The brutal truth? You’re probably losing £3,000 to £8,000 per project without realising it. Here’s why.
Most fire stopping contractors operate with a 24-48 hour information lag between work completion and knowing what actually happened on site. Your engineers seal penetrations on Monday, but you don’t see the timesheets, material usage, or photos until Wednesday—or later if paperwork goes missing. By then, scope creep has eaten your margin, overtime wasn’t captured, and materials were wasted.
The typical scenario looks like this: you quote 20 hours for a compartmentation job, your engineer works 24 hours (including travel and waiting time you didn’t account for), uses 15% more sealant than estimated because of unexpected penetration sizes, and doesn’t log any of it properly. Your quoted margin of 22-25% erodes to an actual margin of 18-20%, and you only discover this after the invoice is sent and it’s too late to correct.
The Spreadsheet Trap
Forty percent of UK fire stopping contractors still rely on Excel for job tracking and costing. Spreadsheets can’t capture real-time data from engineers working in basements with no signal. They can’t automatically calculate labour costs when someone works overtime. And they certainly can’t alert you when a job is going over budget while there’s still time to intervene.
The result? Finance teams spend 8-12 hours weekly reconciling job data between operations and accounting systems, errors creep into 5-10% of manual entries, and project profitability is only known after completion—when it’s too late to fix.
Setting Up Automated Pricing for Seals, Materials, and Labour
Accurate pricing is the foundation of profitability, yet most fire stopping contractors are quoting based on guesswork rather than data.
Build Your Digital Pricing Engine
Automated pricing eliminates the estimation errors that silently destroy margins. A proper pricing engine should capture:
- Material costs per seal type: Intumescent sealants, fire-rated boards, collars, and putty all have different cost profiles and wastage rates
- Labour time per penetration type: A cable penetration takes different time than a large-diameter pipe penetration through a two-hour fire wall
- Geographic and access factors: Working in occupied buildings, restricted access times, or requiring night shifts all impact true costs
BORIS Software’s automated pricing module allows you to set up pricing matrices for every scenario your team encounters. When an engineer logs a penetration type, location, and seal specification on their mobile device, the system automatically calculates expected materials, labour hours, and total cost. No more guessing, no more spreadsheet errors—just accurate, data-driven pricing that protects your margins.
The ROI of Pricing Automation
Finance Directors at fire stopping firms report that implementing automated pricing typically delivers a 2-4% gross margin improvement. On £1.5-£2 million annual revenue, that’s £30,000-£80,000 additional profit annually. The system pays for itself within 6-12 months purely through improved estimating accuracy, before you even factor in the time savings.
Tracking Productivity: Expected vs Actual Time Per Penetration
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Yet most fire stopping contractors have no idea how long tasks actually take versus how long they’re supposed to take.
Establishing Performance Baselines
Real-time productivity tracking shows you exactly how long each type of seal installation takes across different buildings, access conditions, and engineer experience levels. BORIS enables you to set expected completion times for each penetration type and then compare actual performance against those benchmarks.
For example, you might expect a standard cable penetration through plasterboard to take 20 minutes, including preparation, sealing, and documentation. If your productivity dashboard shows it’s actually taking 35 minutes on a particular project, you can investigate immediately—perhaps access is restricted, materials weren’t pre-staged, or the engineer needs additional training.
Spotting Issues Before They Become Profit Killers
The difference between reactive and proactive management is timing. With traditional paper-based systems, you discover productivity problems 3-7 days after they occur, when paperwork finally arrives. By then, you’ve already lost thousands in wasted time.
Digital productivity tracking gives you real-time visibility across all active sites. Operations Directors report they can now spot project issues 3-5 days earlier than before, preventing costly delays and enabling timely client communication. Live dashboards show you exactly what’s been completed and what’s outstanding across every project, right now—not when the paperwork arrives next week.
GPS Time-Stamping for Accurate Payroll and Invoicing
Time theft and inaccurate time recording aren’t just operational issues—they’re direct hits to profitability.
