Sheets, printouts, whiteboards, and paper time cards. The hassle of shuffling files around until you have what you need.

For too long, field service management has been bound to outdated methods of scheduling and performance tracking. This process costs your business time, focus, and cash to keep everything in line for a fully optimized workday. Field service management (FSM) software ensures your office teams and technicians have the tools and information required to do their jobs well, and that data is entered and compiled as accurately as possible.

Field service management software changes the game entirely. By upgrading to a digital system that gives everyone on your team a common information gathering and sharing portal, you’ll improve quality and precision in commercial contracting, doing far more with the resources and skills you already have. It transforms your field operations — from prioritizing and detailing work orders and enhancing the customer experience to creating the right invoices faster with less effort. Keep reading for four key advantages of field service management software.

1. Better Visibility Across Team Members

When technicians have visibility into the task ahead of them, they can get the job done more efficiently.

Field service software simplifies operations and improves workflow management. Our platform provides a dashboard for each work order, which is numbered and shows the issue and maintenance needed. This dashboard helps technicians know what they need to do and what has already been done. You can easily assign these orders to a field technician’s schedule, and they will receive real-time updates. Whether it’s for HVAC, electrical, plumbing, or any other service request, our workflows provide information on how critical the repair is, its past service history, and how long it should take to complete. Additionally, you can search for similar requests using task filters to get an instant picture of what’s due.

Visibility is a top priority for many field service managers. That said, paper-based systems often struggle when it comes to establishing clear, organized information, lacking an at-a-glance view that helps you plan for and follow up on the work that’s upcoming or in progress.

FSM tools can present work order statuses on screen, with labels that allow you to make sense of active jobs. Color codes, for instance, are a simple, powerful way to determine whether a request is being dealt with on time. A coding scheme might look like this:

• Green: The work has started.
• Gray: The work is done.
• White: The request is complete.
• Red: The work is suspended.
• Purple: A service technician is en route.

Tasks can also be coded for urgency, so you can service the most complex or high-value assignments with the appropriate skills and inventory. As soon as something changes, it’s automatically updated in the software for administrative staff and the field team they’re managing to see. If you work in one or a dozen  territories, those benefits are the same.

2. Time Saved with Optimized Field Schedules

When there’s a busy day of service appointments ahead, you don’t want your technicians spending time checking in with the office. The time it takes for them to drive to the office, hang out by the water cooler, get their schedule, and get on with their day, is valuable time that they could otherwise be spending on the job. Not to mention the money that it costs you as the owner, to pay for that time.

Effective field service management software gives your technicians all the schedule and job information they need on their mobile device. That way they can leave directly from their homes, as opposed to driving into the office.

The best FSM software feeds workflow data into a live GPS map. Technicians and administrators can then see which tasks are due from customer to customer, setting up optimized routes for that schedule.

Additionally, you can optimize workflows further with estimated repair times. These help your mobile workforce predict whether a larger, more urgent job is feasible that day, or whether smaller, less critical tasks should be given second priority, providing further visibility than historic customer records and Google Maps alone.

Since the field technician also has an exact idea of what tools are necessary for the job, they don’t have to leave that job for more supplies. If you’re an HVAC owner, for example, your bread-and-butter parts are in the van, fully stocked up thanks to field service software’s detailed work orders. If you do require extra parts, send a runner instead. Emergency repairs thrive on automated scheduling, too, because you can assign local contractors with the perfect arsenal at the ready.

The result? More revenue, fewer trips, and optimized field schedules.

3. Clearer Insights on Technician Performance

Do you know which teams or individuals are driving the most revenue for your business? For many commercial contracting companies, the answer is still up in the air. Carefully parsing through time sheets and service reports is one solution, but paper records can be lost, misplaced, or contain inaccuracies. You’re relying on good faith and customer feedback, which while essential, doesn’t lay performance data out in black and white — at least, not to a degree you can completely trust.

However, FSM software provides a constant eye on the assignments each worker is undertaking and how they’ve approached it. Your contractors record when they start and complete a job before submitting a weekly timesheet in their field service management platform. By comparing these logs to estimated repair hours, you can determine who finished faster or later. Also, with the software’s real-time task updates, you can review everything that made the service request more difficult or successful. Documents, comments, and attached images can live in your hub forever, offering more context when you need it.

From there, you’ll gain actionable insights such as:

• Which technician needs more training.
• Which technician are most productive or particularly efficient at certain jobs .
• Realizing that your inventory management may be lacking in particular areas of field work; for example, if certain types of repairs are becoming more common and you should prepare additional stockpiles of the most useful parts and equipment.
• Equally, you might find that some customers are bringing in more revenue compared to others. Our software lets you analyze customer revenue over days, weeks, and months for a snapshot of your profitability. If a few accounts are bringing in less cash that doesn’t justify the time or callouts, you may want to discuss more appropriate billing rates. Therefore, it’s possible to avoid pinning lower earnings on performance, but rather attribute them to service contracts that don’t reflect the hours or effort expended.

There’s more than metrics to consider, too. Since effective field service management software provides a continuous flow of communication between your office and technicians, you can learn more about their performance from the updates they give you in the field. This connection can also eliminate your office team’s need to re-key information into their accounting system.

4. Higher Earnings from Improved Invoicing

Let’s face it — traditional invoicing is a nightmare. You can fall several weeks behind and play catch up, severely compromising your cash flow and revenue forecasts. Or, you might mix up the details with paper invoices, send incorrect billing rates to clients, or leave out details they want to review before paying. Excel spreadsheets can cause the same obstacles because you’re still handling customer data that has to be dragged into a template or custom invoice generator. There’s the risk you or your accounting staff will slip up and bill the wrong rate.

Most commercial contracting companies come to us saying, “we want to improve our invoicing.” This is where the value of our FSM software is felt from Day 1: We’ve developed QuickBooks integration to make invoicing fast, easy, accurate, and reliable.

Operix stands out from other field management software as the top platform to integrate into one of the most popular accounting tools on the market – QuickBooks online. That means if you use QuickBooks already, you’re enhancing what you’re used to — and if you don’t, then it’s one of the most seamless methods for modernizing your invoice practices.

As you set billing rates for specific fixes or , on-demand projects, our FSM software matches the time taken, materials used, client contract, and changing scope to every work order. When your field technicians are finished, they can collect a customer signature right then and there using our app. Everyone is on the same page for what the field work costs, how extensive it was, and whether it’s been completed to a sufficient standard.

Subsequently, once your administrators review and approve this data, they’ll generate an invoice in seconds. You can send it out same-day. As a result, you’ll get paid faster, with zero errors. Through QuickBooks, you can also automate payment reminders for outstanding bills and collect more from your clients..

Automating your billing is a huge advantage for your finances, which impacts everything else we’ve discussed here. But, really, the best way to leave pen and paper behind is to show you what the benefits of field service management software can do firsthand.