Running the business side of pest control

The rat is the easy bit!

Pest controllers can outwit a colony of rats and still get beaten by a pile of unpaid invoices. Benjamin Dyer, CEO and co-founder of Powered Now, on taking back the business side of the job.

I have a lot of respect for pest controllers. You turn up to the jobs nobody else wants, in places nobody else wants to go, and you solve the problem. Lofts, drains, commercial kitchens at 6am before the breakfast rush.

Then you get home and the other job starts. The quotes. The invoices. The customer who said they’d pay on Friday, three Fridays ago. The site report you promised a client. Nobody trained you for that bit, and it turns up every evening regardless.

Earlier this year we commissioned The NOW Report 2026, a national study of the pressures facing UK tradespeople. 93% of business owners and self-employed tradespeople told us running their business causes them stress or anxiety. Not the work. The business.

Pest control has its own quirks, but the admin problems are exactly the same. Here’s what I’d do about them.

1. The first quote in usually wins

A customer with mice in the kitchen isn’t shopping around for the best value. They’re shopping around for whoever gets back to them before the mice start another family. They’ll ring three firms and book the first one that sends something sensible.

55% of tradespeople in our research have definitely or probably lost a job because a quote went out too slowly. Only 4% quote on the same day. So if you can quote quickly, you’re already ahead of most of the competition.

• Template the jobs you do every week. Wasp nest, rodent survey, three-visit programme, commercial contract. Write it once, change the details, send.
• Quote from the driveway. Do it while the job’s fresh in your head and the customer’s still keen, not at the kitchen table at 9pm.
• Say how many visits are included. Most pest work is more than one trip. Put it in writing now and you won’t be arguing about it later.
• Follow up after two days. A one-line “any questions?” wins more jobs than any advert.

 

2. Your customer’s cat did not die

On average, the tradespeople we surveyed are owed £5,901 in unpaid invoices. 26% are owed more than £10,000. And 67% have had a customer deliberately delay payment, dispute an invoice unfairly or try to dodge it altogether.

We asked for the best excuses, and they didn’t disappoint. “The cat died.” “Dropped laptop in the bath.” My personal favourite is the customer who was apparently out of the country, while being clearly visible through a crack in the door.

Funny, until you add it up. 60% of tradespeople have written off money because chasing it felt like too much hassle. That isn’t a bad debt. That’s you working for free.

• Invoice the same day. An invoice that turns up two weeks later tells the customer it isn’t urgent.
• Put a payment link on it. “I’ll do a transfer later” is where most of those excuses start.
• Agree terms on the quote. If they signed up to 14 days, they can’t claim they didn’t know.
• Let the software do the nagging. Automatic reminders at 7 and 14 days do the awkward bit, and nobody has to make a phone call they’re dreading.
• Charge for the extras. 41% of tradespeople told us they’ve definitely not invoiced for extras because they forgot or couldn’t face it. The extra bait box and the unplanned return visit are not freebies.

 

3. If it isn’t written down, it didn’t happen

Pest control has more paperwork than most trades, and unlike some paperwork, it actually matters. Risk assessments, COSHH records, treatment and bait records, site reports, and the folder a commercial client needs the day the auditor turns up.

Spread across a notebook, a phone full of photos and an overflowing inbox, it’s all technically there. Finding it is another matter.

• One job, one record. Photos, notes, treatments used and reports stay with the job, not in your camera roll between the holiday snaps and the dog.
• Forms, not blank pages. A standard site visit form means nothing gets forgotten, whoever does the visit.
• Send the report before you leave the car park. A commercial client who gets a tidy report after every visit is a client who renews.
• Diary your own renewals. Certifications, insurance and training dates go in the same diary as the jobs, so they can’t sneak up on you.

 

4. The phone call you let ring out

I’ll admit it. I’ve let plenty of calls ring out because I physically could not get to the phone. Nobody in the history of pest control has taken a call while lying in a loft space with a torch in their teeth, or while suited up in a commercial kitchen with a bait box in each hand.

The problem is that a customer with a pest problem doesn’t wait. They don’t leave a voicemail. They ring the next number on Google, and by the time you call back, they’ve booked someone else.

• Make sure something answers. A person, a service or software. Anything but silence.
• Get the details. Name, address, what the pest is and how urgent it is. Then you’re calling back to book the job, not starting from scratch.
• Call back the same day. Speed wins here exactly as it does with quotes.

That’s the gap we built Powered Now Receptionist to close. It answers your calls when you can’t, takes the customer’s details and what they need, and passes it all straight to you. It is not voicemail with ideas above its station. In his first week using it, Robert Bonam of RB Electrical Services had six calls answered, and four turned into booked jobs. Four jobs that would otherwise have gone to the next number on Google.

 

5. Get your evenings back

The tradespeople in our research spend an average of 5 hours 20 minutes a week on admin, and 29% spend more than seven hours. 62% do it in the evenings after work, and 43% at weekends. So it’s hardly a shock that only 48% have had a proper week off, genuinely switched off, in the last 12 months.

• Do it as you go. Five minutes in the van after each job beats three hours on a Sunday night.
• Let the regular work run itself. Commercial contracts and routine service visits are the backbone of most pest control businesses. Set them up as repeat jobs, with reminders and invoices that go out on their own.
• Plan by postcode. Group your jobs by area and you’ll spend less on diesel and more time getting paid to work.
• Book the holiday first. Put it in the diary, then fit the work around it. Do it the other way round and the holiday never happens.

Bringing it all together

None of this needs fancy technology. A notebook and a lot of willpower will get you part of the way. The trouble is that willpower tends to run out around the fourth callout of the day.

That’s why we built Powered Now. It’s a job management app for trade businesses. You can quote and invoice from your phone, take payments, schedule one-off and repeat jobs, keep forms, photos and reports with each job, and send payment reminders automatically. Powered Now Receptionist then makes sure the phone gets answered when you can’t get to it.

And for all the moaning about admin, the trade itself is in good heart. 84% of the tradespeople we spoke to would still recommend it as a career to a young person, and 51% of business owners are confident about the next 12 months. The work is worth doing. It just shouldn’t cost you every evening and weekend you’ve got.

Sort the business side out, and you can get back to outwitting rats.

Benjamin Dyer is CEO and co-founder of Powered Now. Powered Now’s mobile app aims to make it easier for pest controllers and other trades to run their businesses, and Powered Now Receptionist answers customer calls when they can’t.