Dispatch, planned maintenance visits and van inventory for trade contractors whose revenue rides on service calls, recurring agreements and fixing it on the first trip.
Field Service runs the service side of a trade contractor: taking the call, matching it to the right technician, sending that technician with the right parts, and closing the visit with signed paperwork and billable detail. Maintenance plans generate recurring visits, so quarterly filter changes, annual sprinkler inspections or monthly pest treatments appear on the schedule automatically. Technicians see the equipment history at each site on their phone, record readings and deficiencies, and capture a customer signature before leaving. The office gets completed work ready for invoicing the same day, not when paper tickets arrive.
Commercial trades sit in the middle of the field service spectrum. Visits are shorter than construction work but more varied than a single-product repair business: one day a technician swaps a rooftop unit, the next brings a routine inspection, the next an emergency leak in a tenant's space. Revenue depends on maintenance agreements as much as on reactive calls, so the schedule has to protect planned visits while leaving room for urgent work. Field Service adapts through work types with default durations and required skills, scheduling policies that weigh priority against travel, and maintenance plans tied to service contracts. Contractors that also run installation crews can put those teams on the same resources, customers and asset records instead of a separate system.
A no-heat call or a tripped breaker feeding a server closet cannot wait for tomorrow's route. Dispatchers create the work order from the caller's site record, see which qualified technicians are nearby and what they are working on, and slot the job in with the optimizer or a drag on the dispatcher console. The customer receives an arrival window and displaced planned visits are flagged for rescheduling.
Service contracts define what each customer bought: visit frequency, covered equipment and included tasks. Maintenance plans turn those terms into work orders ahead of time, each carrying a checklist built for that asset type. Managers can see which agreement visits are overdue, which sites come due next, and which contracts are approaching renewal, so the renewal conversation grows out of normal service rather than a last-minute scramble.
Fire protection, backflow, elevator and similar inspections follow defined procedures and produce reports that owners and authorities may ask to see. Mobile flows walk technicians through each device or component, record pass or fail results with photos, and turn deficiencies into quotes for corrective work. The finished report attaches to the site, so whoever performs the next cycle starts with the findings from the last one.
Each van can be modeled as a location holding its own product inventory. Technicians consume parts against the work order, request replenishment when stock runs low, and transfer items between vehicles or back to the warehouse. Limiting each technician to the stock on their own van keeps counts honest, and parts recorded on the job flow to the invoice so installed materials do not go unbilled.
Three choices shape a trade contractor's design. The first is how customers and sites relate: a property manager or facilities department may control many buildings, so accounts, locations and billing contacts need to be distinct records. The second is the asset register: which equipment is tracked individually, such as chillers, panels, risers or elevators, and which is treated as a consumable. The third is how work is classified, with work types for repair, planned maintenance, inspection, installation and quoted work, each carrying default durations and required skills. Get these right and scheduling, contract coverage and reporting all read from one consistent structure.
Completed work orders, labor and parts pass to invoicing, and payment status comes back so technicians know about past-due accounts before they arrive on site.
Warehouse stock, purchase orders and part costs stay in the system of record, while van-level quantities and consumption on each job sync with Field Service.
Alarms from connected equipment can open a work order automatically, handing the technician fault codes and readings before anyone drives to the building.
Paying for a mobile license per person rarely makes sense on a trades crew. Helpers, apprentices and contract labor can often be tracked as resources on custom records without paid seats, while lead technicians carry mobile access. Decide this during design, because retrofitting it later means reworking scheduling and timesheet logic.
Installing the scheduling engine is not the same as configuring it. Territories, operating hours, skills, travel settings and scheduling policies all need tuning to match how your dispatchers really decide. Untouched defaults are a common reason dispatchers drift back to whiteboards and shared calendars.
Technicians fill in forms on ladders, in mechanical rooms and in the rain. Mobile flows with a handful of fields, sensible defaults and prefilled site data get used; long forms get skipped or completed at night from memory. Pilot with a few technicians before rolling out to everyone.
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Yes, and many trade contractors need both. Short reactive calls and planned maintenance use standard appointments, while installations and retrofits can use multi-day appointments and crews. The important step is agreeing how longer jobs break into work orders, so project managers and dispatchers read the same schedule. We usually configure the service side first, because that is where scheduling pressure is greatest.
Billing terms normally live in the accounting system, with Field Service recording what was actually performed. Contracts in Salesforce define covered assets and entitlements, so technicians and dispatchers can tell whether a repair falls under the agreement or should be quoted separately. Capturing that distinction at the visit is what stops covered work from being billed and uncovered work from being given away.
No. The mobile app works offline, which matters in basements, parking structures and mechanical penthouses where coverage disappears. Technicians download the day's work, complete checklists, record parts and capture signatures, and everything syncs when the connection returns. We test offline behavior on the phones and tablets your technicians carry and in the types of buildings where they spend their day.
Usually, yes. Common causes are a scheduler that was installed but never configured, multi-day appointments that error out, automation that floods users with notifications, or licensing every worker when only some need it. We start by reviewing the current build, fix whatever blocks daily use, and then decide with you which parts are worth rebuilding and which can stay.
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