Field service software for trades is software that runs the whole business of a plumber, an electrician or a heating and air-conditioning contractor. It books the customer's call, dispatches the technician, helps him quote a price at the door and takes the payment. It is sold mainly in the United States. There, most trades work is done by small and medium companies that own vans and employ technicians.
It is a kind of field service management (FSM) software, made for a smaller business. A large FSM customer, such as an appliance brand, has a separate call centre, billing team and accounts team. A plumbing company with 15 technicians has one small office. So the trades software does all of it: the phone bookings, the dispatch board, the price book, the invoices, the marketing and the accounts.
Here is a typical case, in Phoenix, Arizona. At 9:10 am, a homeowner calls a plumbing company because her water heater is leaking. An employee in the office books the call in the software. This creates a work order, the record of the job. The dispatch board shows that one technician is finishing a job nearby, so the call goes to him. At 11:00 am, he inspects the heater and decides that it must be replaced.
On his tablet, the software builds three options from the company's price book: a repair for $450, a standard new heater for $1,800 and a high-efficiency heater for $2,900. A price book is a list of the company's jobs with prices fixed in advance. So every technician quotes the same price for the same work, and the customer sees the choices side by side.
The homeowner chooses the $1,800 option and signs on the tablet. Many American homeowners pay for large repairs in monthly instalments, so the software can also offer a loan from a lender at this point. She pays by card, on a card reader connected to the tablet. The job closes. The invoice and the payment go into the company's small business accounting software.
Why do these companies pay for such software? A plumbing company earns money only while its technicians are working on jobs. The software helps each technician reach more jobs in a day, and offer every customer the same clear options.
In India, most plumbers and electricians work alone, or take jobs through a home-services app. So this kind of software has few buyers in India, although part of it is built by engineers in Bengaluru.