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Service specification 4 sections Products named

Bespoke Field Service
Management Software

Get it scoped Buy or build?
01

What field service management software does

Field service management, often shortened to FSM, runs work that happens away from the office. It plans who goes where, sends the job to the engineer’s phone, and records what they did on site. Most systems also handle quotes, parts, certificates and the invoice at the end.

Field service or job management?

Mostly the words change, not the software. Service and maintenance contractors say field service. Trades say job management. The same FSM tools cover both. Use whichever phrase your team already uses.

This is one type of bespoke software. It often sits beside a bespoke ERP system and customer portal software. It may need API integration services to read customer and stock records.

Off-the-shelf job software against something built for you

There are good products in this market. This is when one of them stops being the right answer.

General to this kind of project rather than to any one product. No prices, because none are ours to publish.
What to weigh The case for building your own What it costs you
How the day is planned Scheduling follows how you really allocate work, including the awkward parts. You have to write down how you allocate work. Much of it lives in one person head.
The engineer on site The app asks only what your job actually needs, so it gets filled in. Getting engineers to use anything new is a people job, not a software job.
What you pay No monthly fee per engineer, so a busy season does not cost more. The build costs money up front, and so does every change afterwards.
Joining things up Jobs, parts, invoices and certificates can share one set of records. Each connection to an existing system is its own piece of work.
Paperwork Certificates and reports come out in your format, signed on site. Somebody has to own those documents being right, and keep them right.
When to buy instead If a product fits, buying is faster and cheaper. Most firms should. Building because a product is nearly right is the expensive mistake.

What it replaces

Most of this work is being done already. It is just being done on paper, on the phone and in the evening.

The day is planned on a whiteboard

Only the person holding the pen knows the plan. A sick engineer means a morning of phone calls.

The board shows who is free, who is nearby and who holds the right ticket.

Job sheets come back in the van

Paper arrives days later, wet or missing. Somebody types it up again to raise the invoice.

The engineer records the job on site and the office sees it the same minute.

Nobody can say what happened last visit

The history sits in an old file, a different engineer's memory, or nowhere at all.

Every visit to that site and that asset sits on one record with photos and readings.

Invoices go out late

The invoice waits for the paperwork, and the paperwork waits for someone to have time.

The invoice is built from what the engineer entered, as soon as the job is signed off.

02

The products, and when to buy one

Search for this software and you will find products, not developers. That is the right result. For most businesses one of them is the answer, so here they are.

For a trades business running a few vans, look at Tradify, Powered Now, OnSite7 and ToolTime. For service and maintenance contractors with bigger teams and contract duties, look at Joblogic, Commusoft, BigChange, Simpro, Workever and Fergus. For large firms with heavy compliance rules, the options are Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, IFS and Totalmobile.

Those are mature products with years of work behind them. If one fits, buy it. We would rather tell you that now than take a scoping call that should never have happened.

When a product is the right answer

Buy one when your jobs look like everyone else’s: a quote, a visit, a job sheet, an invoice. Setup is quick. Someone else fixes the faults and keeps the phone app working. Most connect to Xero or QuickBooks with no work from you. If that describes your business, stop reading and go and buy one.

When building one wins

Build when the product keeps saying no to something that matters. In practice it is usually one of four things.

Your certificate or job sheet has to be laid out a set way, because a regulator, an insurer or a large customer says so. Your pricing depends on a contract the product cannot model, so someone corrects every invoice by hand. The job needs a customer, asset or stock record that lives in a system you already run, and the product cannot show a record it does not hold. Or the sum stops working: most products charge for every engineer every month, forever, and you have a lot of engineers.

Try two products before deciding. The things they cannot do become your specification, and that is a far better brief than a blank page. Our guide to writing a software specification covers turning that list into something every supplier can quote against.

03

What goes in a bespoke build

Three parts do most of the work. The scope names every job type, every document and every system the build has to read.

  1. 01

    Scheduling and dispatch

    The board shows who is free, who is nearby and who is trained for the work. Jobs move between engineers without a phone call. Recurring visits and contract commitments are planned once and then repeat on their own, so a missed service shows up before the customer notices it.

  2. 02

    The engineer's phone

    The job, the address, the site history and the parts list arrive on the phone. Photos, meter readings, times and a customer signature go back. It has to keep working with no signal and sync when the van reaches coverage, because a job that cannot be closed on site becomes evening paperwork again.

