-up. What you type stays in this browser on this device.
Read this first
This saves in this browser, on this device, and nowhere else. Nothing you type is sent to us and there’s no account to log in to. But saved in a browser isn’t the same as locked: anyone who opens this page on this computer can read it — other men’s phone numbers, who vouched for them, and whatever you wrote in the notes. Half these men still work somewhere else, and a competitor’s foreman finding his own name on your bench is a conversation you don’t want. Keep this one on your own phone, or clear it before you walk away from a shared machine.
The bench fills in right here in your browser. If this line stays put, JavaScript is off — the spreadsheet below does the same job.
How it gets used
- Fill it from memory tonight. Twenty minutes. Every roofer you’d take on or take back, plus the last three men who quit on you. Don’t call anybody yet — ten names beats an empty sheet, and that sheet is your bench starting today.
- Add a man the day you meet him, not the day you need him. The hand at the supply-house counter who knew exactly what he was ordering. The man on a competitor’s crew whose tear-off was clean and whose ground was picked up at four. The hand you laid off in November. Forty seconds in the truck and he’s on the bench.
- Leave the date blank if you’ve never called him. Blank is not missing data — it flags CALL HIM, which is exactly right for a name you collected and never followed up. A man you’ve never rung is the one most likely to be gone by spring.
- Set the status when you add him. bench is every man you’d still call. When you hire one, change it to hired; when he leaves the trade or you wouldn’t take him back, gone or no. Those three stop the flag, so the list quits nagging you about men who aren’t on the bench any more.
- Work it fifteen minutes a month. Hang it on a meeting that’s already on the calendar. Read the flags, make the calls, add anybody new, update the dates the same day, shut it.
- Send the January text one man at a time. Forty numbers on one blast reads like a blast. The words — and the follow-ups for the man who goes quiet and the man already working somewhere else — are on the card in the play.
One thing to settle first
The bounty, and the man who isn’t an employee
Your crew knows every good roofer in town, and a standing bounty is what gets those names onto this list. How that payment gets handled and reported isn’t the same for a man on payroll as for a sub, so ask your accountant before you announce a number in a huddle.
If your crew is 1099, a sub doesn’t go on the bench as a man — he goes on as a crew, and you’re collecting something else: who bid it clean, who showed up the morning he said he would, who hauled off his own trash. A finder’s fee to a sub is a payment from your business to his, so it belongs in his agreement and his paperwork, not in a huddle announcement.
One more thing: this play is how we run a shop — it’s not legal advice. Rules change by state and by contract, so before you act on the legal-sounding parts, run them past your own attorney or accountant. It’s your business, and what you do with any of this is your call and your responsibility.
Want it in a spreadsheet?
The same list as a spreadsheet
the-bench-list.xlsx is this list as a spreadsheet — same columns, same counts, same ninety-day line — for the computer at the shop. Three differences in the page’s favour: there’s no twenty-row ceiling on what gets counted; the example row is placeholder text here, so there’s nothing to delete before you start; and a new man opens at bench, where the file leaves the status empty and then flags him for a call while counting him on nobody’s bench. Two the other way: the file is a real file, so it survives a cleared browser and can be handed to somebody, and it opens on any computer you send it to. The sheets ask for your email once; this page never does.
The play behind it — M4-13 Hire Off a Bench You Built in January, Not a Panic Ad in June — is where the bench comes from and what the January text says, and the sheet notes spell out every column and formula.