SalesManager – Multi-Site Proposals : A Smarter, Faster Way to Win Work Across Every Location
If you sell service work to customers with multiple facilities, you know how complicated proposal management can get. Different locations, different scopes, different service levels… and usually a whole lot of manual effort just to keep everything straight. That’s why we’re excited to enable Multi-Site Proposals for all SalesManager customers, a powerful new way to build, manage, and deliver proposals for multi-location customers with total clarity and zero chaos.
Multi-Site Proposals gives sales teams a streamlined, repeatable workflow for organizing all proposed work across every customer site. Instead of juggling spreadsheets, email threads, and dozens of disconnected PDFs, you can now build one coordinated package that captures every service recommendation, pricing option, and location-specific detail in a clean, professional format.
One Proposal. Every Location. Total Confidence.
With Multi-Site Proposals, you can finally eliminate the friction that slows down enterprise sales cycles. Whether your customer has five locations or five hundred, your team can group all recommended work into a single, polished proposal that’s easy for stakeholders to review and approve.
Customers can see exactly what they’re getting at each site, no guesswork, no ambiguity, no back-and-forth hunting for details. That clarity builds confidence, speeds decision-making, and helps you close larger, more complex deals faster.
Consistency Your Team Can Count On
Multi-location proposals often break down because every rep builds them differently. With this release, your team will follow a consistent structure that ensures pricing, tasks, plan levels, and descriptions are standardized across every proposal.
That means:
Fewer errors and less rework
More accurate pricing for every site
A smoother transition to service delivery after the customer signs
When every stakeholder, including sales, operations, service, and the customer, is looking at the same organized information, the entire experience becomes more predictable and professional.
Instead of losing hours piecing together multiple documents, reps can now prepare multi-site proposals in a fraction of the time. That frees them up to focus on what actually moves deals forward: meaningful conversations with customers about expanding coverage, upgrading service levels, or addressing deferred maintenance across their portfolio.
And because the proposal structure makes cross-location comparisons easy, customers can instantly understand their options and confidently select what works best for their business.
A Big Win for Sales Teams and Customer Relationships
Multi-Site Proposals isn’t just a workflow improvement. It’s a value multiplier. It helps your team present complex work more clearly, build trust with enterprise clients, and close larger, more strategic contracts with less effort.
We’re excited to bring this capability to your sales process, and we can’t wait to see how it helps you win more work with your multi-location customers.
Smart Scan Has Arrived — Faster, Smarter Asset Capture for Every Technician
STOP TYPING. Start Scanning.
Technicians have always done whatever it takes to get the job done, but manual asset entry has never been the part they enjoy. Between faded serial plates, tiny lettering, and tight schedules, capturing equipment details by hand slowed everyone down. And when the data wasn’t complete or accurate, the office was left guessing during quoting, planning, or reporting.
That’s exactly why we are introducing Smart Scan, ServiceTrade’s AI-powered nameplate scanning tool built right into our mobile app. Smart Scan makes it effortless for technicians to capture accurate asset data by simply scanning a nameplate—no typing, no transcription errors, and no wasted time.
How Smart Scan Works
Smart Scan uses artificial intelligence to read the make, model, and serial number directly from a nameplate. Technicians can use it in two key ways:
Creating new assets – A quick scan automatically populates the essential details needed to build a new asset.
Looking up existing assets – Scanning a unit in the field immediately pulls up its ServiceTrade record and history, making diagnostics and decision-making much faster.
Every scan also helps improve the AI model, making the tool more accurate as customers continue to use it.
Why It Matters
Smart Scan cuts down one of the most repetitive tasks technicians face. Instead of typing long strings of model numbers or snapping photos they’ll organize later, techs can record asset details in seconds. For office teams, Smart Scan ensures the information flowing in from the field is clean and consistent.
Contractors see benefits such as:
More productivity – Less time entering data means more time servicing equipment and completing additional jobs.
Better accuracy – Nameplate details are captured by the camera and details are enhanced by AI, reducing errors that lead to quoting mistakes or confusing service histories.
Cleaner data across the board – When the field sends accurate information, the office can rely on it for planning, reporting, and maintenance management.
A smarter system overall – The tool improves as more scans come in, helping every team using ServiceTrade.
It’s a small change that makes a noticeable difference in the speed and quality of work.
Why We Built It
Commercial service contractors face intense pressure to deliver more work with the same (or smaller) teams. Removing tedious tasks is one of the easiest ways to increase productivity without adding headcount.
Smart Scan was built to help with exactly that. Accurate asset data is foundational to quoting, preventative maintenance programs, and customer communication but getting it manually was slow and error-prone. Smart Scan ensures techs can collect the data quickly and correctly, all while staying focused on the work that actually drives revenue.
Try It Out
Smart Scan is live in the ServiceTrade Mobile app and available to all Premium and Enterprise ServiceTrade customers. If your technicians haven’t used it yet, make sure they’re running the latest version (7.3.0 for Android and 7.3.1 for iOS) and have them give it a try on their next service call.
