The job finished on Tuesday. The paperwork is still in the van.
Field work loses its margin in the gap between the site and the office. The work was done well; it is the record of the work that arrives late, incomplete, or on a docket that got rained on.
What changes for trades and field service
- Job sheets and photos in the office before the van is back
- One board showing every job, engineer and status today
- Quotes sent from site instead of written up at night
- Invoices out the same day the work is finished
What goes wrong in trades and field service
The office knows what was scheduled and the engineer knows what happened, and the two only reconcile when paper comes back at the end of the week. Every missing detail is a phone call to someone who has moved on to three other jobs, and every day of delay is a day the invoice is not out.
Meanwhile nobody at the office can answer the simplest customer question. Where is he, and when will he arrive, is guesswork based on a phone call, so the answer given is vague and the customer's estimate of the business drops slightly. That is a real cost that never appears anywhere.
What this usually runs on today
- Phone calls and a wall planner for scheduling
- Paper job sheets and dockets
- Quotes typed up in Word in the evening
- Photos sitting in engineers' camera rolls
- Invoicing days later, from the paperwork
Recognise most of that list? It is the usual starting point.
What we build for trades and field service
The pieces specific to this pairing. Each is quoted separately, so you can start with one and see whether it earned its cost before committing to the next.
- 01
Job sheets completed on a phone, offline
The sheet, the photos, the parts used and the customer's signature captured on site and synced when signal returns. Basements and plant rooms have no coverage, so working offline is not a nice-to-have — it is the difference between a system used and a system abandoned.
- 02
One board for today
Every job, who is on it and where it stands, in one view. Reassignment is a drag, and the customer is notified without anybody making a call.
- 03
Quotes built and sent from the driveway
Priced line items from your own catalogue, assembled on a tablet before leaving site. The competitor who quoted on the spot usually wins, and this is what makes quoting on the spot possible.
- 04
Invoices the same day
A completed job produces a draft invoice with parts, hours and photos already attached. It goes out while the work is fresh in the customer's mind, which is also when it is most likely to be paid without a chase.
- 05
Proof that exists when it is needed
Photos and signatures attached to the job rather than living on a personal phone. A disputed visit becomes a record you open instead of an argument you lose.
Questions we get asked about this
Our engineers are not office people. Will they use it?
Only if it is faster than the paper it replaces, which is the actual design constraint. That means a handful of taps, no typing where a choice will do, and working with no signal. If completing a job sheet on the phone takes longer than filling in a docket, the system has failed regardless of what it can do.
Why not one of the established field service platforms?
For a straightforward install-and-invoice operation, buy one — several are good and we will say so. Building earns its cost when the job has a shape the platforms do not hold: staged works, statutory certification, parts reconciliation against a van stock, or a subcontractor model that pricing-per-engineer punishes.
Can it work with our existing accounting package?
Yes, and it should. Invoices and payments belong in the package your accountant already uses; the job system raises the draft and reads back what has been paid. Replacing accounting software is expensive, disruptive and almost never the actual problem.
Zoom out
Want to know what this would involve for your business?
Forty-five minutes on how your operation actually runs, then a written summary of what we would fix first. Free, and yours to keep.