The schedule and the route are usually a spreadsheet, invoices are in QuickBooks or Wave, the crew fills in a paper sheet and brings it back, and the customers on a recurring plan are in a second spreadsheet. Last-minute changes come by phone and text.
A regular calls to add a service and there's no easy way to slot them into the route. The crew finishes a job and the photos sit on someone's phone for three days.
The tool we'd build for a lawn care, snow removal, cleaning, pest control, junk removal or landscaping business would hold the routes, the recurring customers, the crew's day and the billing, and would know that a snow night runs differently from a Tuesday in July.
Things we could build for field services
- A dispatch and route screen with one view of who's where, what's scheduled, what's done and what's late, and drag-and-drop when the day changes.
- Recurring visits (weekly cuts, monthly treatments) tracked by customer and route and scheduled automatically.
- Snow calls that only run when it snows: a trigger you set (say, two centimetres), a list of which lots get cleared first, and a route that builds itself for that night.
- A crew page for the truck: today's stops, mark them done, photos with the time stamped on them, signatures and notes.
- A customer record with the service history, the route, the billing arrangement, the gate code and the note that says "dog in yard, knock first".
- Billing the way you bill: per visit, per push, prepaid season or on account. The numbers go into QuickBooks, and we'll tell you on the first call whether your program can be connected if you use something else.
- A place for the "you missed me" text to land other than your phone at five in the morning.
The time-stamped photo matters more than it looks: when a slip-and-fall claim shows up in March, it shows the crew was there at 4:10 a.m.
Winter is a different business
Field service programs charge for every crew member and treat winter as summer with a plow on. Per-push billing, priority lots and a 4 a.m. route that depends on the forecast are what you end up working around. We'd design for both seasons from the start, and there's no per-crew fee.
What you own when it's done, and what it costs, are on the work with us page.
Common questions from field services
Some of our routes drop signal. Does it still work?
The crew page needs a signal to send stops and photos in. If your routes lose coverage often, say so on the first call and we'll plan around it.
Our crew turns over every season. Will new people pick it up?
The parts a crew member touches are kept as simple as we can make them, and the walkthrough we do at go live is the same one you'd give the next hire.
Can it handle the winter switch?
Yes. The same customer can be on a summer plan and a winter contract with a different route and a different price, billed per push or for the season.
Getting started
Start with a short, free call about how your routes run in summer and in winter. Request a call, or fill in the estimate form.