Free business guides for UK trades

Templates handle the paperwork; these guides handle the decisions behind it. Each one is a short, readable document on a problem that shows up in nearly every trades business we speak to, written to be acted on in an evening rather than filed and forgotten.

Pricing is the recurring theme, because it is where the largest and fastest gains are. Most small firms price from a rough hourly figure they set years ago and have never revisited against real overheads — van, insurance, tools, unbilled travel, quoting time, holiday, the hour a day spent on admin. The pricing guides walk through calculating a rate that actually covers those, and through raising prices with existing customers without losing them, which is usually less painful than people fear.

Quote conversion is the second theme. Winning more of the work you already quote for costs nothing in marketing. The guides cover response speed, presenting options rather than a single figure, following up on a schedule instead of hoping, and knowing when a prospect is never going to buy so you can stop spending Sundays on them.

Then the cash side: credit control that works without souring relationships, deposits and staged payments, and what to do when an invoice passes sixty days. Reviews: how to ask, when to ask, and how to reply to a bad one in a way that wins more work than it loses. And missed calls, which is the quietest leak in the trade — a customer who reaches voicemail usually rings the next firm on the list within minutes, and most one-van businesses miss a meaningful share of inbound calls while working.

Each guide is an editable .docx you can read, print or adapt for your own team. No sign-up to browse the library.