Accurate asset data has never been faster, or easier, to capture. When your software works smarter, your whole team does too.
Real Reviews. Real Results: ServiceTrade Takes 7 Capterra “Best Ease-of-Use” Badges
Earlier this week, we announced our seventh Capterra “Best Ease of Use” award in 2025. These awards are particularly important as Capterra bases its evaluations on verified customer reviews. No wonder it’s considered the top destination for companies to find the right software and services for their business.
These badges reflect what matters most to commercial service contractors: more productive techs, greater efficiency, improved margins and growth, and happier customers. They’re awarded to top-rated products that meet strict thresholds for each badge, including a minimum of 4.5/5 average on the relevant rating (e.g., Ease of Use), and rank among the top 25% of qualifying products in their category.
ServiceTrade’s comprehensive field service management platform has an overall rating of 4.6, with 96% of customer reviews being positive and 3% being neutral. ServiceTrade helps commercial service contractors deliver better service and scale faster. It’s purpose-built to transform technician performance, elevate end-customer experiences, and streamline operations from the field to the back office.
Our 2025 Capterra “Best Ease of Use” Badges
1. Contractor Management — Current contracts, Informed customers, Efficient Operations
Featured ServiceTrade Capabilities
Contract and agreement engine: Standardize service programs (inspection, monitoring, and repair pull-through) with templates that prefill frequency, scope, SLAs, and pricing. Renewals auto-generate, so sales don’t have to rebuild from scratch.
Account hierarchy & sites: Organize multi-location customers cleanly; filter work and reporting by region, site, or asset group in one click.
Customer Portal: Branded, self-serve portal for approvals, job status, documents, invoices, and service history—fewer back-and-forth emails
How ServiceTrade Makes it EasieR
Contractors like ServiceTrade’s unified view of agreements, sites, contacts, and active work. Team members can click into any customer or job to schedule, check status, quote, or invoice without context switching.
2. Field Service Management — One end-to-end workflow from lead to invoice.
Featured ServiceTrade Capabilities
End-to-end job lifecycle: Convert approved quotes to jobs, automate checklists on the work order, and push time/materials straight to invoicing.
Advanced Parts Management: Technicians issue purchase orders and enter receipts in the mobile application. Plan for the needed parts and only schedule a job if the parts are available.
Accounting integrations: Send clean, complete invoices to your connected accounting system with attachments (photos, forms, signatures).
How ServiceTrade Makes it Easier
Every step uses the same data model—no retyping, no hunting for files.
Admin spends minutes (not hours) closing out a day’s work.
3. HVAC — Built for commercial mechanical complexity
Featured ServiceTrade Capabilities
Asset-centric model: Track equipment by site, with model/serial, tagged components, and service history for each asset.
PM & seasonal programs: Templates schedule multi-visit PMs (cooling, heating, filter changes) with auto-generated tasks and materials.
Quoted repairs from the field: Techs capture deficiencies with photos/video, tap a pricebook item, and trigger a branded, multi-option quote.
How ServiceTrade Makes it Easier
Techs see exactly what to do on each service call; the office sees exactly what to bill.
4. Inspections — Accurate Inspections With Less Admin
Featured ServiceTrade Capabilities
Digital inspection forms: Speed up inspections with faster forms and streamlined processes. NFPA forms and custom checklists with required fields, conditional steps, and auto-fail rules.
Deficiency capture: Photos/video, severity, code references, and recommended remedy roll directly into a repair quote queue.
Certificates & reports: Accurate inspections and an ironclad paper trail limit liability. Instantly generate branded inspection reports, attach them to the job, and publish them to the customer portal.
How ServiceTrade Makes it Easier
Faster Inspections with less admin: Elevate inspections, minimize risk, and uncover new, high-margin repair revenue.
5. Scheduling — Faster, Smarter Scheduling
Featured ServiceTrade Capabilities
Smart Scheduling & Available Jobs Filters: Use advanced filters to identify and prioritize available jobs based on due dates, service lines, or even custom tags.
Map Scheduler: Schedule jobs visually with map pins that indicate unassigned work and filters to help you identify and assign the most relevant work.
Drag-&-Drop Calendar: Assign jobs and work orders to the calendar with an intuitive drag-&-drop interface.
How ServiceTrade Makes it Easier
Less chaos and time spent scheduling with tools that simplify job assignments and provide better visibility and control over technician schedules.
6. Service Dispatch — Get the right tech, to the right job, with the right parts and equipment.
Featured ServiceTrade Capabilities
Dispatch Board: Manage technician schedules at a glance, with a centralized view of assigned and unassigned jobs.
Capacity Planning: Track monthly technician utilization to maximize team capacity and better meet the demand of the market.
Route hints & clusters: Group nearby jobs and preview drive time before committing.How ServiceTrade Makes it Easier
How ServiceTrade Makes it Easier
Get more work orders done: Fully book technician schedules and minimize travel time between jobs. Dispatchers act on a single, live source of truth—no radios, fewer calls.
