The tool, in your browser
The booked-out sheet
Four crews, and what each one really lays in a week. Then one card per sold job, with a Y or an N on it. The page divides the second by the first and hands you the thing you actually get asked for on a driveway: the Monday you can start her roof. It reads today off this device, so the answer is right the day you read it — and different next week, which is the point.
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 sheet only knows about this browser. Nothing you type is sent to us and nothing syncs, so the phone and the office computer each keep their own copy — and this one fills up with customers’ addresses, so anyone who opens this page on that computer can read them. Clearing your browsing data wipes it, and a new phone won’t bring it along. Keep the-booked-out-sheet.xlsx on the computer at the office if the backlog has to last.
The sheet fills in right here in your browser. If this line stays put, JavaScript is off — the spreadsheet below does the same job.
What you say on the driveway
Sell the week. Never the day.
“We start the week of the 31st, and the day gets set the Thursday before.” That sentence survives rain, a dump run and the job in front of hers running a day long. A date — “Tuesday the 1st” — does not, and the first time it slips you are the roofer who lied, over one day. The page prints the Monday for exactly that reason, and the ten-day board is where the day itself gets set.
The second date is not the one you promise. If everything waiting frees up — the carrier approves, she picks a color, the deposit lands — the line is longer, and that’s the week you quietly plan around and beat. Ready means ready to schedule, not cleared to roll: nothing rolls till it’s ready clears tomorrow’s job the afternoon before.
Before you trust the date
Four things this page does not know.
- Layers. The squares-a-day you typed came off a rate — 2.5 crew-hours a square is a one-layer tear-off, and two layers is 3.25. A backlog full of two-layer roofs takes the example from 101 squares a week down to about 78, and 2.1 weeks out to 2.8. Hours, not days builds that rate off your own timesheets.
- Which crew can do which roof. It adds your crews into one shop number, so it can’t see that the 55-square job won’t split three ways. Which crew gets which roof is that call.
- Your supply house. The week it hands you is crew time, not material lead time. A roof nobody can get shingles for is still sitting behind that Monday.
- Whether the roof is cut-up or walkable. Same squares, different day. Read your rate off your own mix, every month and any time you add or lose a man.
How it gets used
- Count the days a crew really gets on a sold roof, not five. Rain, the dump run, the job that wasn’t ready and punch-list days are already gone. Take those out here, or out of the buffer — not twice.
- One row per sold job. A bid you haven’t sold does not belong on this list. Squares come off the takeoff, decimals and all — the takeoff sheet — never off the job’s dollars.
- Answer every job Ready or Waiting. The weeks refuse to print until you have, on purpose: an unanswered job counts as no squares, and every missing square makes you look sooner than you are.
- Keep half a week back. The callback, the change order and the storm week are crew time you never sell. Half a week is where to start.
- Read it again on Monday. Sell three roofs this week and the date moves. Write down the Monday you gave her — this page won’t remember what you said.
Want it in a spreadsheet?
The same sheet as a spreadsheet
the-booked-out-sheet.xlsx is this sheet as a spreadsheet — same crews, same Y and N, same Monday — for the computer at the office. Three differences in the page’s favour: the file carries the formulas on twelve job rows and then stops, where here the list grows as far as your backlog does; a job with the squares box empty is added as nothing by the file’s SUMIF and pulls the week in, where this page stops and says so; and it reads today itself, so there is no date box to leave stale. Two the other way: the file is a real file, so it survives a cleared browser and prints for the whiteboard — and it makes you TYPE today’s date, which is what keeps a printout you handed somebody last week honest about the day it was true. The sheets ask for your email once; this page never does.
The play behind it — M14-05 Sell a Start Date You Can Actually Hit — is where the math comes from, and the sheet notes spell out every column and formula.