Add scheduling, dispatching, and more to QuickBooks.
4.3/5 (241 reviews)Smart Service is a direct QuickBooks add-on that adds scheduling, dispatching, and more, making QuickBooks into a one-stop shop for all the administrative needs facing the modern field service company. In addition, the mobile Smart Service system expands QuickBooks with customer management, work orders, routing, time tracking, inventory, estimates, digital forms, workforce tracking, service histories, and many other easy-to-use features. Smart Service will help:
-Manage customers.
-Schedule jobs.
-Handle paperwork.
-Dispatch new work orders.
-Optimize travel routes.
-Track employee progress.
-Track vehicle use.
-Manage assets.
-Analyze marketing.
-Document work with pictures.
Because Smart Service works as a direct QuickBooks add-on, all work done in Smart Service gets duplicated in QuickBooks in real time. Smart Service helps eliminate double data entry and lets service businesses keep all their work in one centralized location.
Businesses in HVAC, plumbing, electrician, pest control, appliance repair, chimney, IT service, construction, document destruction, fire protection, irrigation, lawn care, landscaping, pool service, property management, and countless other field service specializations use Smart Service to go mobile, get organized, increase efficiency, and eliminate waste.
Pros
I've been using Smart Service and iFleet for nearly 4 years and I really couldn't imaging operating our service company without it. I've seen quite a few changes and feature upgrades throughout over the years which shows that the product has great support. When ever I have questions, they are answered right away. The only "complaint" I have if I had to make one would be that I would like to see the front facing camera be fixed within the iFleet app. I have been requesting this to be fix for the entire time that we have been using this product but it seems to go unnoticed. It must be a simple fix as every other camera app on iOS seems to work as intended. The pictures come in reversed which make reading numbers and words impossible. We use the front camera to take picture of product tags that are hard to reach. It would also be nice if the pictures were tagged with the job name and number so that we can easily locate and identify it. Thanks for a great product and all the support that goes into it. Looking forward to using this product for many years to come.
Cons
I've been using Smart Service and iFleet for nearly 4 years and I really couldn't imaging operating our service company without it. I've seen quite a few changes and feature upgrades throughout over the years which shows that the product has great support. When ever I have questions, they are answered right away. The only "complaint" I have if I had to make one would be that I would like to see the front facing camera be fixed within the iFleet app. I have been requesting this to be fix for the entire time that we have been using this product but it seems to go unnoticed. It must be a simple fix as every other camera app on iOS seems to work as intended. The pictures come in reversed which make reading numbers and words impossible. We use the front camera to take picture of product tags that are hard to reach. It would also be nice if the pictures were tagged with the job name and number so that we can easily locate and identify it. Thanks for a great product and all the support that goes into it. Looking forward to using this product for many years to come.
My employer was quite hopeful that Smart Service would be the answer to our scheduling & invoicing headaches as he invested a great deal of money into the software, the iPads, man hours, time away from our regular business days to learn the system, etc. The idea of the system is really good. The implementation in daily business is not so good as it takes real dedication and compliance on everyone's part. He had to rework the inventory on Quick Books so items would be easier for the field guys to find, invent ways to charge mileage as we live in a rural area and Wyoming is huge, rework the labor hours so the men knew how to charge a customer in the field. With all the work we both put into it, the extra training I requested from My Service Depot, you would think that it would run smoothly. Smart Service is only as good as the people's efforts entering the data from a job. If they forget something it can cost the company a lot of money. Since we started Smart Service we have returned to paper as it can be tracked. Having a paper trail is very useful. My employer has returned to invoicing duties as he will know if the men forgot something on the invoice and won't have to eat the cost any more.
Pros
Being able to schedule the field guys is fantastic. I can look at the screen and immediately know if I have a worker available or not. If a person takes the time to learn it the scheduler can be your new best friend. Some of the men really LOVE that they can take photos of the job site, the work, parts that need to be replaced and it stays with that job forever. I love that too. It is very handy.
Cons
Since Smart Service makes a new, unique job in Quick Books every single time you make a job, it makes more sense to have QB in single user mode all the time so a job can be deleted if necessary but my employer uses QB in his office to do his bids and the invoicing so it can be a pain in the neck. There is no way to tell Smart Service to print ONE work order if the jobs are assigned to the department and to the person (indicates who is doing the job) it automatically spits out one for the office that I don't need, one for the job, and one for the human. Once a person's name is entered as a customer there is no way to change it. It is wrong forever. Once it is used in QB it can only be made inactive not deleted. It might be a Quick Books interface problem which is not really Smart Service's problem but if Quick Books runs into a problem and has to close (but they always apologize for the inconvenience ;) ) then I have to close Smart Service, re open QB, start Smart Service, wait for it to go through it's acrobatics (gathering data) before I can use it.
We have been using Smart Service with the IFleet portion for our technicians in the field for about 4 years now. Overall it is a very good system.
Pros
The ease of entering customers, service tickets, time keeping and the GPS tracking are great benefits of this system. For the most part our technicians have been easily trained on the process and it has cut down on a lot of their processing time in the field.
Cons
We have used the "Get Customer" or "Sync Customer" functions many times and since some of our office employees enter data directly into QuickBooks, we've lost a lot of email address and contact information on our customers. This information is critical to our database and it's very frustrating to try to rebuild.