7. Work Order — Clear scopes in, clean invoices out
Featured ServiceTrade Capabilities
Smart task lists: Work orders inherit tasks from contracts, PM templates, and inspection outcomes; techs check off and add time and materials.
Media-rich records: Photos, video, comments, and signatures compile into a polished job summary automatically.
One-click handoff to billing: Completed work orders post all line items and documentation straight to invoicing
How ServiceTrade Makes it Easier
Techs capture what happened as they go; billing is seamless and efficient.
Why “Ease of Use” matters for contractors
Higher revenue per tech: Fewer clicks and less admin unlock more billable hours.
Elevated End-Customer experiences: Clear ETAs, branded customer updates, and a streamlined portal where customers can see inspections and transparent service records, invoices, and communications.
Scalable operations: Standardized templates and automation transform technician experiences and streamline back office operations.
Shorter billing cycles: Connected scheduling, work orders, quotes, and invoicing.
Improved technician satisfaction: Tools your techs actually want to use.
About the Capterra “Best Ease Of Use” badges
Capterra Best Ease of Use badges highlight the highest-rated products based on verified user reviews in specific software categories, using a documented methodology reviewed annually by Gartner Digital Markets. Learn more about how badges are awarded here. Capterra
Ready to see why contractors rate ServiceTrade so highly for usability? Book a demo and put it to work in your service business.
Isn't it time to switch?
Book a demo to see the best ease-of-use field service management software for commercial contractors.
Break Through and Scale Faster: Why DWC25 is a Must-Attend Event for Commercial Service Contractors
Every year, ServiceTrade hosts the Digital Wrap Conference, our signature event designed specifically to empower commercial service contractors. This year, DWC25, happening November 4-6, 2025, at the beautiful Wild Dunes Resort in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, promises to be our most impactful yet.
Why should you attend? Because today’s commercial service industry is changing faster than ever. Contractors are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities—from skilled labor shortages and economic headwinds to the rapid evolution of technology. DWC25 is specifically curated to help you break through these barriers, servicing smarter, scaling faster, and building a high-value business in the face of accelerating mergers and acquisitions activity.
Unlocking Growth and Innovation
Our theme this year—”Break Through. Service Smarter. Scale Faster.”—captures precisely what you’ll experience. Attendees will gain actionable insights on:
Attracting and Retaining Technicians: In-depth sessions will offer solutions for navigating labor shortages by creating workplaces technicians love.
Boosting Efficiency and Productivity: Experts will discuss technology-driven workflows designed to streamline your operations, enhance productivity, and optimize profitability.
Winning the Right Customers: Learn to modernize your sales and marketing processes, increase your pull-through revenue, and build lasting relationships with the most profitable customers.
Increasing Business Value: Understand the keys to preparing your business for private equity, mergers and acquisitions, or next-generation leadership.
Insightful Keynotes and Expert-Led Breakouts
At DWC25, you’ll engage directly with industry leaders and peers, diving into practical solutions across several keynotes and targeted breakout sessions, including:
Navigating Today’s Commercial Service Landscape
Leveraging Technology Innovations to Drive Growth
Transforming the Technician Experience
Optimizing Efficiency and Customer Experience
Driving Business Value Through End Customer Success
We’ve tailored multiple tracks to your role—whether you’re a business leader, service manager, sales or account executive, or front-office administrator. From mastering operational excellence to becoming a ServiceTrade power user, each session is packed with actionable content.
Building Community and Collaboration
Beyond the insights and technology, DWC25 is about community. It’s a unique opportunity to meet other industry leaders facing similar challenges, share best practices, and build supportive networks that extend beyond the event.
I firmly believe the future belongs to commercial service contractors who can adapt quickly, innovate constantly, and build relationships that matter. DWC25 is where you’ll find the ideas, inspiration, and practical tools to achieve exactly that.
Reserve Your Spot Today
Space is limited, and we expect DWC25 to reach capacity quickly. Join me, the ServiceTrade team, and hundreds of your industry peers as we unlock the next chapter of growth and innovation together.
The busy season for HVAC contractors brings a familiar chaos – phones ringing non-stop, emergency calls flooding in, and schedules packed beyond capacity. While many teams scramble to keep up, the industry’s top performers are handling this rush with remarkable efficiency. These leading HVAC companies complete 15% more work per technician, spend half as much time on dispatching, and earn 10% higher gross margins by implementing strategic operational improvements.
The key difference? They don’t wait until they’re drowning in service calls to optimize their operations. The most successful contractors prepare their systems, teams, and processes well before the temperature spikes. With summer approaching rapidly, the time to implement these efficiency strategies is now – not when you’re already in the thick of the busy season rush.
Focus on Your Most Valuable Customers
When every customer is demanding immediate service during peak season, you need a clear system for prioritization. The most successful HVAC teams rank their customers by revenue, margin, and ease of doing business. This strategic approach ensures your limited resources are allocated to the accounts that truly drive your business growth.
