Two people, one set of client jobs: who sees what, who replies

A partner, an apprentice, a freelancer you subcontract part of the work to, a spouse doing the admin. From the second person onwards something changes, and it is not the work.

The work divides up perfectly well. It is the client-facing side that breaks, and it always breaks in the same place.

The failure that costs the most

A client writes. Three days later they have had no reply, not because nobody saw the message, but because you both saw it and each assumed the other was answering.

It is the most ordinary and most expensive failure of working in twos, because it is invisible from both sides: you read it, so as far as you are concerned the message is dealt with. There is no alert, no list turning red, nothing that flags a message read by two people and answered by neither.

The reverse costs less but looks worse: you both reply, at two different speeds, and the client learns in one minute that you do not talk to each other.

"We'll split them between us" is not an assignment

It is the instinct and it lasts a week.

A verbal split works at three jobs and collapses at eight, for a mechanical reason: it exists only in memory, and two memories diverge as soon as a job changes hands mid-flight, which happens constantly. A holiday, an emergency, a skill somebody lacks, and Monday's split is no longer true on Thursday.

What holds is one name per job, written down, visible to both. Not a separate allocation sheet, which has exactly the same flaw as the tracking spreadsheet and will lie for the same reasons: a name attached to the job itself.

The three questions to settle once

They look alike and they have three different answers. Confusing them is what produces the failures above.

1. Who owns this job? One name, always. Not two, not "both of us". A job with no owner is a job nobody notices has been asleep for ten days.

2. Who talks to the client? Not necessarily the same person. On technical work, whoever does the job is not always the better writer, and separating the two is perfectly fine. What matters is that it is decided rather than inferred.

3. Who is allowed to see what? This is the one people skip, and the one to be grown-up about.

On visibility, the honest tension

Giving everybody everything is simpler. That is true, and it is even the right call between two partners who share the takings.

It stops being true at the third person. A freelancer you subcontract one job to does not need to see your margins, or other clients' payments, or three hundred people's phone numbers. It is not a question of trust: it is that they do not need it, and what you do not show cannot leak by accident while that person is also working for somebody else.

The right way to think about it is not "who do I trust" but "what does this person need in order to do their work". That is a question you can answer, whereas the first cannot be asked without awkwardness.

And the practical consequence not to miss: permissions have to be decided at the moment you add the person, not later. Nobody ever narrows an access already granted, because doing so looks like a sanction.

Who did what, three weeks later

You need somewhere that keeps who sent what and when. Not to keep an eye on anybody: to answer a question that recurs and cannot be settled from memory.

The concrete case is always the same. A client says "I was told that was included". And it is true: one of you said it, in good faith, in a three-line message three weeks ago. With no record, that conversation ends in an arbitration between two recollections, on your side, in front of the client. With a record, it takes ten seconds and you decide what you want to do, which is an entirely different position.

What must never be duplicated

The client's link. One, for the job, whoever is handling it.

If you each send your own form and your own tracking link, the client has two addresses, keeps one at random, and it is the one that is out of date. The worst case is real and arrives quickly: they reply on the old link, nobody is watching it, and you are both waiting for an answer that has already arrived.

The holiday test

The best diagnostic of a two-person setup fits in one question: could your colleague pick this job up tomorrow without calling you?

If the answer requires a twenty-minute phone call, the job does not live in your tool, it lives in your head. That is fine while you are there. It is exactly the problem on the day you are not, and the day you are not is never chosen.

What has to be readable without you: what the client answered, what has been decided since, what is being waited on from them, what has been paid.

The subcontracting case

One rule, and it is simple: the client must never receive a message from somebody they have never heard of.

Two valid ways to handle it, and the choice is yours. Either you introduce the person explicitly, saying what they do on the project. Or the studio speaks with one voice and you write, even when you are not the one doing the work.

What does not work is the mixture: a client who one day gets a message signed with an unfamiliar first name wonders who they are dealing with, and they are right to wonder.

What Kalepio does about it

Every order carries one owner, changeable. You invite your colleagues and decide what each of them may do, at the moment of the invitation. The journal keeps who did what and when, including the messages sent to the client.

And your client sees the studio's name, never the name of whoever is writing. Which settles the subcontracting question by construction rather than by discipline: the voice is the workshop's, whichever of you is typing.

Frequently asked questions

How do you divide client jobs between two people?

One name per job, written down and attached to the job itself, never a verbal split. A verbal split holds at three jobs and collapses at eight, because it exists only in memory and two memories diverge as soon as a job changes hands.

How do you stop two people replying to the same client?

By deciding who talks to the client, separately from who does the work. The commonest failure is not the double reply but the absent one: two people read the message and each assumes the other is handling it.

Should a subcontractor get full access?

No. The right question is not who you trust but what that person needs in order to do their work. A freelancer doing one job does not need your margins or three hundred clients' contact details.

When should you decide each person's permissions?

At the moment you add them. Nobody ever narrows an access already granted, because doing so looks like a sanction.

How do you know whether a colleague could take over a job?

One question does it: could they pick it up tomorrow without calling you? If the answer needs twenty minutes on the phone, the job lives in your head rather than in your tool, and the day you are away is never chosen.