Is ServiceM8 a CRM?

Short answer. Yes, for what a trade business means by a CRM. Every client gets a card holding their contacts, notes, badges and the full history of every job, email and text, and ServiceM8 chases quotes and unpaid invoices by itself. It is not a sales CRM, though. There is no pipeline you can add your own stages to, and every enquiry you log uses up a job credit.

ServiceM8 does not really sell itself as a CRM either. It calls itself job management software, and its About page lists CRM as one item among job cards, scheduling, staff tracking, forms and invoicing. That is the right way round. The customer record hangs off the jobs.

Where I stand: I set ServiceM8 up for a living, certified by them and listed in their Partner Directory. I do not resell licences and my fee is the same whichever plan you pick. ServiceM8 does pay partners a share on clients they bring in, so I am not neutral. Read on knowing that.

What a CRM does, and how much of it ServiceM8 covers

Most people asking this want to know one thing: do I need a second system for my customers? Here are the usual CRM jobs, and the straight answer for each.

Scroll the table sideways on a phone.

Look down that plan column. Nearly all of it is on the free plan. The customer side of ServiceM8 is the base product, not an extra. What you pay more for higher up the ladder is mostly job volume, forms and asset management.

What is actually on a client card

Every client in ServiceM8 has a card. Going by ServiceM8's own help article, this is what is on it.

• Contacts, as many as you need, each with a role. The primary contact lands on every new job. The billing contact is compulsory. When the tenant lets you in and the agent pays, that split is the whole point.
• A client diary. Notes, photos and documents saved here show at the bottom of every job for that client. The key safe code. The dog. The stopcock nobody can find. Written once, seen by whoever turns up next.
• Client badges. Switch one on for a client and it switches on for every job created for them. ServiceM8's own examples are "VIP" and "Bad Payer". You can guess which one gets more use.
• Job history, every quote, work order, completed and unsuccessful job for that customer, plus any assets tied to them if you use asset management.

Then the part that makes it a CRM without anybody doing CRM work. Every email and text sent from a job card, and every reply, is kept with that job. ServiceM8's pricing FAQ calls it storing all communication with the client with the rest of their job history, in one place. Nobody copies an email into a customer file.

If the same customer ends up in there twice, and they will, you tick both and merge them. And for letting agents or anyone with a head office and lots of sites, the Client Sites add-on keeps notes, badges and photos per site while the invoices go to head office.

Where it stops being a CRM

Every job in ServiceM8 sits in one of four statuses: Quote, Work Order, Completed or Unsuccessful. ServiceM8's help centre is blunt: the four are "locked-in" and cannot be customised. So there is no "site visit booked" or "chased twice" stage of your own.

What you get instead is queues. A queue is a holding pen for a job that is waiting on something, and every job in one has an expiry date. If it is still sitting there on that date, it is flagged and drops back into your Action Required list. ServiceM8's own suggested names give the idea: "Quotes awaiting approval" for jobs waiting on the customer, and "Provide quote" for jobs waiting on somebody in your team, which lands in that person's list with a notification. For reporting, jobs also carry categories.

A handful of well named queues is a working sales pipeline for a trade business. It is also the part most people never set up, because it only looks obvious once built. That is the sort of thing a setup should leave you with on day one.

Now the honest limit. If you sell big jobs slowly, with several visits, a design stage, finance and a salesperson carrying thirty open quotes, a proper sales CRM does that better, and I would not bend ServiceM8 into one. Some kitchen, bathroom, solar and extension firms work like that. Reactive work, servicing and ordinary installs almost never do.

Every enquiry you log costs a job credit

I have not seen anybody else write this down. In ServiceM8, a lead is a job. And jobs are what you pay for.

From ServiceM8's own pricing FAQ: every time you create a new job card, it uses a job credit. A job can start as a Quote, and when the customer accepts and it becomes a Work Order, it does not use a second credit. The catch runs the other way. A quote you lose has still used its credit.

Run the numbers on a normal month. You do 40 jobs. Twenty are callouts that go straight to a work order. The other twenty come from quotes, and you win about one quote in three. That is 60 quotes to land those 20 jobs, plus the 20 callouts. 80 job credits for 40 jobs of paid work. Starter covers 50 a month. Growing covers 150. So a firm that looks like a £25 Starter customer is really a £59 Growing one.

