Three answers to 'how many jobs did we do?' and how to get one
When sales, operations and accounts each report a different number, it usually comes down to what the word means. Fix the definitions first.
3 min read Provecta Group
"How many jobs did we do last month?"
Sales has a number. It counts every job where the client signed.
Operations has a smaller number. It counts jobs where the crew finished and the client signed off on site.
Accounts has a smaller number again. It counts jobs that were invoiced.
Picture this at the Monday meeting of a maintenance contractor, or a cleaning company, or a firm that installs solar systems. The next twenty minutes go on working out why the three numbers differ. Someone opens a laptop. Someone else says their sheet is the right one. The meeting ends without a decision on the thing it was called to decide.
Nobody in that room is wrong. Each person is counting something real. They are just counting different things and calling all of them "jobs".
The data is usually fine
When owners hear "single source of truth", they tend to think of software: one system that everything feeds into. That helps eventually. But the three numbers above could all live in the same system and still disagree, because the disagreement is about what the word means.
A lot of reporting arguments in small and mid-sized firms come down to a handful of words that everyone uses and nobody has defined:
- Job, order or project. Signed, started, completed or invoiced?
- Customer. Anyone who has ever paid? Anyone who paid in the last twelve months? Each site of a company with three branches, or the company once?
- Revenue. Invoiced, collected, or recognised when the work is done?
- Overdue. One day past the due date? Thirty days? After the reminder was sent?
- Lead. Anyone who called? Anyone who asked for a quote? Anyone who met the criteria you would actually sell to?
Each team quietly picked the definition that suits its own work. Sales counts signatures because that is what it controls. Accounts counts invoices because that is what it reconciles. Both choices are reasonable. Together, they produce three numbers for one question.
Why this matters more once AI is involved
Firms are starting to ask AI tools these questions directly. Upload the job tracker, ask how many jobs were done last month, get an answer in seconds.
The AI has the same problem as the Monday meeting, with one difference. It does not argue. It picks a definition, usually without telling you which, and gives you a single confident number. Ask the same question with a different file and you get a different confident number. If two managers ask their own assistants, they may each walk into the meeting with a different AI-backed answer, and now the argument has extra authority on both sides.
An AI can only report your numbers consistently if your definitions are written down where it can read them. That page does more for reporting accuracy than any amount of prompt wording.
Write the definitions down
The fix is a short glossary, one page, kept wherever your team and your tools look first. For each term:
- The word.
- What it means in this company, in one sentence.
- Where the number comes from, meaning which file, which system, which column.
- Who owns the definition and settles arguments about it.
For example: "Completed job. A job where the crew has finished and the client has signed the completion form. Source: the operations tracker, status column, value 'Signed off'. Owner: operations manager."
You can keep the other counts. Sales can still track signed jobs. Just give them different names, so "jobs signed" and "jobs completed" stop being confused for each other.
The part that takes longer
Writing the glossary is easy. Agreeing on it is not. Someone will feel their number has been demoted. That conversation is worth having once, with the owner in the room, rather than every Monday for the next two years.
There is also a question we do not have a tidy answer to: what to do about historical reports built on the old definitions. Some firms restate them. Some draw a line and start fresh. Both work. Mixing them does not.
Run the experiment
Write down the five numbers your team argues about most. For each, ask the people involved to write their definition separately, without conferring. Put the answers side by side.
Then pick one definition per number, name an owner, and put the page at the front of every report and every AI prompt that uses those numbers.
Find out where definitions and handoffs are leaking revenue at pgco.world/tools/revops-audit.