ServiceM8 4.1 – saving time and managing costs

We’re proud to announce the release of ServiceM8 4.1, one of our most feature-packed releases ever!

When we released ServiceM8 4.0 in October last year, we completely overhauled the look and feel of the app, and made many improvements to speed and usability. The feedback from 4.0 has been outstanding. Building on the success of 4.0, we’ve continued to work on enhancements with two main themes in mind: saving time, and managing costs in your business.

We believe that taking advantage of the latest technology allows small businesses to thrive in a competitive environment. So in 4.1, we’ve introduced support for the latest Apple technologies and devices to keep your business at the forefront.

3D Touch: Peek & Pop, and Quick Actions

If you have a device which supports 3D Touch, you can now ‘peek’ into jobs from your schedule, or the calendar. This lets you quickly review multiple jobs without opening them. Using Peek quick actions, you can call the client or even navigate to the job without even opening it. Using Home screen quick actions, you can clock on or off, navigate to your next job, and create new jobs – all from the ServiceM8 app icon.

Sharing Support

We’ve improved support for sharing between apps. It’s now possible to attach photos and documents from other apps directly into the job diary. This makes saving diagrams, documents or email attachments into ServiceM8 easier and faster.

Today Widget

We’ve now added support for including ServiceM8 in the notification centre on your device. You can now see which job you’re currently checked into, regardless of which screen or app you’re using on your iPhone or iPad — simply swipe down from the screen’s top edge at any time. This means that whatever you’re doing, you can always return to your current job fast. You can also see how many minutes remain until you should leave for your next job, so you’re always on time.

Interactive Notifications

New in this release is the ability to reply to staff messages from your device’s Home screen, without having to open the ServiceM8 app. You can also swipe job reminders to start navigating to the job site or call the client.

Keyboard Shortcuts

If you use a keyboard with your iPad, we now support Keyboard Shortcuts. As businesses become more and more mobile, efficient data entry on your mobile devices is becoming essential. 

Photo Actions

Photos in ServiceM8 are a fantastic way of communicating with your clients and team. ServiceM8 4.1 supports an iOS feature called ‘Photo Actions’, which makes it possible to mark up photos using other apps. For example, you can use ‘Skitch’ from the App Store to add annotations such as text, arrows and shapes to photos. This lets you communicate with your staff and customers easier and more effectively than ever.

To learn more about how to use these new iOS features, please read this help article.

ServiceM8 for Apple Watch

One of the most exciting features in this release is ServiceM8 for Apple Watch. Using ServiceM8 on your Apple Watch will keep you on time throughout the day while giving you access to information, without needing to pull out your iPhone.

Using ServiceM8 for Apple Watch, you’ll be able to receive and reply to staff messages from your wrist, keep track of how long you’ve been on site, and view job details in a glance. You’ll also receive notifications on your Apple Watch that tell you everything you need to know about your next job and when you need to leave.

Auto Check in

Checking into jobs in ServiceM8 is a great way to keep track of how much you’re spending on labour. But when staff forget to check in, the recorded time quickly becomes inaccurate. ServiceM8 4.1 detects when you arrive on site, and if you haven’t checked in within a few minutes, it will automatically check you in and back-date the start time to when you arrived.

Improved GPS

ServiceM8 4.1 comes with a completely new GPS system. Most GPS systems work by reporting GPS location consistently throughout the day, regardless of whether anyone needs the information. ServiceM8 now only reports your GPS location when required by someone in your team. This dramatically reduces battery usage, and improves GPS accuracy. We highly encourage any users who have disabled GPS tracking to reactivate it with ServiceM8 4.1.

Smart ‘Next Job’ Reminders

Since the beginning, ServiceM8’s automatic job reminders, occurring 15 minutes out from the next scheduled job, have been great at keeping staff punctual. We’re now introducing a new, smarter ‘Next job’ reminder.

Now, ServiceM8’s job reminder takes into account the distance to your next job site, travel time, and traffic, and notifies you 5 minutes before you need to leave. This is a simple but massive change, and we think it’s going to make a huge difference to keeping your business on time throughout the day.

Job Costing

ServiceM8 has always made it easy to create invoices and charge your customers, and in this update we’re introducing a new way to manage your costs and see the profitability of jobs.

ServiceM8’s Job Costing add-on is designed to be super-simple to use, providing you with estimated profit from start to finish on every job. With the Job Costing add-on, you can quickly get a picture of how profitable a job will be while you’re quoting, and then see how much you made after the job has been completed.

With Job Costing activated, each job’s estimated profit is clearly displayed in the job card. Hovering over the profit gives you a breakdown of materials and labour, and clicking on the profit icon provides a more in-depth breakdown of costs and gross profit. The Job Costing add-on even tracks admin labour automatically, which is often a hidden cost to your business.

To get started with Job Costing, please read this help article.

Margin Billing

Many businesses prefer to set item prices based on their costs plus a percentage margin, rather than setting the sell price directly. Our new Margin Billing add-on adds cost and margin columns to the materials table, allowing you to quickly set material and labour prices based on margin.

For instructions on how to activate and use Margin Billing, please read this help article.

Check in time editing

Because recorded time is now an important part of calculating labour costs when using Job Costing, it’s important that this data is accurate. If staff forget to check in, you need to be able to correct those mistakes. Starting with this update, it’s now possible to edit recorded time from the job card. You can even convert checked in time to charged labour at the click of a button.

To learn how to edit recorded time, please read this help article

Online Quote Acceptance

In 2014 we launched our integration with Stripe, which included giving your customers the option to pay their invoices online using a credit card. With ServiceM8 4.1, we’re now enabling your customers to accept your quotes online. Customers can also ask questions about their quote, which you’ll be notified of via email, with everything saving to the job diary. 

To use the Online Quote Acceptance feature, all you need to do is send your customers a special link to view their quote. Just add the special field code {document} to your Email or SMS templates.

Online Booking Enquiries

Manually processing enquiries coming from your website or Facebook page can be difficult and time consuming. The details have to be re-typed or copy/pasted into the job card, and customers frequently forget to provide important details. In this update, we’ve introduced a super-simple way to capture enquiries from your website or Facebook page which can be set up in minutes.

ServiceM8’s Online Booking form gives you a beautifully designed online booking page for your business that works perfectly on any device. The address field auto completes to ensure your customers enter a valid address, and your customers can attach photos and files to help explain the work they need done. Enquiries from the Online Booking form arrive in your inbox and they can then be converted instantly to jobs.

The Online Booking form is super easy to set up — it’s automatically available as part of the ServiceM8 Inbox add-on. To learn how to add the Online Booking form to your website or Facebook page, refer to this help article.

ServiceM8 4.1 is now available for download on the App Store. If you’re not a user yet, getting started is easy – download the app or create an account online here.