The Column That Isn't There

Every conversation about field service software starts the same way. How many guys have you got.

It's a fair question and it's the wrong one to start on, and you can see why by looking at what the software actually charges for.

Pull up ServiceM8's price list and there's nothing priced per seat. Where a per-user rate would sit, every paid plan says the same two words. Unlimited Users. Starter, Growing, Premium, Premium Plus, all of them. The app's on every plan too, including the free one.

What's being counted is jobs.

Canadian dollars, off their Canadian pricing page. On the free plan you can also earn extra jobs beyond the 30 by taking card payments through it.

Now take two businesses you'd never put in the same bracket. A twelve-person commercial painting contractor opening 120 new job numbers a month sits on Growing, at $79. A two-person turnover cleaning outfit opening 200 a month is on Premium, at $149. Twelve people paying less than two, and headcount didn't predict either bill.

That's the vendor detail. I work on ServiceM8, which is why the second example is in there alongside the flattering one. The general version is the part worth carrying around.

Seat-priced software gets more expensive when you hire. Job-priced software gets more expensive when you sell. Those two pull in opposite directions, and which one suits you depends on which way your business actually grows: a contractor adding techs to serve the same customer base wants the second one, and one holding headcount flat while pushing volume wants the first.

But the expensive part of this is quieter, and it's on the seats side.

When users are free, there's no reason to ration the app. People ration it anyway. The office gets a login, the two senior techs get logins, and the newer crew members work off whatever the foreman tells them that morning. It reads as a cost control, and on any paid plan it controls nothing, because those logins are already included in what you're paying.

Everyone you leave off is someone whose job information arrives by text message. Photos sit in a camera roll nobody else can see. Materials get remembered on Friday. The check-in times that would have told you what the job actually cost were never recorded, because the person on site had nothing to record them into.

That one's free to fix. Add them.

The other thing worth knowing is what actually spends a credit, because the count is more forgiving than people assume. Every new job card uses one. Quote it, requote it, reschedule it four times, invoice it, come back to it eight months later, and it's still that one credit. A job that stays open for a year is still one. Accept a quote and turn it into a work order and it doesn't consume a second.

The credit gets spent when the job card is created, though. A quote is a job card. So the work you bid and don't win is on the meter alongside the work you do. Whether that matters is a question about your own quote count against your win rate: bid heavily into a low win rate and it's the difference between two tiers.

One caveat before anyone goes looking for a downgrade. The tiers gate features as well as volume. Forms, Asset Management and Proposals start at Growing; Job Costing and Markup Billing start at Premium. So your job count sets the floor, and a feature you actually rely on can set it higher. Work out both before you move.

Which makes the number that picks your plan a straightforward count: the job numbers you opened between the first and the last of the month, quotes included. Invoices lag and merge, and a call only counts once it becomes a job card, so neither of those will give you the figure. Count a busy month, because the tier has to hold in the busy one.

If you'd rather have that count run against your own history and the account sized around what it tells you, https://www.chanautomation.com/servicem8-consultant-canada.

And if you land on the wrong tier, the ceiling's soft. Go over and you keep working normally for another seven days. If your billing month resets inside that window your credits come back, and if it doesn't you get an upgrade prompt. Worth knowing before you over-buy a tier to be safe.

Whatever you're weighing this against, ask the same thing of it. Find the unit it counts before you compare the sticker prices, because the unit is what decides whether your bill follows your payroll or your revenue.

Kevin Chan
The Ops Shortcut by ChanAutomation
https://www.chanautomation.com/servicem8-consultant-canada