Chandeliers To Die For hires chandeliers and lighting for weddings and events across Sydney. Every job runs the same way: an enquiry, a quote, a deposit, a run sheet, a bump in, a bump out, an invoice. Hundreds of times a year, with a small team and a lot of moving parts.
It was also the first business to run on TAO, which made it the natural place to prove the model on real jobs before anyone else’s. This is what changed, with the figures we are comfortable publishing.
The manual way, and what it cost
Before TAO, the business ran the way most hire and events businesses do. Enquiries came in by email and phone. Quotes were written by hand from the last similar job. Deposits were invoiced when someone remembered. Run sheets were built in a spreadsheet the day before. Bump in and bump out details lived in messages and in people’s heads.
None of it was broken, exactly. It just all ran through people, and mostly through one person. Running the business the manual way cost about $550,000 a year. That is not one line on a budget. It is the combined cost of the time it took to quote, confirm, chase, re-key and keep track, across everyone who touched a job.
The owner was the switchboard. Every question about pricing, availability or what had been promised came back to the owner, who was the only one who knew.
The five day job
The clearest number is the simplest one. Taking a typical enquiry from first email to confirmed booking took five days.
Not five days of work. Five days of waiting between steps: a quote that could not go out until stock and pricing had been checked, a deposit invoice raised separately in the accounting software, a run sheet built from scratch, confirmations chased by hand. Every step was short. The gaps between them were long.
- Day one: the enquiry lands, someone reads it, someone asks about the date.
- Day two or three: the quote goes out, after pricing is checked and the last similar job is found.
- Day three or four: the client comes back with changes, and the quote is rewritten.
- Day five: the deposit invoice is raised and sent, the booking is confirmed, the run sheet is started.
Every one of those gaps was somewhere a job could quietly fall over.
What TAO built
TAO’s team ran the same process it runs for every customer: Discovery, Build, Connect and run.
Discovery meant sitting down with the way the business actually worked: how a quote was priced, why some clients were different, what had to happen before a truck left the warehouse. All of that became the company brain, loaded from years of quotes, emails, run sheets and decisions.
Build shaped the modules around the job: email, calendar, tasks, contacts and more, plus a run sheet built for the way this business bumps in and out. Connect and run linked the accounting software, inbox and calendar the business already used, two-way, so nothing was replaced and nothing had to be re-keyed.
From then on Andy did the doing. The enquiry comes in, and Andy drafts the quote from it, priced the way the business prices. A person approves. Andy raises the deposit invoice in the accounting software, books the dates, drafts the run sheet, and chases the balance on the day it falls due. Nothing goes out without someone saying so.
One day instead of five
With the gaps closed, the same enquiry now goes from first email to confirmed booking in one day. The quote is drafted within minutes of the enquiry landing, because Andy already knows the pricing and can see the calendar. The deposit invoice is raised the moment the quote is approved, not when someone remembers. The run sheet starts itself.
The work did not get faster. The waiting disappeared.
A wedding enquiry that lands on a Tuesday afternoon is a confirmed booking by Wednesday, with the deposit invoice sent and the dates held in the calendar. The client notices the speed. The team notices that nobody had to chase anyone to make it happen.
About $250,000 a year back
The second figure is the one owners ask about. Of the roughly $550,000 a year the manual way cost to run, about $250,000 a year came back.
It did not come back by cutting the team. It came back through the hours that were spent re-keying, chasing and answering the same questions, which are now spent on the events themselves and on the next customer. The team is the same team. What changed is what they spend their day on.
What the team noticed
The owner’s phone went quiet. Questions that used to come to the owner now go to Andy, in the business’s own words, from the business’s own history. The team stopped waiting for answers and started approving drafts instead.
Nobody had to learn a new system. The accounting software is the same. The inbox is the same. The calendar is the same. TAO sits across them, and Andy works inside all of them at once.
Mistakes got caught earlier. A deposit invoice that was never sent used to surface when the balance was overdue. Now Andy notices the missed step the day it is missed, drafts the fix, and waits for a person to approve it.
What it took
This is the part people expect to be painful, and it was not. The business kept trading through the whole process. Discovery was a series of conversations. Build happened on TAO’s side. Connection used the official access each system already offered. The team’s first experience of TAO was a draft waiting for approval, not a training day.
Where the business had a way of doing things no software would have guessed, like how a run sheet is ordered for a venue with a single loading dock, that became part of the build rather than a workaround the team had to remember.
The same three steps run for every customer, in every industry. The systems change. The pattern does not. You can see how it fits your trade on Industries, and the events version in particular on Events and hire.
Chandeliers To Die For is one business, with its own numbers, and yours will be different. What carries across is the shape of the problem: work that runs through one head, across systems that have never met, with gaps between every step. That shape is the same in a clinic, a trade and a hire yard.
If that sounds like your business, book a discovery call. We will walk through your version of the five day job and show you where the days go.
Questions people ask
Did Chandeliers To Die For replace its accounting or calendar software?
No. TAO connected to the accounting software, inbox and calendar the business already used, two-way. Nothing was replaced.
Should every business expect $250,000 a year back?
No. These are one business’s figures. Your numbers depend on how your work runs today, and discovery is where we work them out honestly.
Does Andy send quotes and invoices on its own?
No. Andy drafts, a person approves, then it goes out. That rule applied at Chandeliers To Die For from day one.
