How CC Carpentry Got Sundays Back: A Love Invoicing Case Study
A 3-person Manchester crew swapped notebooks for Love Invoicing. Within 6 weeks: −42% chase calls, +£3.4k recovered, zero spreadsheets.
The business: CC Carpentry, 3-person crew based in south Manchester. Specialises in fitted kitchens, bespoke wardrobes, and shopfit carpentry. Founded 2019.
The problem:Sundays were paperwork days. Two hours every weekend chasing money, six WhatsApp threads to track who paid what, an A4 notebook with the actual customer list. Three invoices had been forgotten entirely — £3.4k owed, never sent.
Before Love Invoicing
CC Carpentry ran on a notebook, WhatsApp, and a spreadsheet that Connor’s wife rebuilt every January. Quotes were typed in the Notes app on the phone, screenshotted, and sent over WhatsApp. Invoices were written on Word, exported as PDF, attached to emails sent from a personal Gmail.
“We weren’t losing money because the work was bad. We were losing money because we couldn’t remember who owed us.”
— Connor Carpenter, owner
On a 3-person crew doing 12–18 jobs a month, the cracks showed fast. Two customers quietly stopped paying. One disputed a job because there was no record of the agreed scope. The yearly accountant’s tax return was a 2-day nightmare.
The switch (week 0)
Connor signed up for Love Invoicing on a Tuesday evening. By Wednesday morning he’d imported the existing customer notebook (CSV export from Apple Numbers, drag-drop into Love Invoicing), set up the Stripe pay-by-link integration, and customised the quote template with the CC Carpentry logo.
Total setup time: 1 hour 47 minutes, including the kettle break.
Week 1–6: the numbers
- Chase calls:dropped 42% — from 11 in the previous month to 6, because pay-by-link did the chasing automatically
- Money recovered:£3,400 from three invoices that had never been sent — surfaced when Connor imported the old job notebook and spotted them
- Average pay time:14 days → 4 days
- Time spent on Sunday paperwork:2 hours → 0 minutes
- Quote-to-job conversion:51% → 73% (one-tap accept link beats “reply to this email if you want to go ahead”)
What changed day-to-day
1. Quotes happen on-site
Connor measures the kitchen, opens the app on his phone, types the scope, attaches three photos. The customer signs on the same screen before he leaves. The quote becomes a scheduled job and a draft invoice in the same tap.
2. Workers see their day on their phone
Connor’s two crew members get a daily push at 7am with their jobs, customer notes, and address. No more morning WhatsApp groups with site addresses.
3. Customers self-pay
The Stripe pay-by-link is now the default on every invoice. Customers tap, pay with Apple Pay, and CC Carpentry sees the payment hit the bank within 60 seconds. No more “chequebook’s in the kitchen drawer” calls.
The Sunday test
Six weeks in, Connor took his first paperwork-free Sunday in 4 years. The 14:12 Sunday roast happened on time. The accountant export at year-end took 11 minutes, not 2 days.
“The thing nobody tells you about going self-employed is that you also become an admin assistant for yourself. Love Invoicing gave me back the job I actually signed up for — making cabinets.”
— Connor Carpenter
Could this be your business?
If your weekends contain spreadsheets, your Sundays contain WhatsApp chasing, or your year-end contains tears — try Love Invoicing free for 30 days. No card. No setup call. We’ll import your existing customer list for free in your first week.
Read more: solutions for tradespeople, how to get paid same-day, and our pricing (Solo £12/mo, Crew £29/mo).