Start by analyzing your customer data to identify your A, B, and C-tier clients. Your A-tier customers likely represent 80% of your profit from just 20% of your customer base. During the busy season, these accounts should receive priority scheduling, your best technicians, and proactive communication.
Quick Win: Create a simple spreadsheet ranking your top 20 customers by annual revenue, profit margin, and a 1-5 score for “ease to work with.” Use this list to guide your dispatch decisions when schedules get tight.
Let Techs Focus on What They Do Best
Industry surveys show that 47% of technicians report significant frustration with customer communication issues and administrative burdens. Every minute your technicians spend hunting for information, chasing paperwork, or making phone calls is time they’re not turning wrenches and generating revenue.
Successful HVAC operations provide technicians with comprehensive information before they arrive on site. This includes equipment history, access instructions, customer preferences, and all necessary documentation. Mobile tools that put this information at technicians’ fingertips eliminate the back-and-forth calls to the office that waste valuable time.
Quick Win: Create standardized job packets with all site information, equipment details, and customer history that technicians can review before arriving at each job. Even a simple digital document shared via text can dramatically improve efficiency.
Schedule Smarter
During peak season, 42% of technicians report experiencing significant scheduling challenges that reduce their productivity. Smart scheduling isn’t just about filling technicians’ days with appointments – it’s about strategic routing, matching skills to jobs, and building in appropriate buffers.
Leading HVAC companies use intelligent scheduling systems that consider technician location, expertise, and traffic patterns. This approach minimizes drive time between jobs and ensures the right technician arrives with the right skills and parts. The result is more completed jobs per day and higher customer satisfaction.
Quick Win: Start each week by mapping your scheduled jobs geographically and rearranging assignments to minimize cross-town travel. Even manual optimization can save hours of drive time each week.
Catch Problems Before They Cost You
The HVAC industry experiences 50% higher employee turnover than other trades, and this challenge intensifies during busy season when stress levels peak. Daily team coordination becomes essential to maintain morale and operational efficiency.
Top-performing companies implement daily kickoff meetings where teams align on priorities, discuss potential challenges, and share important updates. These brief, focused meetings help identify and resolve issues before they escalate into costly problems or customer complaints.
Quick Win: Implement a 15-minute morning standup meeting with a consistent agenda: today’s priorities, team changes/updates, and open questions. Keep it brief and action-oriented to respect everyone’s time while ensuring alignment.
Keep Customers Happy, Automatically
During peak season, your office staff can easily become overwhelmed with customer calls requesting updates or information. Smart HVAC businesses implement customer portals and automated communication systems that provide proactive updates without requiring staff intervention.
Automated appointment reminders, technician arrival notifications, and follow-up surveys not only improve the customer experience but dramatically reduce the volume of inbound calls your team must handle. This allows your office staff to focus on revenue-generating activities rather than routine status updates.
Quick Win: Set up automated email appointment reminders that go out 24 hours before scheduled service. This simple automation can reduce no-shows by up to 30% while decreasing the call volume to your office.
in summary
The difference between HVAC companies that thrive during busy season and those that merely survive comes down to preparation and systems. Implementing these five strategies now – before the summer rush hits – will position your team to handle higher call volumes with less stress and greater profitability.
By focusing on your most valuable customers, empowering your technicians with the right information, optimizing your scheduling, implementing daily coordination, and automating customer communications, you’ll create an operation that can scale efficiently during peak demand.
Want to learn how ServiceTrade helps mechanical contractors thrive in the busy season? Book a demo today.
Commercial Service Contractors – Can You Reduce Busy Work in the Busy Season?
Busy season is here for many commercial service contractors. Being busy is much better than the alternative, but this busy season may be a good opportunity for you to examine your current operations and workflows and ask, “What are my people busy doing?”
Busy doesn’t necessarily mean productive. In fact, busy often means hurried, overwhelmed, and constantly running in reactive mode. This isn’t good for you or your company. Eliminating the unnecessary busy work can go a long way in improving morale during a stressful busy season. Instead, focus on working smarter and increasing productivity across the board for all your employees.
For the purposes of this post, we are looking at the busy work that arises when customers are calling in emergency repair work. Let’s look at four basic stages or phases of an emergency repair job to identify areas where you can potentially reduce busy work, and reduce stress levels for you and others in your company.
Phase 1: The customer calls
A customer with an emergency calls in a repair request. One of your front office staff members fields the call and gathers all the necessary details. They may scribble notes on a piece of paper, or type information into a spreadsheet saved to their computer. Either way, it’s likely the beginning of information about the job being recorded everywhere but one central location, which is going to cost you a lot of time over the course of the job.
Busy work time drains:
Retyping job details into the work order.
Failing to have an online emergency request form. (Which could reduce the amount of information your staff has to type in to a work order, or even allow the customer to go directly to phase 2.)
Searching for the customer’s contract to find the SLA for emergency service calls.
