Joe Quay started Quay Electrical in 2019 with 1 apprentice and a notebook. By early 2026 the team was 5 sparkies, 2 utes, a whiteboard in the shed, and a steadily growing pile of paperwork on the kitchen table.
“We were losing about a day a week to admin between the two of us. Quoting in the evening, invoicing on the weekend. It was unsustainable.” Joe Quay
The decision
Joe looked at the per-user platforms first. With 5 staff and the occasional subbie, the maths put them at over $400 a month in user fees alone. That was the deal-breaker.
Trak’s per-job model fitted better. They started on Basic to test it on a quiet month, then moved to Pro within 6 weeks.
What changed
Three things shifted noticeably:
Quoting. Custom templates with parts pricing meant a typical quote went from 25 minutes to under 10. Quotes sent the same day instead of the next morning.
Scheduling. One source of truth replaced the whiteboard plus three group chats. Joe could see the week at a glance, and the team saw their day on their phones.
Job costing. Knowing whether a job was actually profitable, while it was still running, changed how Joe quoted the next one.
The result
3 months in, admin dropped from about 8 hours a week to about an hour. The team grew from 5 to 9 without hiring an admin person. Joe took his first proper weekend off in 2 years.
"The thing that made it work was not paying per user. We just kept adding people."