The True Cost of Manual Time Tracking
Manual timesheets are notoriously unreliable. Engineers rounding up travel time, forgetting to clock out, or estimating hours days later creates payroll inflation and invoicing delays. Even well-intentioned mistakes add up: if just two engineers overreport by 30 minutes daily, that’s 20 hours monthly or £400-£600 in unnecessary payroll costs.
Worse, clients increasingly dispute invoices that lack verifiable proof of time on site. Without GPS-verified timestamps, you’re left defending your invoice with nothing but a handwritten timesheet.
GPS-Enabled Time Tracking That Actually Works
BORIS includes GPS tracking as standard—no hidden per-device fees that competitors charge (£5-£15 per device monthly, or £600-£2,400 annually for a 10-20 person team). GPS time-stamping provides:
- Automated clock-in/clock-out with location verification: Engineers can’t clock in until they’re actually on site, and the system captures exact arrival and departure times
- Geo-fencing for site boundaries: Set virtual perimeters around project sites to automatically trigger time tracking and verify operative presence
- Travel time vs productive time separation: Accurately differentiate between paid travel time and billable on-site work for proper client invoicing
- Instant payroll integration: GPS-verified hours flow directly into your payroll system (Sage, Xero, or QuickBooks), eliminating 8-12 hours of weekly manual data entry
The result? Accurate payroll that reflects actual hours worked, faster invoice generation with verifiable proof of time on site, and elimination of the “I haven’t received the timesheet” excuse that delays payments by 7-14 days.
Lone Worker Safety Bonus
GPS tracking isn’t just about payroll accuracy—it’s also critical for lone worker safety. Fire stopping engineers frequently work in basements, underground car parks, and restricted areas. If communication is lost, GPS tracking allows you to identify their last known location and route history, fulfilling your duty of care obligations under CDM 2015 and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Case Study: 20% Cost Reduction Through Operational Optimisation
Let’s look at how a 25-person fire stopping contractor in Greater London implemented these strategies and transformed their profitability within 12 months.
The Starting Point
The Challenge: This contractor was turning over £1.2 million annually but operating at just 18% gross margin—well below the 22-25% they were quoting. The Operations Director spent 15 hours weekly chasing paperwork, finance spent 10 hours reconciling job costs, and projects were frequently going over budget without anyone knowing until completion.
Key problems included:
- No real-time visibility into active projects
- 5-7 day lag between work completion and documentation
- Engineers using personal phones for photos, resulting in lost evidence
- Manual timesheets with frequent errors and disputes
- Inability to prove actual time on site for client invoicing
The Transformation
After implementing BORIS field service management software, the business underwent a systematic operational overhaul:
Phase 1: Automated Pricing and Job Costing (Months 1-3)
- Set up pricing matrices for all seal types, materials, and labour rates
- Established expected completion times per penetration type
- Enabled real-time job costing with automated variance alerts
Phase 2: Mobile Data Capture and GPS Tracking (Months 2-4)
- Engineers began capturing all documentation on-site via smartphones—photos, signatures, seal specifications, and time logs
- GPS time-stamping eliminated manual timesheet disputes and enabled accurate payroll
- Offline capability meant engineers working in basements could still log work, with automatic syncing when signal returned
Phase 3: Real-Time Dashboards and Financial Integration (Months 4-6)
- Operations Director gained live visibility across all projects, spotting issues 3-5 days earlier
- Finance team automated Sage integration, eliminating 8-10 hours of weekly reconciliation
- Invoice turnaround improved from 7-14 days to same-day or next-day
The Results After 12 Months
The operational optimisation delivered transformative results:
- 20% overall cost reduction: Administrative time dropped from 25 hours weekly to 10 hours, saving £10,000-£18,000 annually
- Gross margin improvement from 18% to 22.8%: Better cost visibility and real-time intervention prevented margin erosion, adding £57,600 to annual profit on £1.2M revenue
- Debtor days reduced from 62 to 45: Faster, accurate invoicing with GPS-verified time improved cash flow by approximately £40,000-£50,000
- 100% audit pass rate: Every installation documented with photos, signatures, geo-tags, and timestamps—audit preparation dropped from 3 days to 4 hours
- Scalability achieved: The business confidently bid for and won its first framework contract worth £750,000 over 3 years, demonstrating digital capability that differentiated them from competitors
Total financial impact: £107,600 in first-year profit improvement, plus £40,000-£50,000 in improved working capital—a return on investment exceeding 700%.