Phase 2: You schedule the service call
Once the work order is created, it’s time to schedule the service call, and fast. But unless you have real-time visibility to your techs’ schedules, an increased volume of emergency calls can create a lot of distracting, time-consuming phone calls in just getting the tech to the job. The pace that comes with the busy season can make even the best organized spreadsheet or whiteboard outdated by mid-morning.
Busy work time drains:
Identifying techs who can take the emergency call.
Figuring out which techs are nearby.
Distracting phone calls to technicians who are on another job.
Phase 3: Your service techs do the work
Once the tech is on site, questions they have about the location or facility will require that they search through a stack of papers, search their email, or call the office to get more information. Even worse, you may find the information your tech needs is on a piece of paper you can’t find, or in the head of an employee who is on vacation.
Busy work time drains:
Techs driving to and from the office to pick up paper copies of work orders and schedules.
Techs calling around to get facility or equipment information.
Phone calls to the customer to let them know the tech is on the way.
Phase 4: You invoice the customer
Once the tech drops off the paperwork (unnecessary in and of itself), the fun for the back office begins.
Overwhelmed techs are filling out paperwork faster than ever. Sloppy handwriting and incomplete descriptions can be an even bigger than usual source of frustration for your back office staff. Someone in your back office has to retype information from work orders into your accounting system. Techs are hard to get a hold of when your accounting team has a question about the paperwork, or, even worse, an irate customer calls in with a question about their bill.
Busy work time drains:
Trying to decipher tech handwriting and notes on paper work orders.
Double data entry – retyping all information from the work order into your accounting system.
Searching for the contract to find the customer’s agreed upon rate for emergency service calls.
All these time drains assume the paperwork is already in the office. Waiting on paperwork to get back to the office is a common problem for commercial service contractors. Techs keep paperwork in their trucks until the end of the day or week, and then bring it into the office for back office staff to process. (Unless they’ve lost it somewhere along the way.) While it’s more of a bottleneck than busy work, it’s a huge opportunity for companies who want to streamline processes. While you are identifying busy work tasks, take a look at this process within your organization to see if there are opportunities for improvement.
Use this busy season to better your business
Commercial service contractors can save time for techs in the field, front office staff, and back office staff by reducing busy work that comes with a higher volume of jobs. Use this busy season as a discovery period to identify inefficiencies in your processes. Then, you can use your slower season to implement solutions based on your findings. Otherwise, you’ll be losing time and money from the same busy season busy work this time next year.
How to Free Your Techs From Busy Work
As commercial service contractor, you must manage a perpetually fluctuating volume of work orders. A slow week is followed by a weekend full of repair requests. A big project lands on your plate, spreading your resources thin. A heat wave or polar blast initiates an early start to your busy season.
Meeting the demands of busy spikes and seasons can put a strain on your techs—hurting retention and morale. But with labor shortages and margins in mind, growing your team to meet temporary demand is not realistic.
What makes more sense is to expand your existing team’s capacity with a technology solution that automates and simplifies many of their tasks. Increasing the productivity of your current team not only allows room for more business, it also improves the quality of your service.
In this article, we’ll focus on freeing your most valuable resource—your technicians—from the time traps of busy work so they have more time and energy to do the job they’re specially trained to do.
Freeing Your Techs From Busy Work
By allowing techs more time for their primary responsibilities, you can improve overall efficiency and satisfaction for both techs and customers. Some benefits of improved technician efficiency include:
Increased Productivity
When technicians spend less time on administrative tasks, they have more time to focus on maintenance, installs, and repair work. This leads to faster completion of jobs, resulting in improved productivity for the business.
Improved Employee Satisfaction
Technicians often get into the field because they enjoy hands-on work and problem-solving. By reducing tedious admin work, techs are able to spend more time doing what they love and are trained to do. This equals improved employee satisfaction and reduced turnover rates.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Removing the burden of busy work enables techs to perform maintenance, repairs, and inspections more quickly and effectively. This leads to improved customer satisfaction and increased customer loyalty, winning you repeat business and positive referrals.
Here are some key ways to give techs back their time.
Less Time Behind the Wheel
The busy work: Technicians are spending a large portion of their days sitting in traffic or driving long routes created by reactive and inefficient scheduling.
Solution: Technology-assisted scheduling that prioritizes convenient routes and fewer miles can reduce windshield time and give techs back a significant chunk of their day.
Fewer Phone Calls
The busy work: Without access to real-time work order changes, location details, equipment history, and other customer data, your techs find themselves consistently dialing the office in search of the information they need.
Solution: Mobile access to real-time customer data gives techs the information they need without disrupting their task list to call the office. Bonus: A software solution that centralizes real-time data ensures your office staff and technicians have the same, up-to-date information at all times.
Fewer (and Easier) Administrative Tasks
The busy work: Technicians are spending too much time on administrative tasks, like creating invoices and quotes, that could be assigned to the office. Additionally, the manual processes of time tracking and keeping paper records are inefficient and burdensome.
