If you’re ready to sign up to begin using ServiceBox and have some burning questions before you take that final leap, you’re probably not the first operator or contractor who’s had these questions running through your head.
After working with countless commercial HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses during onboarding, the same handful of questions come up every single time.So, let's walk through them with practical answers that'll get your crew up and running faster and help you sidestep any roadblocks that come to mind. Let’s dive in!
Moving from a single inventory management app or a spreadsheet to ServiceBox’s inventory management feature is among the first few tasks we recommend tackling, with customer information uploads and jobsite-specific details. The best way to do this is through a bulk upload using an Excel template, rather than entering each item individually.
The important thing to remember during this step is to follow the template we provide, with the first row and column remaining intact so the software can handle the mapping. For many field service businesses, you’ll want to have fields that specify at least:
Later, you’ll also want to consider adding:
That said, don’t overwhelm yourself or your team by trying to create a perfect spreadsheet for upload. It’s easy to use the software for future updates, as the important part is that you start using the system.
Over time, you’ll be able to refine your inventory management process and begin automating order notifications and more. We provide a step-by-step guide to implementing that in our knowledge base.
To protect our customers and help you focus on the important aspects of a new job, we do not allow labor codes or key regulatory line items, such as overtime, to be deleted. While that may seem frustrating if you’re looking to control that yourself, this can ultimately lead to regulatory and legal issues regarding your employees.
We also prevent a line item, like a labor code, from being edited once it’s been used in a quote, work order, or invoice. The purpose of this mechanism is to preserve historical data for future reference.
Recurring work orders are an extensive feature that automates manual work order creation for ongoing work, such as boiler maintenance, security reviews, or jobs that require weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even annual support.
To set up a recurring work order, you’ll begin by setting up a template that’ll be used to automatically generate future work orders, all aligned with the schedule that aligns with your client contracts.
You can create one from the dashboard by going to New > Recurring Work Order, from inside a customer profile under the Work Orders tab, or directly from a job site. Learn more here.
Once you're on the setup screen, you'll name the recurring work (something clear and searchable, like "Quarterly HVAC Maintenance" or "Annual Inspection"). The first work order is generated based on the customer settings, so it can be within 24 hours of the job or 32 days before the actual job date. Next, choose your repeat frequency for when this will be generated.
One setting you’ll need to understand more deeply is how the “Schedule After Last Close Work Order” function supports your recurring work order process. If it’s not checked, the recurring work order will go out regardless of whether the last job was completed or not.
Secondly, "Schedule Work Order" must be selected to insert the work order directly into the calendar. If this is not selected, the work order is still created but remains unscheduled in the work order list, where your dispatch team can manually approve and assign it.
Finally, keep in mind that there is still a manual step required by your field technicians to make this workflow usable, as each technician needs to complete or close the work order manually.
If you’re looking to reduce the level of detail, like removing labor hours and internal pricing, the fix here is in the Print options.
To adjust what's visible before sending out to a customer, open the quote and go to the Print options. From there, you can toggle off line items such as labor hours or unit costs, so they don't appear in the version you want to send out.
Once a quote is created, pricing is entered through the Calculator tab, where you can add labor, materials, and any other categories your account is set up to use. You can also easily add discounts at the bottom of the pricing section.
By default, ServiceBox provides fairly transparent quote breakdowns, including quantities and unit costs. This is to help provide an easy couple-of-clicks setup so you can begin using ServiceBox without requiring customized templates from the get-go.
The quotes user guide walks through everything you can control in your quote layout, including print options and what gets included when you email a quote directly to a customer.
Here is an issue some contractors run into during the first week of usage. When emails or quotes aren't reaching their destination, the cause is almost always domain authentication rather than something inside ServiceBox itself.
Typically, the issue is related to your email security configuration (SPF, DKIM, and related records). The fix is to set up domain authentication properly on your end, which our onboarding specialists don’t have access to. We recommend checking in with your IT team for this.
ServiceBox makes it easy to set up which data your technicians can see by providing as many user roles as you need to fully support the different people and functions across your organization.
Basic user permissions are highly granular and fully customizable to fit your company's needs.
For work orders, you can configure whether technicians have the ability to:
For quotes, you can set it so that technicians can only view quotes tied to their own work orders, or restrict pricing visibility entirely. The same details also work for customer entries, job sites, notes, contacts, and more.
The basic user access levels guide breaks down every configurable permission in detail.
Notification preferences are also critical to keeping everyone in the loop, especially busy technicians who may be on the road or away from office support all week. Getting this right during onboarding pays off every single day after.
To ensure all technicians and field crew receive notifications properly, their mobile devices or tablets must be configured to enable push notifications and grant the ServiceBox app the required permissions. Note that this needs to be enabled per user in ServiceBox and under the “Alert” section in the work order settings tab. You can learn more here.
We recommend rounding up each device when rolling out ServiceBox to ensure the app is properly installed and notifications are configured on a per-device basis.
Finally, send a test notification before they take their devices back out into the field. This will save time on getting everyone up to speed and ensure that office staff can easily notify and reach technicians, no matter what they’re attending to in the field.
Checklists in ServiceBox are built in Settings and then attached to work orders. Here's how to get them set up:
Go to Settings (click the down arrow beside your name at the top right) and select the Checklists tab. Click Add List to start creating it. Begin by structuring your checklist using a Group Title to create sections, then mix and match field types for each item.
Now that you have your checklists created, they can be manually added when creating or editing a work order.
For the full configuration walkthrough, see:
If your internal processes heavily rely on checklists, whether paper-based or communicated via email, like a safety checklist or pre-job inspection, you’ll want to add checklists to your work orders. Typically, your dispatch team will be responsible for making sure checklists are included, but it adds a layer where a team member can make sure you’re staying on track with any compliance gaps that cannot be automated.
So set the expectation that checklists are fully supported and easy to use, but they aren't universally enforced by the system without a little process discipline on your end.
Time tracking in ServiceBox is largely automated. When technicians check in and check out of work orders, they can add a note about what was done, and optionally include a maintenance note that flows through to their time sheet. Their time is automatically logged into a time card.
From there, every check-in and check-out automatically populates the employee's time sheet on the admin side, and any edits made in the time sheet flow back to the work order' and Materials section as well.
If you ever need to manually enter time for a staff member who wasn't on-site, like an apprentice or admin, you can do that, too:
After you hit confirm, you’ll be able to add any relevant notes.
Expenses aren't enabled by default and need to be set up. An admin can create expense categories, such as fuel or materials, and technicians can then log those expenses.
Admins can also edit time entries and expenses directly from the time sheet view.
Check out the full setup walkthrough in the time tracking and employee timesheets guide.
When it comes to login problems, the most common culprits we see are:
Let’s say you’ve got a tech in the field fixing a boiler, and they cannot log in, and you’re still unable to help them troubleshoot. The support team at ServiceBox is always ready to help. Or, if your new hire was running dispatch alone for an afternoon and forgot their password, simply resetting it can fix that issue. Keep in mind that you’ll need to be on the correct URL, unique to their company information, to send this email or log in.
If you're going through setup and still have questions you'd like support with, our customer success team is here to help you! Or, if you'd like a fresh walkthrough of how it all fits together, you can always contact our support team through the app, and we'll help you get the most out of your field service management software.
Our customers love the affordability and flexibility of our software. ServiceBox is priced to ensure you see a return on your investment. We have pricing options that align with your needs; whether you’re a one-person service business or manage a large team in the field.
Field Service Management — Field work scheduling software for contractors and small businesses. Try our full demo! The best field work scheduling software for HVAC, Plumbing and Electrical Contractors.
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