22 May Enhancing Your Service Business with ServiceM8
By: Jeff Siegel
Siegel Solutions works with many industries and one of those are the service industries focusing on trades: Electrical, Plumbing, HVAC, Cleaning, Locksmiths Pool Services, Pest Control, Lawn Care Appliance Repair and more!
While QuickBooks alone is great and can do all the accounting for these types of companies; there are some things it can’t do alone such as:
Job Management, Asset Management, Online Booking of service calls, Electric Forms, Proposals, Dispatching and seeing your technicians on a map in real time, drag and drop scheduling and even providing a knowledge base for the technicians or workers in the field. ServiceM8 is a comprehensive solution designed to streamline and optimize such various aspects of service management. We recently started working with Service M8 and we can attest that it is not only functional, but also visually appealing.
With ServiceM8, you can create job queues to hold incomplete jobs:
One great feature of these queues is that you can set a time limit on how long a job can remain in a queue and receive alerts when that time has passed. For instance, if a job is in a queue called “Parts on Order” and remains there for more than 7 days, it can automatically move to an action required list:
What about sending a salesperson to create a proposal:
A very important feature not always found in Field Service applications is the ability to create forms. Forms for certification or compliance where a technician in the field needs to go through a series of checks and various steps and print out a form that is attached to the job ticket.
Forms such as:
– Checklists
– JSAs
– Procedures
– Calculator – quotes & pricing
– Compliance certificates
– Certificates in general
– Contract variation
– Dial before you dig
– Authority to proceed
– Inspection reports (Pest, Building, Fire, maintenance)
– Customer information forms
– Emergency approval
Service M8 allows you to create custom questions/steps for each job. Once the job is complete, the form can be formatted and printed using Microsoft Word. These forms are attached to the job and will appear within the application:
Some of the other features I personally like are the ability to create job templates. This means we can develop templates for recurring job types, such as HVAC cleanout or pool closings. Each template can include a detailed description and specific tasks. If tasks in the description start with a hashtag, they will appear as checklist items on the Technician’s app in the field! So when you create a new job, you can simply select the job type:
Each type will have a description of what the Tech needs to do. Also, recurring jobs can be set up for regular maintenance.
ServiceM8 also offers powerful asset management features! It allows you to create and label assets for customers with each label containing a QR code. Customers can scan this QR code to create a service call or review the asset’s history, even including previous repairs.
ServiceM8 has so many other features that we love such as:
- Self-Serve Online Booking
- Integrating with Stripe for payments
- Progress Invoicing
- Email Inbox – forwarding emails directly to the dispatch board so they can be converted to jobs
- External Calendar linking – Outlook and Google
- Track my Arrival – Allow customers to see staff arriving at jobs in real time via SMS
- Job Costing
- Mailchimp Integration
- And more…
The application for technicians only runs on IOS devices which may be a turnoff. Ipads and iPhones are all that can be used in the field. The Company has decided to only focus on those devices.
Pricing is attractive with unlimited staff and is done by # of jobs per month and features required. There is a free option for 1 user doing 30 jobs per month. The top price is $349/month and allows for unlimited users and unlimited jobs with all the features of the program.
Siegel Solutions is committed to helping service-based businesses succeed. By partnering with us, you gain access to expert advice and tools tailored to your industry’s unique challenges such as ServiceM8. Let us help you transform your business operations.
Contact us today to learn more about how ServiceM8 can benefit your business and to schedule a demo. Together, we can take your service business to the next level!