Solution: Two solutions here. One: Narrow you techs’ responsibilities to their incredibly valuable skilled work, assigning administrative tasks to your office. And two: use a commercial field service application that includes time-tracking software for contractors, digitizes paperwork, automates time tracking, and allows techs to easily upload supporting media saves time and eliminates frustration in your tech’s day. These two things will give your techs more time to do their best work, find more repair opportunities, and service more facilities in the day.
Less Time at the Office
The busy work: Dispatching from the office and returning there at the end of the day is wasting your tech’s time and reducing the number of jobs they can complete.
Solution: Enabling your techs to dispatch from their homes and submit work order paperwork electronically eliminates the need for frequent office visits, improves routes, and gives your team back time to do more—and better—work. It also allows the office to close out work orders as soon as they’re completed rather than having to wait for techs to deliver paperwork to the office.
Giving Busy Work the Boot With the Right Technology
The benefits of optimizing workflows for your technicians are many. Better employee satisfaction and retention; more efficiency in the field; better customer service; and smoother overall operations in your business. Finding the right tool(s) and leaning on technology for improved efficiency is essential.
ServiceTrade is a premier platform built specifically for commercial service contractors. Learn how our platform can help you give techs (and your office staff) back their days by booking a demo.
Is Your Field Service Management Software Being Sunsetted?
If you’re feeling pressure to switch software, especially to a system you didn’t choose, you’re not alone.
Recent acquisitions in the field service management world have left many contractors scrambling, facing tight migration deadlines and major disruptions to their operations.
Forced to Change? You’re Not Alone.
We’ve heard from many contractors who are frustrated by sudden platform shutdowns and rushed transitions. After investing time and money into a system that worked for them, they’re now being told to move fast—or risk being left without a solution.
This isn’t an isolated event. It’s part of a larger pattern that’s affecting businesses across the industry.
Software Consolidation Shouldn’t Cost You Stability.
Mergers and acquisitions are a natural part of the software world. But how a company treats its newly acquired customers speaks volumes.
Are they acting like a true business partner—or simply pushing you to hit their next revenue target?
At ServiceTrade, we take a different approach. When we acquired SalesManager over three years ago, we didn’t force customers onto a different system. We invested in SalesManager, making it even stronger.
It’s still the leading tool for tracking sales opportunities and preparing rich maintenance and project proposals for the mechanical market.
If a product works for contractors, we believe in making it better—not shutting it down.
Why ServiceTrade Could Be the Right Move for You
If you’re feeling uncertain about your current situation, you’re not stuck. Many contractors in your position are making the move to ServiceTrade. Here’s why:
Structured Implementation: Our proven onboarding process, backed by dedicated in-house resources, ensures you go live quickly without major disruptions to your business.
More Jobs, Less Admin Headaches: Customers report up to a 15% increase in weekly work orders after switching to ServiceTrade.
Faster Cash Flow: ServiceTrade users experience up to an 80% reduction in proposal creation time and a 50% faster billing cycle—helping your business stay healthy and growing.
Field Teams That Sell and Serve Better: We make it easy for technicians to document issues on-site, capture photos, and flag additional work—helping you boost service quality and drive more revenue.
A Platform That Grows With You: Unlike others who sunset products after an acquisition, ServiceTrade continues to invest in our platforms because your success is our success.
Don’t Let Forced Changes Disrupt Your Business.
You deserve a field service management solution that works for you, not one that’s forced upon you. Explore how ServiceTrade can provide a stable, supportive, and user-friendly alternative. We’re here to help you navigate this transition and ensure your business continues to thrive.
Contact us todayto learn more about how ServiceTrade can support your needs.
Nick Rohan
VP of Product, Commercial Mechanical at ServiceTrade
Navigating the Skilled Labor Shortage: Balancing Supply and Demand
For mechanical contractors, the busy season is a great opportunity to show customers that they can rely on you, but the increased workload creates a lot of stress for employees and customers, especially during a skilled labor shortage. Here we explore some innovative ways to balance the stress between supply and demand and optimize workflows for technician productivity during the busy season and beyond.
The Magnitude & Implications of the Skilled Labor Shortage:
There is currently a 40% shortage of skilled technicians in the workforce. Moreover, the industry experiences an 8% net loss of technicians each year. The growing gap between labor supply and service demand is only expected to worsen over time for mechanical contractors. To make matters worse, demand for mechanical service calls increases by an average of 30% during the summer months according to the usage data in ServiceTrade.
There’s a difficult balancing act that contractors face. On one hand, they can hire more technicians to meet the demand during the busy season, but this may result in excess labor and higher operating costs during the slower periods. On the other hand, hiring just enough technicians to handle the baseline demand may lead to unhappy customers and churn during peak seasons when response times are crucial. So, how can contractors find a balance?
1. Update how you prioritize service calls
Traditionally, mechanical contractors prioritize service calls based on urgency, revenue, and margin. However, introducing a new metric called “Gross Profit per Labor Hour” and creating a customer scorecard can revolutionize this approach.
