This month we’re excited to announce the External Calendars add-on. With external calendars you can see (but not change) your ServiceM8 schedule in other calendar software such as MS Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal; – and even your iPhone/iPad.
To activate external calendars, visit the new addon directory inside your account.
ServiceM8™ today announced it has released a new app for small and micro businesses to the App Store™.
ServiceM8 is a feature-rich package of innovative technology and business framework, specifically designed to provide micro and small businesses with corporate style tools that simplify the connection between staff, customers and the processes of winning and completing work.
“ServiceM8 is dedicated to helping small and micro businesses increase productivity and maximise cashflow” said Kim Ford CEO of ServiceM8. “In my 40 years of business I have never seen it harder for small business to operate than it is today. ServiceM8 combines technology, tools and process so small business can leverage their strengths in what is a competitive and regulated business environment.”
ServiceM8 is an iPad™ app that also works on iPhone™ and the web. The app helps manage the myriad of tasks, communications and documents associated with operating today’s small business.
The app includes innovative features designed to help cashflow like the ability to post an invoice to a street address direct from an iPad. The app makes communication and information transfer between staff and customers easy, passing relevant details about jobs and tasks in a few finger taps. These communication features reduce time and missed communications within the business. That saved time can then be deployed to productive use.The app makes extensive use of Amazon’s cloud technology to relieve operators of backup and recovery tasks and uses integrated voice, camera and scanner technologies to streamline and enhance productivity.
Our pricing model is tied to the number of jobs created by the business in a month, linking our success to that of our customer. We couldn’t think of a better way to show our commitment to improving small business and to help further the first 20 jobs every month are free.
With ServiceM8, it’s in our interest not only for our customers to succeed, but to grow – and with no ongoing contracts we re-win our customers loyalty on a monthly basis.
We’ve introduced five new ServiceM8 ‘characters’ this month. Change each staff members’ icon to a unique character to personalise your dispatch board, and locate staff on the map easier.
To change a staff members character:
1. Login to ServiceM8 and go to Settings
2. Go to Staff
3. Edit the staff member
4. Under options, change the Staff Icon setting
This month we’re excited to induce SMS Templates. As with emails, you can now setup SMS templates for texts you are constantly sending to clients or staff.
Payment and quotes reminders, scheduling delays and anything else can now be a click away on your Dispatch Board.
This report uses active jobs as a baseline to compare against new jobs and the weekly rate of completed/unsuccessful jobs over the last three months.
Use this report as a trend-line of if you are getting in-front or falling behind with your current job workload.
Try it from the Reports menu of your ServiceM8 account today.
We’ve introduced a brand new invoicing page this month. In addition to looking the part, this update will provide you with a quick overview of your finances – how much quoted work you have have in the pipeline, which customers owe you the most money, and most importantly – who do you need to invoice. The goal is to reduce the time involved in invoicing jobs.
What’s changed?
We’ve introduced the option to view your job pricing as either Inc Tax or Ex Tax, simply go to the Quotes and Invoicing tab and select your preference from the tax drop down.
This provides you with flexibilty to work with your preferred pricing method and will prevent staff accidentally quoting inc pricing when they wanted ex, or vice versa.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could hit a button and have all of your invoicing done? Each client would have an email address and would be happy to receive their invoice via email – it would save you hours of printing, folding and posting of invoices – all so you can get paid for the work you’ve already delivered.
While this is a great idea, most people will tell you that sometimes it is just not possible. The client might not have an email address, or you might have forgotten to get their email address during the job? How many hours a month do you (or your admin staff) spend posting paper invoices to clients? What about the time involved in getting the invoices to the post office? And what about the cashflow issues because your behind in posting your invoices? Wouldn’t it be great if you had a magic button in ServiceM8 so you could post invoices to clients as easily as you can email them? Well now you can.
InstantPost is a new feature in ServiceM8 to assist time poor businesses get their invoicing to the client on-time. With the click of a button on your invoicing page, you can confirm your job pricing and postal address, and instantly post your invoices via Australia Post to directly to your clients.
InstantPost is simple, when you click the InstantPost button, we will:
ServiceM8 has been named one of Australia’s 100 most innovative products or services, in one of the largest and most audacious innovation awards of its kind in Australia – the Anthill Magazine ‘SMART 100’ Index.
About ServiceM8
ServiceM8 (Service Mate) is a hosted application that allows you to manage all facets of a field service delivery business. It will guide you from job quoting (or job estimates) right through to invoicing and payment. You will have real-time information on what jobs are currently active, what quotes have been issued to clients, and where and when staff are at clients sites.
ServiceM8 is designed to be used by everyone in your business, from each individual field staff member, to back office staff, through all levels of management. It is simple and effective, and best of all, it’s available anywhere, anytime.
About the Smart 100
The SMART 100 Index was created by leading business media channel Anthill Magazine in 2008 to identify and rank Australia’s 100 most innovative products, proving to be one of the largest surveys of its kind in Australia.
“In true Anthillian style, the SMART 100 is an ever-evolving, ever-improving experiment,” said Anthill founder and Editor-In-Chief James Tuckerman.
“It identifies and ranks new Australian innovations by applying a combination of crowdsourcing, collaboration and common-sense. We employ the judgement of ‘mavens’ and readers.
“Unlike your average awards program, we don’t lock a panel of expert adjudicators in a small room. Neither do we demand a thorough analysis of each applicant’s P&L statement. We don’t even request an historical snapshot of ‘runs on the board’ or commercial achievements.
“This is because innovation is future focussed. It is about identifying and solving problems in ways that will change the way we live, do business and think.”
What is a ‘maven’?
Academics have known about the existence of Mavens for many years, claiming they have a particular psychotype. However, it was Malcom Gladwell’s book ‘The Tipping Point’ that really brought attention to this underutilised group in society.
Gladwell described Mavens as “those who are intense gatherers of information and impressions, and so are often the first to pick up on new or nascent trends”. ‘Maven’ is a Yiddish word that means, literally, “one who understands”.
According to Tuckerman, “The maven’s unique talent is his or her ability to unearth and identify, from all the new products and services available in the marketplace, the innovations that are worth propagating. A maven also generally has the ability to communicate the potential of the innovation to the broader public and, therefore, plays an integral role in the mass take-up of any innovation.
“These people have the ability to identify innovations that will meet an important need for the population. The hypothesis is that Mavens will provide a more predictive measure of innovation than mass consumers or, indeed, experts in the field – because they have a unique ability to identify the importance and relevance of an innovation.”
What is Anthill Magazine?
Anthill was initially launched as a print magazine, in September 2003, by its current editor-in-chief James Tuckerman, who at the age of 26 quit his day job, departing a promising career in corporate PR, to pursue his own entrepreneurial journey.
Since then, it has evolved into one of Australia’s leading online communities for Australian business owners, ranked among the Top 50 Business & Finance websites in Australia by Nielsen Online Ratings. It is dedicated to innovation, entrepreneurship and the commercial development of Australian ideas.