Making It Happen: Your 90-Day Profitability Roadmap
You don’t need to transform your entire operation overnight. Here’s how to implement these profitability improvements systematically over the next three months.
Days 1-30: Foundation and Data Capture
- Audit your current job costing accuracy: compare quoted vs actual margins on your last 20 projects
- Set up automated pricing matrices for your most common seal types and penetrations
- Roll out mobile data capture to 3-5 engineers as a pilot group (include a mix of tech-comfortable and tech-resistant team members)
- Begin GPS time tracking for payroll verification
Quick Win: Most contractors see immediate improvement in documentation completeness and photo quality within the first two weeks.
Days 31-60: Real-Time Visibility and Integration
- Expand mobile adoption to all field engineers
- Integrate with your accounting software (Sage, Xero, QuickBooks) to eliminate duplicate data entry
- Set up live project dashboards for operations and commercial teams
- Establish expected vs actual productivity benchmarks per penetration type
Quick Win: Operations Directors report reclaiming 8-12 hours weekly once real-time dashboards replace daily phone calls to Project Managers.
Days 61-90: Optimisation and Financial Measurement
- Analyse first 60 days of productivity data to refine pricing and resourcing
- Implement automated alerts for jobs exceeding budget thresholds
- Measure month-over-month improvement in gross margins and administrative time
- Use data-driven insights to win your next bid with confidence
Quick Win: Finance teams can close month-end in 3 days instead of 7, and produce real-time profitability reports for board meetings.
What Fire Stopping Contractors Need
BORIS Software was purpose-built for contractors in the passive fire protection sector. Key capabilities include:
- Offline-first mobile app: Engineers can log penetrations, capture photos, and record time even 100 feet underground with no signal—data syncs automatically when connectivity returns
- Customisable forms for fire stopping workflows: Pre-built templates for penetration seals, compartmentation, fire door inspections, and fire damper testing
- GPS tracking included as standard: No hidden per-device fees—full fleet and team tracking built into the platform
- Native Sage, Xero, and QuickBooks integration: Bi-directional data sync eliminates duplicate entry and provides real-time job costing visibility
- Audit-ready compliance trails: Every seal logged with photos, signatures, GPS coordinates, and timestamps—meeting Building Safety Act 2022 “Golden Thread” requirements
- Real-time dashboards and KPI reporting: Operations, commercial, and finance teams see live project status, margins, and resource utilisation
Contractors typically implement BORIS within 2-3 weeks with minimal operational disruption, and see measurable ROI within 6-12 months.
Stop Guessing, Start Knowing
The difference between a £1.2 million fire stopping contractor operating at 18% margin and one operating at 23% margin is £60,000 in annual profit. That’s the cost of a new vehicle, two additional engineers, or the breathing room to pursue larger contracts without cash flow anxiety.
You already know your team does excellent work. Now it’s time to ensure your business systems protect the profitability you deserve. Automated pricing eliminates estimation errors, real-time productivity tracking prevents margin erosion before it’s too late, and GPS-verified time capture ensures you’re paid accurately for every hour worked.
The fire stopping contractors winning framework agreements in 2026 aren’t necessarily the ones with the largest teams—they’re the ones who can demonstrate operational excellence through data, respond to client queries with real-time dashboards, and prove compliance with verifiable audit trails.
Ready to see what 20% cost reduction looks like for your business?
Book a free demo of BORIS Software and discover how fire stopping contractors across the UK are protecting their margins, reducing administrative chaos, and winning larger contracts through operational excellence.