Gross profit per labor hour:
Karim Nice, owner of BlueHat Mechanical, introduced us to this powerful metric. Gross Profit per Labor Hour enables contractors to identify customers who generate more profit with the same amount of labor, allowing them to prioritize work that maximizes their earnings. Without it, contractors may not realize that the top-grossing customer may have significantly lower gross profit for labor hour compared to a slightly smaller customer.
Creating a customer score:
To consolidate the metrics and prioritize customers effectively, contractors can create a customer score. Some key metrics to include: total revenue, margin, gross profit per labor hour, average work order total, and quote acceptance rate. By assigning points based on different ranges within each metric, a weighted score is obtained. This score enables contractors to sort their customer list and identify the customers who bring the most value to their business. Dispatchers can use this score to determine priority order, giving faster service to high-scoring customers.
By using metrics like gross profit for labor hour and creating a customer scorecard, contractors gain a deeper understanding of which customers drive the most value for their business, so they can prioritize their work accordingly.
2. Stop wasting technicians’ time
Another valuable tip is to stop wasting technicians’ time on unnecessary tasks. Reallocating administrative tasks to other team members protects technicians’ productivity, even beyond the busy season. So, some do’s and don’ts:
❌ Don’t require techs to hunt for work order details.
Set technicians up for success by equipping them with the tools they need to get the job done as efficiently as possible. This includes work order details, equipment details, service history, and any additional instructions or access codes. By doing so, you eliminate the need for them to spend valuable time contacting others for information.
❌ Don’t have techs create quotes and invoices.
Unless absolutely necessary, refrain from having technicians create quotes and invoices in the field. Leverage tools like mechanical estimating software to streamline the quoting process in the office, allowing your technicians to focus on their core expertise. While you may bill for those labor hours, it’s more efficient to delegate these administrative responsibilities to other team members, especially when there is a technician shortage. You can still bill for those hours, just don’t have your technicians doing it.
❌ Don’t have techs run to the parts house.
Similar as above, it’s vital to optimize the utilization of your highly skilled and expensive technicians to do the skills they’re trained to do, especially given the ongoing labor shortage. So instead, allocate these tasks like running to the parts house to junior or non-technical staff. You can still bill for those hours as you would normally.
✅ Do have techs document equipment issues.
Encourage technicians to capture every repair opportunity and have them do it in a way that makes it easy for the office to generate accurate quotes and determine if repairs can be deferred until the busy season subsides. Documenting repairs creates future revenue opportunities for your business.
A commercial service platform like ServiceTrade helps mechanical contractors set their technicians up for success.
3. Keep projects agile and on budget
K & R Mechanical, a ServiceTrade mechanical customer, excels at keeping projects on budget and on time. A tip their Vice President of Service, James Mugabero, recommends is to hold daily project review meetings where you review financial reports and check operational statuses.
Review real-time financial reports daily.
Review the financials of every project to see if you are projected to be over or under budget based on where each project is from the expected completion. Comparing projects side-by-side gives insight into if there are project(s) that you can reallocate resources from to a project that is over budget or behind schedule. Looking further into each project’s performance gives insight into what is affecting the budget.
Hold team stand-ups each day.
During the daily project review meeting, check the performance of projects from the previous day, so you can make decisions for today. You may discover the opportunity to relocate technician resources to service calls. The operational review ensures you never lose track of a project and maintain technician efficiency.
To keep projects on budget during busy seasons, implement a daily project review meeting where you analyze real-time financials and conduct operational review. Leveraging mechanical project management software can streamline this process, providing a centralized platform for tracking project progress, financials, and resource allocation in real time. These practices enable better resource allocation, risk assessment, and decision-making, ensuring projects stay on track and meet financial targets.
The 3 big takeaways to start implementing now:
Prioritize work from a complete view of a customer’s value.
Delegate tasks like quoting and invoicing to the office.
Review projects daily to plan resource deployment and protect your profit margin.
How ServiceTrade Helps You Streamline Operations and Speed Up Cash Flow
Keeping cash flow steady is crucial to meeting expenses, investing in growth, and maintaining operational stability. However, achieving a fast, efficient invoicing cycle can be a challenge when processes are manual or disconnected. ServiceTrade tackles these issues head-on, offering solutions that help contractors streamline operations and speed up cash flow. Here’s how ServiceTrade enables service contractors to move from job completion to cash in hand, faster than ever.
1. Utilize Mobile Tools to Capture Job Details in Real Time
One of the biggest sources of invoicing delays is missing information, requiring back-and-forth communication between technicians in the field and office staff. ServiceTrade’s mobile application enables technicians to capture and submit job details—photos, videos, parts and labor—in real time, reducing gaps in documentation and allowing the office to invoice as soon as the job is complete — without waiting for paperwork to come back from the field days or weeks later.
Benefits:
Improve field-to-office communication: Real-time data capture keeps the office informed, allowing for faster invoicing.
