Spreadsheet or software for a firewood business?

A spreadsheet is a good place to start.

One owner on a UK forum asked for something more advanced than a spreadsheet for their firewood business. It's a fair thing to wonder, and the honest answer to firewood business spreadsheet or software is this: start with the spreadsheet, and move when it stops earning its place.

Nothing here is against spreadsheets. A tidy sheet with a row for each customer and a tab for each week has run plenty of yards. While orders reach you one way, you know your regulars by name and you plan the week alone, it can be all you need.

When a spreadsheet stops working.

It rarely fails on one particular day. It gets a little more annoying every week until October arrives. These are the signs to watch for.

• Orders arrive by several routes, a call, a text, a message, a web form, and you retype each one before it counts.
• Two people edit the sheet, and one overwrites the other or works from a copy that's already out of date.
• The run is planned in your head. The sheet holds the orders, but the sensible order of stops lives in one person's memory.
• You can't see at a glance what is already promised for Thursday, so you say yes on the phone and find out later.
• A customer's warning isn't where the driver will see it. The dog in the garden and the 'ring first' sit in a note cell nobody reads on the van.
• You dread October. Take that one seriously.

One sign on its own is fine. Three or four, and the sheet is costing you evenings. That's the time to look for something better than a spreadsheet, and not before.

What to move first.

Don't change everything at once. Move the job that hurts most and leave the rest where it is until it hurts too.

1. Orders first, if retyping is the pain. One list that every order lands in, however it arrived, ends most of the chaos.
2. Customers next, if lost notes are the pain. Addresses, phone numbers, access notes and past orders in one place, instead of in your head and on three scraps of paper.
3. Runs and paperwork third. A run is built from the orders, so it works best once the orders are tidy.
4. Stock last. Counting the yard by eye is a fine way to run for a while, and it's easier to move once everything else has settled.

What to ask of any software.

Whether it's ours or someone else's, put these questions to it before you commit.

• Can orders from the phone, a text and the website all end up in one list?
• Can I see, for any day, what is already promised, product by product?
• Can you bring my customer list across, and what happens to the mess in it?
• Does it print what the yard and the driver hold in their hands, a load sheet and a run sheet with access notes?
• Does it use my words, nets, bulk bags, loads and kindling, or does it talk about jobs and appointments?
• Does it plan the route for me or leave the order of stops to me, and which do I want?
• Who do I ring when something goes wrong on a Saturday in November?

Ask to see it with a real week of your orders. If it looks good on made-up data and falls apart on yours, you want to know early.

How to switch without breaking the busy season.

Changing how you work is easiest when nobody is waiting for logs.

1. Pick a quiet time. Not mid-rush, and not the week the clocks change. Spring and summer are kinder than October.
2. Tidy the customer list, then bring it across. Remove duplicates and fix postcodes first, because new software will copy a mess as faithfully as a tidy list. If your firewood customer list spreadsheet is the thing you'd hate to lose, this is the step that matters most.
3. Run the old way beside the new for a bit. Enter the same orders in both until the new way has earned your trust. It's double work for a short while and a good safety net.
4. Keep a final copy of the spreadsheet somewhere safe, in case you need to look something up.

Your regulars don't need to know anything has changed. They care that the logs turn up.

What about general business tools?

Accounting packages, customer management tools and job-booking apps all exist, and they suit plenty of businesses. If you already use one for your books, it may cover part of what you need.

Whatever you try, the test is the same. Does it fit the way your yard works, or are you bending your yard to fit it? Try it against a real week before you decide.

Where LogRun fits.

LogRun is ordering and delivery software for UK log and firewood yards. Phone and web orders land in one pool grouped by area, you build runs from it by postcode, and it prints a load sheet for the yard and a run sheet for the driver. Customer records carry warnings and notes. Your existing customer list can be brought over from your sheet.

It isn't for every yard. There's no driver app, so the driver works from paper, and it doesn't pick the best route for you. If that sounds close to what you were after, ask for a demo and bring a real week of orders.

Questions people ask.

More guides.

• How to plan firewood delivery runs
• How to sell firewood online in the UK
• A free firewood delivery run sheet template to print