ServiceM8

As a partner with ServiceM8 we've had exciting times with assisting businesses take advantage of powerful features the application has to offer. From creating forms through to managing staff, assigning jobs and scheduling work.

The company has really gone to a great extend to make the application as user friendly as possible. This enables users to easily understand their new process when we introduce the application in their business.

The cost involved is also of benefit to the Company as it is based on the amount of jobs processed through ServiceM8. Thus if you're going through a quite period the application tailors your subscription cost to the amount of jobs processed. An extremely favorable option amongst Trades industries.

Overall, the software is pretty good; it covers a lot of ground and addresses a few of the pain points. There are glitches and no software is perfect but that's not really our issue. Our problem is the lack of customer service you receive when there are issues.

Last year, over the space of 6 weeks we had 92 duplicate jobs appear in our calendar. Confused the team and was a tedious pain to find & remove them all. I reported and also asked if we could have these jobs removed from our billing as we're on a legacy pay per job plan.

Their first response had a suggested solution - it didn't work, it instead created more duplicates and I was told that one of our staff must have created the duplicates....considering the staff they accused was on site with my husband working at the time, with her phone in the car, I know it wasn't her. We were told it had been passed on to the development team and they'd let us know. That was in November 2020.

Since then the only contact I've had was after I complained every 2 weeks that we'd heard nothing and more duplicates were being created. Emails go unanswered. Messages to live chat got the templated 'it's with the development team' answer and I never heard back about billing. We ended up taking the long way and solved it ourselves by deleting every recurring job & setting them all back up. Then rearranged the calendar to fit in the 92 duplicate jobs. PITA

If customer service is important to you, this is probably not the app for you.

Overall it has great features but lacking one major feature for us which would cut down our admin time for invoicing and that is batch invoicing. Customer service unable to help with timelines for this upgrade or indication if it will be implemented?

I started attempting to use ServiceM8 about a year ago. I also changed my books from good old Cashflow Manager to Xero, which I setup to sync with ServiceM8. I am a one-man show.
I say "attempted" to use ServiceM8, because, at the time, I was many months behind on my books/invoices, and the situation really got even worse. I have now got my books up to date, and I am working through doing many months of invoices.
I had my accountant assist me setting up Xero. All was more or less working, but I had big issues with the bank feeds, especially PayPal, basically I got a huge mess, then I wiped it all out to start again, and got much the same mess again. Frustrated, I went back to my good old trusty Cashflow Manager program and did the whole set of books for the entire financial year to date (and 2 BAS statements) in an afternoon. So I have ditched the Xero-ServiceM8 sync, and am now going to use ServiceM8 with Cashflow Manager manually. None of this is in any ServiceM8's fault, Its either mine or Xero's, probably a bit of both.
Basically I will maintain my books in Cashflow Manager, do the invoices and job tracking in ServiceM8, and then manually enter the payments into Cashflow Manager, much like I used to. A nuisance, but not a big deal.
As for ServiceM8, I have only really started exploring it and using it the last few days. I have been trying to for ages, but either forget, or left my iPad at home. I have learnt a lot about it in the last few days.
I have looked at the competition, but most of them (at a similar price point at least) had apps that don't work offline. ServiceM8 will work without an internet connection (with some features not working naturally), so it was the obvious choice for me in a rural area with poor telecommunications.
So far, it seems to work well, is easy to use, the app is fast, and the website seems fast enough on the odd occasion I have used it on a decent internet connection. Just now (a public holiday) i got a response (and solution) from their support in 14mins. That is my first contact with them.
It is quite cheap and I feel that it is quite a good fit for my business. But it will only work as well as you make it, and you will have to put some time into learning it and incorporating it into your daily routine.
I highly recommend giving it a shot to all small service businesses that are struggling to manage their jobs, invoices etc. Bonus points if you can start using it before you get overwhelmed by work.

Um well I am in the pressure washing - gutter cleaning business and needed a software to keep track of customers, have 2 way sync with quick books online and easy scheduling. I tried literally probably 100 crms before I settled on service m8. It was a perfect balance of amazing features but a good cost