Minimize follow-up: Technicians submit complete job information before leaving the site, preventing delays due to missing or incomplete details.
Boost productivity: Office staff spend less time tracking down job details, freeing them up for other essential tasks.
2. Streamline Invoicing to Accelerate Payments
Invoicing quickly and accurately is key to getting paid on time, but manually building invoices can lead to delays, errors, and missed revenue. With ServiceTrade, contractors can streamline their invoicing process, ensuring that invoices can be generated immediately upon job completion. Technicians submit parts and labor details directly from the field, providing the office with everything needed to send an accurate, timely invoice—often within hours of completing a job.
Benefits:
Eliminate delays: Automated invoicing reduces the lag between job completion and invoicing, improving cash flow.
Increase accuracy: Digitally documented job details and automated pricing ensure that invoices are accurate, reducing the likelihood of disputes or delays.
Reduce administrative burden: Office staff spend less time chasing down job details, allowing them to focus on revenue-generating activities.
3. Use Pricing Contracts for Consistent, Error-Free Billing
For contractors, invoicing can be a complex process, especially when rates vary by job type, technician, or customer contract. ServiceTrade’s platform enables contractors to standardize pricing, ensuring consistency across invoices and reducing the chances of billing errors. With a reliable system that applies contract-based pricing automatically, invoices are sent out faster and with greater accuracy.
Benefits:
Speed up invoicing: Contract pricing eliminates the need to calculate rates manually, reducing the time from job completion to invoicing.
Reduce errors: Contract pricing minimizes the risk of incorrect rates or charges, preventing costly billing disputes.
Build customer trust: Consistently accurate invoices show clients that your business operates efficiently and transparently.
4. Pre-Bill for Recurring Services to Improve Cash Flow Consistency
For service contractors with recurring contracts, ServiceTrade enables pre-billing—billing clients for routine maintenance and inspections before the service is completed. By sending invoices in advance, contractors can maintain steady cash flow even when field activity is lower, such as during off-peak seasons. This approach also reduces time spent invoicing after each visit, simplifying billing for recurring clients.
Benefits:
Steady cash flow: Pre-billing ensures a consistent income stream, helping contractors manage expenses even during slow periods.
Simplify recurring invoicing: Automated pre-billing reduces the workload for office staff and provides clients with predictable billing.
Reduce late payments: By invoicing in advance, contractors can encourage clients to pay upfront or on time, minimizing cash flow disruptions.
5. Enhance Quoting for Faster Approval and Cash Flow
ServiceTrade’s streamlined quoting makes it easy to generate accurate, detailed quotes for additional repairs or pull-through work identified during a job. This speeds up the quote approval process, allowing contractors to capture and complete more revenue-generating work without delay. By quoting faster, contractors increase the chances of immediate job approval and completion, enabling quicker invoicing and faster cash flow.
Benefits:
Increase revenue opportunities: Faster quotes enable contractors to capture more repair work from existing clients.
Accelerate the cash cycle: Rapid quote approvals lead to faster job completion and invoicing.
Improve client satisfaction: Detailed, accurate quotes help clients make informed decisions quickly, enhancing the customer experience.
6. Provide Customers with Easy, Digital Payment Options
For faster cash flow, ServiceTrade offers digital payment solutions that allow clients to pay invoices online as soon as they’re received. By making payments convenient and accessible, contractors can reduce delays caused by waiting for checks or bank transfers. Digital payments not only speed up cash flow but also simplify financial tracking, making it easier to monitor accounts and manage collections.
Benefits:
Accelerate payments: Digital payment options reduce payment processing times, getting cash in hand faster.
Improve cash flow visibility: Track payment status in real time, allowing better financial planning and management.
Reduce time spent on collections: Faster payments mean fewer outstanding invoices, reducing the burden of collections.
7. Use Data and Analytics to Monitor Cash Flow and Adjust Operations
ServiceTrade provides robust reporting and analytics, giving contractors visibility into key metrics that impact cash flow, such as invoicing time, average payment speed, and accounts receivable. By tracking these metrics, contractors can identify cash flow bottlenecks, streamline collections processes, and make data-driven adjustments to improve overall financial health.
Benefits:
Identify bottlenecks: Analytics reveal where delays occur, enabling targeted improvements in the invoicing cycle.
Make data-driven decisions: Use cash flow data to adjust invoicing practices, set payment terms, and streamline collections.
Enhance financial stability: Monitoring cash flow consistently allows contractors to plan accurately and avoid cash shortages.
Ready to Speed Up Cash Flow with ServiceTrade’s Invoicing Solutions?
ServiceTrade empowers contractors to streamline operations and accelerate cash flow through faster invoicing, real-time data capture, set pricing, and digital payment options. By improving every step of the invoicing process, ServiceTrade helps contractors maintain consistent cash flow, improve customer satisfaction, and focus on strategic growth.Ready to transform your cash flow process? Book a demo with ServiceTrade to see how the platform can help you speed up invoicing and keep your operations running smoothly.