  3. 03

    Proof, certificates and invoicing

    Anything that has to leave site as a document is generated from what the engineer entered, in the layout your regulator or customer expects. The invoice follows the job rather than being typed again from a paper sheet, so billing stops waiting on the van coming back.

What drives the cost

The number depends on the jobs, the documents and the systems involved. We do not guess it from a headcount.

  1. 03.1

    How many job types

    A single repeat visit is simple. Installs, callouts, services and quoted work each behave differently.

  2. 03.2

    What must work offline

    Reading jobs offline is one job. Recording and syncing them safely is a larger one.

  3. 03.3

    What documents come out

    A plain job sheet is quick. A regulated certificate with a fixed layout is not.

  4. 03.4

    Which systems it reads

    Accounts, stock and customer records each need a link, and one system has to own each number.

How the number gets set
  • Every job type listed
  • Every document named
  • Each source system agreed
  • A fixed price against that scope
04

Common questions

What is the best field service management software?
There is no single best one. Tradify, Powered Now, OnSite7 and ToolTime are aimed at trades running a handful of vans. Joblogic, Commusoft, BigChange, Simpro, Workever and Fergus are aimed at service and maintenance contractors with larger teams. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, IFS and Totalmobile are built for big firms with heavy compliance rules. The right one depends on your team size, your trade and the paperwork you have to produce. Try the two closest to your situation before you look at building anything.
What is the difference between field service and job management software?
Mostly the words, not the software. Service and maintenance contractors tend to say field service management. Trades tend to say job management. Both mean the same job: plan the work, send someone to it, record what happened and raise the invoice. The comparison sites treat job management as a section inside field service management rather than a separate thing. Search using whichever phrase your team already uses. You will land on the same set of products either way.
Is there free field service management software?
Some products offer a free tier, and free tiers come with limits. Check what the limit is before you build a business around one, because the limit is what you will hit first. It is usually the number of users, the number of jobs, or the features that produce documents. A free tier is a fair way to find out whether this kind of software helps you at all. It is a poor basis for choosing the system a growing team will depend on.
Can engineers use it with no phone signal?
They should be able to. Plenty of work happens in plant rooms, basements and rural sites with no usable signal. A well-built mobile app holds the day's jobs on the device, lets the engineer record it all offline, and syncs when the van reaches coverage. This matters more than most feature lists suggest. If an engineer cannot close a job on site, the paperwork goes back to being done in the evening, which is the problem the software was bought to fix.
How secure is customer data on an engineer's phone?
Each engineer should have their own account, not a shared login. This shows who changed each job and keeps access separate. Remove their access the day they leave the organisation. A lost or stolen phone should be signed out remotely. Its saved job data should also be protected from casual access. Keep only the jobs and customer details that engineer needs on the device. The main record should remain in the system, so authorised staff can restore work on a replacement phone.
Will it connect to Xero or QuickBooks?
Most products connect to both, and that link is one of the better reasons to buy rather than build. A bespoke build can connect to either as well, along with your stock system, your CRM or your own database. The important part is the scope saying which system owns each number. Deciding that once, in writing, is what stops the accounts package and the job system disagreeing about what a customer owes. Our API integration services page covers how those links get built.
Should we buy a product or build our own?
Buy when your jobs look like everyone else's: a quote, a visit, a job sheet, an invoice. Setup is quick and someone else looks after it. Build when the product keeps saying no to something that matters. Common reasons are a certificate or job sheet that has to be laid out a set way, contract pricing the product cannot model, or job data that has to come from a system you already run. Try two products first. The things they cannot do become your specification.
How many engineers do you need before building makes sense?
There is no fixed number, because the deciding factor is usually fit rather than size. That said, per-user pricing changes the sum as a team grows. Most products charge for every engineer every month, forever. A build costs more at the start and then needs maintaining. Somewhere between those two lines the totals cross, and where they cross depends on your headcount and how much the product charges. Work out your own figures with a real quote from a real product before assuming a build is cheaper.
Who owns the software once it is built?
It depends on the build. A wholly new codebase belongs to the client. Dev Moves owns the Zeus Laravel CMS and licenses it to the client. The project-specific frontend is packaged separately and belongs to the client. Reusing Zeus lowers the cost because the core platform already exists. Your job records, customer data and site history remain yours in every case. We hand them over in a usable format with the documents needed to run the software.

Every question we get asked, in one place

The parts engineers and customers actually touch: mobile app development, bespoke databases and customer portal software.

Next step

Tell us which product nearly worked

Bring the one you tried and the thing it would not do. That is usually the whole specification, and it tells us straight away whether you need a build at all.

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