Where HV consultancies lose work: the inbox, and how to stop it

In short. In an HV design consultancy, the engineering inbox holds the enquiries, the contract notices, the drawing issues and the payment chasers. Work and money are usually lost in small gaps there: an email that several people saw and nobody owned. Sort mail by what happens next, give each item one owner and one date, and have a person approve anything that leaves the business.

Where does work go missing in the inbox?

Rarely through a dramatic failure. It goes through small gaps between people.

An enquiry arrives at a shared address. Two people read it. Each assumes the other will reply. A week later the client has asked someone else. Nobody did anything unreasonable, and the work still went.

The cause is that the inbox is doing four jobs at once. It is a to-do list, a filing cabinet, a calendar and the project record. It does none of them well. I have spent 16 years in HV design, and this is the pattern I keep coming back to.

Which emails start a clock or move money?

A few kinds of message matter far more than their place in the list suggests.

• A new enquiry. The first reply decides whether you are in the race. A quick acknowledgement with a named person and a date does more than a slow, perfect answer.
• A contract notice. An instruction, a change to the programme, a late drawing or an application for payment can start a deadline. If nobody writes down the day it arrived, the clock runs and nobody knows. We cover the detail in contract clocks that start in an email.
• A drawing or revision. Someone asks for “the latest” and the wrong revision goes out, because the right one is in a different thread. The cost shows up later, as rework or a difficult conversation with a client.
• A payment. Who owes you money, since when, and who last chased? That answer is usually spread across several people’s sent items.
• A change of bank details. An email that appears to come from a supplier or client asks you to pay a new account. It is a well-known fraud. Check by phone, using a number you already hold and not the one in the message, before anything is changed.

None of these is hard on its own. The trouble is that they sit in the same list as newsletters and meeting invitations, and they all look alike.

How do you sort an inbox by what happens next?

Ask one question of every email: what happens next? For example, these four groups can help:

• Needs a decision. Someone is waiting for you to reply, approve or choose. Keep this lane short.
• Waiting on others. You asked and they owe you an answer. Nothing to do today, but someone must notice if it goes quiet.
• Deadline running. A date is attached, from the message or from a contract. The date matters more than the sender.
• Done or for information. Nothing to do. Move it out of sight, and keep it findable.

Sorting tells you what an email is. It does not tell you whose job it is. So give each enquiry one named owner and one date, even a rough one, and look at what is still waiting once a week. An item with an owner and a date shows up when it slips. An item with neither disappears.

What should stay with a person?

Anything that leaves the business or cannot be undone. Sending a reply, deleting an email, and anything about money, contracts or people should be a person’s decision. Software, or a colleague, can sort mail, summarise it and prepare a draft. You decide what goes out.

This matters most for the bank-detail case. A draft that looks right is not the same as a payment you have checked.

What does Letterbox do about it?

Letterbox is our email assistant for busy mailboxes. It works inside your Outlook. It reads incoming mail, sorts it into lanes so you can see what needs you, summarises long threads and drafts replies for you to read.

You check each draft and approve it. Letterbox does not send anything on its own and it does not delete anything. Each move it makes can be undone, and each is listed so you can see what it did.

It comes from Saqib Engineering Ltd, an ISO 9001 certified HV design consultancy in Rotherham. Letterbox is £19 per user per month, or £15 per user per month if you pay yearly, ex VAT, with a 30-day free trial.

You do not need Letterbox to use the habits above. A shared spreadsheet, a few folders and a Friday check go a long way. What the software changes is how much of the sorting you have to do by hand.

If you want to see how it works in Outlook, the Letterbox page has the detail.