A family-run gas and heating business in Manchester: one owner-operator on the tools, a part-time bookkeeper, and 312 landlord gas safety certificates (CP12s) due to expire inside 90 days. Every one is a legal deadline for the landlord — and a guaranteed job for whichever engineer asks first.
The situation
The expiry dates were all there, scattered across old certificates and a diary that lives in the van. Chasing them meant evenings of cross-checking and phone calls, so it happened in bursts, late, or not at all — and every certificate that lapsed quietly was a landlord who might call someone else.
The certificate list is the business. Nobody was working it.
The instruction, verbatim
“Chase every certificate expiring in the next 90 days. Offer two real slots. Never let one lapse without three attempts.”
One sentence, typed by the owner, with the rules already standing:
The plan it came back with
Each reminder was drafted against the certificate's own expiry date and offered two genuine slots from the live diary. The plan was itemised, priced, and held — the owner approved it from the van between jobs.
What actually happened
Bookings landed straight in the diary against real availability. Anyone who booked dropped out of the sequence that minute; anyone who didn't got exactly three paced attempts, then a line in the report — completed, skipped or failed, never a green tick for work that didn't happen.
What changed
Eighty-four services booked before the cold snap, each one a certificate that stays current and a landlord who never went looking for another engineer. The owner's evenings went back to being evenings.
The certificate list now maintains itself: every job Datify books writes the next expiry date into the record, so next year's chase is already scheduled the day this year's job is done.
One instruction, a plan read before it ran, and a ledger that never rounds up. 84 services booked before winter — and the same loop runs again next month without being asked twice.