You cannot buy your way out of a busy month on the lower plans either. Go over and you carry on as normal for another seven days. If your billing month resets in that window, fine. If not, you are prompted to upgrade. Only Premium Plus publishes a price for extra jobs, 15p each.

So: log a job when an enquiry is worth quoting properly, not every time somebody rings for a rough idea. And count your real quotes, lost ones included, before you pick a plan. The full ladder is in what ServiceM8 really costs in the UK, or you can have me work it out with you before you subscribe rather than after.

The chasing it does for you

ServiceM8's pricing page sells the core of this as "CRM Automation". Everything in this list is on every plan, the free one included.

• Booking confirmations, and reminders before the visit, by email or text.
• Quote follow ups, which nudge a customer who has been sitting on a quote.
• Payment follow ups on invoices that have not been paid.
• A feedback request once the job is complete.
• An On the Way text with an estimated arrival time.

Texts are the part that costs money. Free includes none, Starter 100 a month, Growing 300, Premium 1,000, and the plan table prices extras at 5p. ServiceM8's separate free plan page says 10c per text instead, in cents. I go by the plan table, which is in pounds.

On ServiceM8's default wording, these work. Rewritten to sound like you, and timed for how you actually quote and invoice, they are where the evenings come back. Getting that right is a big part of what a setup is for.

The £1,000 that pays for the setup

If your setup is done by a partner who is both certified and listed in ServiceM8's Partner Directory, ServiceM8 credits your account with 100% of what you paid that partner, capped at £1,000. I am both. The credit comes off your subscription at half your plan's base price each month until it runs out. Credit, not cash.

So the £800 setup and training package comes back as £800. On Growing at £59, half is £29.50 a month, which makes that credit last roughly 27 months.

One mistake voids it. Subscribe through the online dashboard at servicem8.com/login-page, not inside the iPhone app: the terms exclude Apple In App Purchase, third party app stores and subscribing through Xero. New subscribers only, claimed within 60 days, and it does not stack with other discounts. The full rules are here.

Repeat work, which is what a trade CRM is really for

For most trades the best customers come back on a schedule. The annual boiler service. The landlord's yearly check. The gutters every autumn. Here ServiceM8 beats a general CRM, because the repeat visit is a job in the diary, not a reminder to ring somebody.

Recurring jobs are on every plan. You create the job once and it re-creates and schedules itself over time. Where you would rather confirm the date with the customer first, ServiceM8's free plan page says you can set reminders instead of booking it outright.

If you maintain equipment rather than just fit it, asset management tracks each unit's details, location and service history against the client, and that starts on Growing, at £59.

Newsletters go to Mailchimp

ServiceM8's own integrations page opens with a line I respect: "ServiceM8 doesn't do everything". Email marketing is one of those things. Its answer is a Mailchimp integration that syncs every client email address in ServiceM8 into your Mailchimp list daily.

It takes every address, so decide who you actually want on a newsletter before you switch it on. And Mailchimp is a separate company with its own pricing.

If you already pay for a sales CRM

Plenty of firms arrive with a CRM already running their website enquiries and marketing. There are two ways to join them up. Zapier, which ServiceM8 lists as an integration, connects thousands of apps with triggers and actions, so check your CRM is on its list first. Past that is ServiceM8's REST API, from Starter up, which a developer builds against.

Be clear who does what, because this is where projects drift. That connection is developer work, and it is not part of a setup. I set ServiceM8 up and train you on it. The build belongs with whoever runs your other system.

The decision that matters more is which system holds the master customer list. If your accounts package has them, connect Xero, QuickBooks Online or MYOB first, because ServiceM8 imports your clients as part of connecting. Then import whatever is missing. The other way round, you risk every customer arriving twice.

Two limits before you rely on it

Your old history does not come with you. Clients, contacts, your price list and your assets all import. There is no bulk import for past jobs, so the history on each client card starts the day you go live. Keep the old system readable for a year and pick a clean cutover date.

It has no inventory system of its own. No purchase orders, no van stock, no supplier ordering. What it has is stock level visibility mirrored from a connected Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks Online account, and the count only moves when an invoice containing a tracked item is approved and synced.

So, is ServiceM8 a CRM?

The right hand box is short because that is how it comes out. Most trades asking this are really asking whether they need a second system, and usually they do not. They need the one system set up properly: customers brought across once, queues that match how they quote, and chasing in their own voice.

Want the customer side built properly from day one, with the rebate covering it? Here is what a setup costs.