Windows & doors (Fenster)
A window is made to measure, so taking the measurements is part of the job, not preparation for it. An opening measured wrong is a loss you never get back — nobody takes a window back.
How it is billed
Windows and doors are counted by the piece, but every piece has its own size and its own price — two windows with the same name can differ by half. Fitting goes by the piece or by the hour, removing the old units by the piece, disposal separately, internal and external sills by the running metre, tapes and seals by the running metre. A lift for the upper floors is an item of its own. The trip to measure up is an item too: a separate day, a separate journey and a separate hour — and usually no trace of it on the invoice. Areas and volumes are worked out in the program itself: you enter the dimensions opening by opening, name every measurement your own way, and the total goes into the quote as a finished item with the breakdown — you can see where the figure came from.
What disappears on paper
What disappears is the measuring. You drive out, measure, drive back — and that trip is nowhere. The method of fitting disappears: a three-layer seal costs differently from foam and silicone, and if the quote holds only the word „fitting", the customer expects the first while you priced the second. The work after fitting disappears — plaster, paint, reveals: the question „who does that" belongs before the order, not after. And the dates disappear: a made-to-measure window can take six weeks, and you pay the maker a deposit long before the customer pays you.
Work it out yourself
Take the last ten jobs. Count the trips to measure up and the second trips for rework — the ones that came out of the measuring or out of a delivery that did not fit. Multiply by the cost of a day with the van. Add one window a year that arrived in the wrong size and stayed in the workshop. The total is bigger than it looks, because each of those trips feels like a trifle on its own.
Five minutes a day
Measurements entered at the opening, not from memory in the van. A photo of the opening before fitting — it shows the state of the masonry, the depth of the reveal and what the bricklayer left behind. A second photo after sealing, before the plasterer arrives: the layers vanish under the reveal and can never be shown again. In the evening: hours, deliveries, the lift day.
What the program watches for you
Deposits: with windows the money goes out to the maker weeks before it comes in from the customer — instalment invoices here are not a convenience but the condition of staying liquid, and in the final account they must be deducted to the euro. When you work for a construction company, the program sets the reverse charge under §13b and watches the §48b certificate. Material ordered against a particular job sits on that job, so you know what is waiting for fitting and what has already gone out. It watches the warranty periods — under a VOB/B contract it will not accept less than four years, under a works contract governed by the German civil code less than five. Additional work is kept as a variation with the date it was announced.
At the end of the year
Windows are the most expensive material that passes through your hands, and the deposits to the maker and the ones from the customer have to line up. Both are recorded against the jobs, along with fitting hours and kilometres. The annual accounts and the VAT returns read finished figures.
What matters is entering things regularly — measurements noted at the opening cost a minute; a wrong measurement costs the whole window.