We have several labor descriptions for our business and the work tickets can be set up correctly for the type of labor on a service call, the information transfers to the invoice in QB correctly, but defaults to ONE labor description on the time cards. So I end up having to revise nearly ever time card entry to correct the labor code. Also have to change the service or installation name from the sales rep's name to the actual technician that did the work. This has made the payroll processing a lot more time consuming than it used to be when it was entered directly through the time card entry in QB.
Pros
For the regular dispatching features, I was able to learn completely on my own with no instruction, becoming our in-house "expert." It is intuitive enough that I found solutions for problems that tech support thought had no work-around.
Cons
The program as a whole is outdated and clunky, built around Microsoft Access, limiting its modern application. For example, if you have a customer with 10 locations and 15 total jobs, and they change their billing address, you have to manually go change it 26 times, in a clunky system that is not fast at all.
Adding a new customer takes forever, especially if you have a location and job to enter as well. There is also no feature to have an AP email for their default QuickBooks email, while still have primary contact's email prevalent.
Scheduling is nice that a job can recur indefinitely, but if a job cancels, you have to change its recurrence pattern PRIOR to inactivating the job, or it still comes up on the schedule. It also has no features for a job to occur for a certain period of time, or to recur on a seasonal basis.
If your customers have multiple services per invoice, it is a huge pain. The "Batch invoices to Quickbooks" feature requires the user to post each individual batch one. at. a. time. Again, on a slow, clunky system.
Many of the advanced features have not worked for us at all, or were not as advertised in the demo. Granted, the most annoying part (the scheduler does not work for us) is largely due to our painfully slow cloud system, making it inoperable.
If you want to print a schedule for each employee, be prepared to pay for an upgrade (ours was $600) so they can program a custom report for you, that is iffy on how often it works on the first attempt. (Ours works on the second attempt every time.)
The "Prospect" feature is useless... it doesn't transition over to "Customer" well at all.
It is also impractical to use many features integrated with Quickbooks-- it requires syncing for anything useful, and with a large customer database, that is completely impractical for the frequency required.
Bill your customer a flat rate each month? Forget about it, unless you cheat the system and create two jobs-- one that is the real job for your employee and charges nothing, and one that only your accountant uses.
Bottom line: It's intuitive to figure out basic functions, but there is SO much room for error, and something simple like an updated address once took me 2 hours to complete for our largest customer. They need to do a complete overhaul of their programming and add some basic features before I could recommend Smart Service to anyone. We've found that to make it work, it requires constant ingenuity to come up with a work-around for design flaws.
The transition from the old dispatch program was ok but not great but I don't feel that was Smart Service's issue as much as it was a planning issue within our company. A detailed migration plan should have been written out and discussed in advance so that everything could be addressed. I suggest Smart Service take that lead as many companies just don't understand the devil in the details until it is too late.
Pros
I love that it integrates with QuickBooks in real time. There are pros and cons to seeing every work order in QB but that also allows us to easily see how many times we have been to a customers house. As I said, the devil is in the details and if you just reach out to the customer service rather than struggle with the reports - they will teach you a lot and get you the report you need much quicker than you can do it yourself - until you learn how to do it yourself! The program is very customizable so that it can become what you need.
Cons
I would like the schedule board to act as a calendar too - the default search info isn't what i need but Smart Service can change the defaults - we just haven't it yet - I need to be able to schedule meetings/days off/ appts that are not service calls - in a manner that will allow them to be seen on the schedule without requiring that they be "Completed" 'cause then they disappear.....
Smart Service is available for a one time price of $1,599.99. Additional users and mobile users are available at a discounted rate.
Below are some frequently asked questions for Smart Service.
Smart Service offers the following pricing plans:
Starting from: $1600
Pricing model: One-time License
Free Trial: Available
Smart Service is available for a one time price of $1,599.99. Additional users and mobile users are available at a discounted rate.
Smart Service offers the following features:
Smart Service has the following typical customers:
Large Enterprises, Mid Size Business, Small Business
Smart Service supports the following languages:
English
Smart Service has the following pricing plans:
One-time License
Smart Service supports the following devices:
Android, iPhone, iPad
Smart Service integrates with the following applications:
Dropbox, Google Calendar, QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online
Smart Service offers the following support options:
FAQs, Knowledge Base, Online Support, Phone Support, Video Tutorials
I've been using Smart Service and iFleet for nearly 4 years and I really couldn't imaging operating our service company without it. I've seen quite a few changes and feature upgrades throughout over the years which shows that the product has great support. Whenever I have questions, they are answered right away. The only "complaint" I have if I had to make one would be that I would like to see the front facing camera be fixed within the iFleet app. I have been requesting this to be fix for the entire time that we have been using this product but it seems to go unnoticed. It must be a simple fix as every other camera app on iOS seems to work as intended. The pictures come in reversed which make reading numbers and words impossible. We use the front camera to take picture of product tags that are hard to reach. It would also be nice if the pictures were tagged with the job name and number so that we can easily locate and identify it. Thanks for a great product and all the support that goes into it. Looking forward to using this product for many years to come.