The stages
- Created — sold work converts into a job carrying the scope, price and customer already agreed.
- Planned — materials, equipment, documents, permits, access and crew requirements are resolved.
- Scheduled — the work is placed on the calendar against real capacity.
- Dispatched — the day is sequenced and the crew is sent with the information they need.
- In production — work is performed and field updates, photos and notes attach to the job.
- Completed — the scope is verified against what was sold and the punch list is closed.
- Invoiced and collected — billing draws from the job, not from memory.
- Closed and archived — the record, its documents and any warranty terms remain retrievable.
Why the stages have to be named
Most operational chaos in a service business is not caused by bad work. It is caused by jobs sitting in an unnamed state — sold but not planned, finished but not invoiced, complete but not verified. Nobody is wrong, because nobody owns the transition.
Naming each stage creates two things: a question you can ask about any job in seconds, and a place where a job can be visibly stuck. A stuck job you can see is a scheduling problem. A stuck job you cannot see is a revenue problem.
Where jobs actually stall
- Between created and planned — nobody checked whether the work could actually start.
- Between completed and invoiced — the crew moved on and the paperwork did not.
- Between production and change order — the scope moved verbally and never re-entered the record.
- Between completion and close — the punch list was never formally emptied.
The lifecycle is one record, not several
The customer, the estimate, the contract and the job should be readable as one continuous thread. When they are separate systems, the same job gets re-keyed three times and the three versions disagree about scope, price or address.
One record also makes disputes short. What was sold, what was signed, what changed, what was done and what was billed sit on one page in order.