Storm damage jobs: how a trade business handles the storm season surge

The short answer

Storm damage jobs arrive all at once, so the work is in the plan you make before the first storm. Send overflow calls somewhere that answers, ask every caller the same short triage questions, sort jobs into danger, make safe and later, capture insurance photos on the job card, and schedule by suburb. Then name one person who checks the Xero sync every week until the rush is over.

What storm damage jobs do to a trade business

The Bureau of Meteorology describes Queensland's severe weather season as October to April, and says southern Queensland carries its highest severe thunderstorm risk from October to December. One hail cell across a few suburbs can turn a normal week into three weeks of work overnight.

For an electrician, roofer or plumber, the problem is not finding work. It is everything around the work:

• The phone rings constantly while the whole team is already on a job.
• Callers describe the same problem in ten different ways, so nobody can tell the real emergency from the cosmetic one.
• Insurers and customers want photos and a written report, and nobody has time to do them properly.
• Regular customers get pushed aside and remember it.
• Invoices pile up and quietly fail to reach Xero.

Search "storm damage jobs" and you mostly get job ads and homeowner checklists. This guide is the other side: the storm season checklist for the business doing the repairs.

Step 1: Make sure every call gets answered

A lot of lost storm work is a call that rang out. Decide now where calls go when nobody can pick up.

1. Turn on conditional forwarding. On a Telstra mobile, no answer, busy and unreachable are separate settings, and the no answer delay can be set between 15 and 30 seconds. Set all three, then test each from another phone.
2. Pick where forwarded calls land. Options include a human answering service, an AI receptionist, or a shared office line. ServiceM8's Phone Agent, for example, has business hours, after hours and voicemail modes, can talk to several callers at once instead of queuing them, and logs a summary, transcript and recording of every call. It can also text callers your online booking link.
3. Give callers a self-serve option. An online enquiry form takes pressure off the phone. In ServiceM8, enquiries land in the Inbox and customer photos move into the job diary when you convert the enquiry to a job.
4. Record a storm greeting. Short and honest: "We are getting a high number of storm calls. If you have fallen powerlines, hang up and call Energex on 13 19 62 or 000."

If you already run an AI receptionist, our guide on setting up an AI receptionist for tradies covers the emergency rules and testing in more detail.

Step 2: Ask the same triage questions every time

Whoever or whatever answers the phone needs a fixed script. Six questions is enough:

1. What is the address and suburb?
2. Is anyone in danger right now? Any fallen wires, sparking, smell of gas or structural damage?
3. Is water getting inside the building at the moment?
4. Is the power on, off or tripping?
5. Have you contacted your insurer, and do you have a claim number yet?
6. Can you send photos? (Then text the link.)

Those answers let you sort every call into three buckets.

Two safety notes for the script. Energex tells people to stay at least 10 metres from fallen powerlines and assume they are live. The Electrical Safety Office says water damaged hard wired appliances need a licensed electrician to check them, and that solar panels keep producing voltage in daylight, so homeowners should not try to turn a solar system off after a storm.

Also know where the SES fits. Queensland SES does temporary emergency measures to make a home safe, and says permanent repairs go through the insurer or a private contractor. That second part is you.

Step 3: Capture photos and reports the insurer can use

The Insurance Council of Australia tells homeowners to photograph or film the damage as evidence, keep damaged items that could be repaired, and speak to their insurer before authorising building work, including emergency repairs. The Queensland Government gives the same advice. So your photos often decide how quickly the customer gets paid, and how quickly you do.

Build a standard shot list into your job form so every tech takes the same set:

1. A wide shot showing the property or street number.
2. A medium shot of the damaged area.
3. Close ups of the cause (the lifted sheet, the burnt connection) and the damage.
4. The same angles after your make safe work.
5. A note in the job diary of what you did, why, and what still needs a permanent fix.

Keep everything on the job card in your field service app, not in a tech's camera roll. When the assessor rings three weeks later, anyone in the office can send the full record in a minute.

Step 4: Schedule when demand triples

When demand triples, a normal first come, first served calendar falls apart. A few rules help:

• Split make safe from repairs. Keep one or two people on short make safe visits each day. Everyone else does booked repairs. Mixing them means nobody finishes anything.
• Batch by suburb. Hail and wind damage is patchy. Group jobs in the same streets so a tech is not crossing the city between tarps.
• Protect your regulars. Keep a small amount of capacity each week for existing customers and builders. They are still your business in June.
• Give honest wait times. A text that says "We expect to reach you in about two weeks" keeps more customers than silence and a vague promise.
• Stay safe and licensed. A rushed roof call out is still work at heights. WorkSafe Queensland requires fall controls from 3 metres in housing construction and 2 metres in other construction, and a safe work method statement where the fall risk is over 2 metres. QBCC warns that operating without the right licence is illegal, and its contracts guidance says domestic building work over a set value needs a written contract.

A worked example: an electrical contractor in Logan

This is an illustrative business, not a client. Picture a ten person electrical contractor in Logan. A hailstorm crosses Springwood and Slacks Creek on a Tuesday afternoon. By Wednesday morning the office has more calls than it normally gets in a fortnight.

Here is how their plan plays out:

1. Calls the office cannot answer within 20 seconds forward to an AI receptionist loaded with the six triage questions. It tells anyone reporting fallen wires to call Energex, sends the booking link for photos, and logs every call.
2. The office manager reviews the call log at 9am, 12pm and 3pm and sorts each enquiry into danger, make safe or repair later.
3. Two electricians run make safe visits only: isolating wet circuits, checking switchboards and solar isolators, and taking the standard photo set.
4. The rest of the team keeps booked work and picks up repairs batched by suburb from the following week.
5. Every make safe job gets a short written report from the job card, sent to the customer for their insurer.
6. On Friday the office manager runs the Xero sync check (Step 5) before payroll.

Nothing here needs new software. It needs decisions made in October, not on the Wednesday.

Step 5: Name who checks the Xero sync

This is the part everyone forgets. During a surge, your field service app pushes far more invoices to Xero than usual, and integrations break quietly.

The vendors document this. ServiceM8 lists reasons invoices fail to sync, such as a zero value invoice or one sent to the wrong Xero organisation. Tradify lists Xero error messages, including hitting Xero's per minute limit. Fergus has a "Not in Xero" filter for invoices that have not synced, and notes syncing can take up to an hour at busy times.

So give the job to one named person: every Friday during storm season, filter for invoices that have not reached Xero, fix them, and confirm the number of completed jobs matches the number of invoices. Our guide to automation for tradies covers the wider job to invoice flow.

What to watch out for

• Privacy. You will collect addresses, phone numbers and photos of inside people's homes. The OAIC says most small businesses are not covered by the Privacy Act because of the turnover threshold, but recommends protecting personal information anyway. Keep photos in the job app, not personal phones or group chats, and remove access when a casual leaves.
• Logins. Storm season often means extra subcontractors. Give each one their own login with limited access instead of sharing yours.
• Integrations. Any connection between your phone system, field service app and Xero needs an owner. If nobody is named, nobody checks.
• Your reputation. Avoid anything that looks like door knocking or pressure selling. The Insurance Council warns homeowners about cash door knockers after disasters.

When to get help

Most of this is DIY. Forwarding, a triage script, a photo checklist and a weekly sync check can all be set up by an organised owner or office manager in an afternoon or two. Get help when your storm damage job management needs the pieces joined: an AI receptionist that writes into your job app, forms that build the insurance report for you, or a business that has outgrown its software and needs the right job management CRM. If you are not sure where your biggest gap is, take the quick wins check before the next storm arrives.