Service Autopilot Software

Hands Down The Best

This is the ideal management software for a lawn service business.

Pros

Very essential for running a service based business. Highly functional and makes admin a breeze. I wouldnt go into the service business without it.

Cons

Cant really think of any cons. Maybe price but I can definitley justify the monthly cost for the upside in being more efficient. Its great

Service Autopilot has helped our company save time and money!!

Pros

Easy to navigate and look up customers. Customer support is awesome and readily available to help out at any time. If they don't know the answer they will return your call as soon as they find it out. Also have a lot of tutorial videos to help with software knowledge.

Cons

This product as so many features it literally takes months to figure out what all it can do. This isn't a true con but you don't know what you don't know.

A CRM and sooo much more

Having all client info in one spot that anyone within our office can access has helped tremendously with taking care of of our clients timely.

Pros

The amount of data it holdsand keeping client information in one place from the clients schedule to their financial accounts, pictures, correspondents and more.

Cons

Learning to use the multiple functions and how they tie into each other can be a bit tedious.

Central time zone phone support only, support times not good for those who do field work in Cali

Tried to use this for small landscaping business but did not contain the functionality I needed to export employee time gracefully into quickbooks - they had a complicated "work around" but I need it to be smooth and simple. Company wants to form their own payroll solution rather than work with QB - understandable given QB's issues, but it doesn't work with my workflow.

Pros

Many options available for customizing the software. Unfortunately implementing and understanding it all is a full time job, so if you only want or need part of the functionality, look to a simpler solution like dropbox or tsheets.

Cons

Crashed quickbooks, took 2.5 days to import all of my quickbooks info
had bugs and errors in setup
the start up info is all in video format, and it's slow, conversational, and takes a long time to get info this way.
Tried calling support numerous times but it seems they'd always just closed by the time I arrived home.
numerous marketing emails for their conventions, despite unsubscribing twice to the emails they STILL kept coming for months.
They made canceling more difficult than I felt it should be.

Handles an unlimited amount of clients, jobs and employees.

I was first attracted to this company because they are very experienced in my line of work and do understand what we need from a very hands on point of view. There attitude toward customer service has taught me a lot about what it take to keep clients happy and coming back for more.

Pros

The dispatch board is laid out so you can customize the view you need of your work by client, status, resources assigned etc. It allows you to read notes and see pictures from the field in real time and correspond with your supervisors efficiently. The custom invoice templates are great and the fact that it syncs with Quick Books has reduced the time we spend billing customers. The Client screens allow us to keep track of every estimate, service and communication. Service Autopilot is capable of retain detailed info about each property and all job history. The training videos are great and the help staff is very polite and patient when you call with questions.

Cons

There is not much to dislike about Service Autopilot. It has been a little slow, but since it is cloud based software it could be my ISP or something else. They have made great improvements in this area.

Cloud-Based Software

Pros

I like that it's cloud-based so I can access it from all my devices on the go. The layout is very simple as well.

Cons

It doesn't save me a whole lot of time with scheduling. I'd rather just use Google Calendar or the Outlook Calendar for free.

Customer for 2 years. Service is great but unreliable.

The software allows our sales team to effectively communicate with crews and the crews to effectively communicate with billing team. We lowered out administrative burden.

Pros

The package is feature rich and will do most of what you need it to do. With modifications to your SOPs can work with almost any service business. Customer support is polite and will walk you through the program's features. Has the ability to handle our 6 crews and more.

Cons

1. Despite advertisements is NOT a full sync with QB. Only syncs limited data and is unreliable in doing so.
2. The servers are way over worked and crash at least weekly. Often in the busy morning hours the servers are too busy to be able to quickly access our company information.
3. Services are unreliable. Features that work this week may or may not work next week. This can be anything from merge fields in email, routing systems, ability to assign work to crews and a wide assortment of things we experienced in the past month alone.
4. The reporting features are worthless and unreliable. Sales reports contain inaccurate totals and present conflicting data. Crew performance reports don't include all jobs. Crew time sheets don't show breaks. Reports will show different totals when you rerun the reports despite setting all the same filters (sounds like I am exaggerating, I am not).
5. When issues are presented to customer support they say they will create a 'ticket' and will get back to us. We have literally over 100f open tickets that are unresolved. When we ask about those tickets from almost 2 years ago they simply say they are "in development" which means someone in the development team is supposed to review the ticket.
6. The support staff at SA have told us on two separate occasions that the administration at SA is more concerned with implementing new features than they are in having the features work correctly because it is the new features that sells.

The system is awesome. I originally signed up for the fertilizer dispatch feature but got a lot more

Help manage the growth and organize the jobs and employees.

Pros

During the winter a snow plow operator was accused of hitting a car in a parking lot. Since Service Autopilot has a time tracking feature when on the job, we where able to prove the time we where on the property and exposed that the manager was trying to pin the hit and run on us! Since they have cameras on the property and we demanded they show us and the car owner the time frame footage from when we where actually on the property. Bottom line they hired us just to pin the hit and run on us but since we had the power of Service Autopilot their plot to pin it on us failed.

Cons

Not really anything I can point out. It has the occasional glitch, but what powerful app/software doesn't.

Amazing! It has completely streamlined our company's processes.

Pros

The ability to communicate seamlessly between the job site and the office through job notes. It makes customer communication so easy and efficient!

Cons

Nothing! The staff is extremely responsive and always quick to troubleshoot and help with any issues.

If you have a few hundred customers, expect to spend 10-15 hours per week correcting its mistakes.

Much easier than using a spreadsheet and hand inputting info into invoices and estimates.

Pros

The estimate, invoice templates and customization for letters is awesome. Other companies need to take a look at making easily customizable forms for invoicing and estimates. The software is excellent for emailing detailed estimates and letters. Converting leads/estimates into active customers is very simple. The pricing matrix conversions (size or piece per job into prices) is extraordinarily well done. Honestly, the software setup shows a ton of promise. I believe it could easily be the best out there if they would fix the basics listed below.

Cons

They do not have the basics down. Payments that are applied to balances are constantly unassociating from accounts. I spend 10-15 hours per week rechecking this error which causes serious billing problems and has cost me customers. Payment check boxes also tend to dissociate every once in a while. I spend another several hours per week on routing because single accounts cannot be pulled. If I have to add a customer into the route for that day the entire days work has to respool for printing. This takes up to 2 minutes to load and then another minute or two to scroll through the pages to print the necessary work. Routing, Call Logs, and To Do's are all scheduled for route printing. This costs a ton of time sorting it all out and paper costs add up quickly. My business (lawn care fertilizing and pest control) runs on renewing accounts each year. There is no way to auto-renew and send updated pricing and service schedules to existing customers. Each year I have had to input entirely new estimates for every active customer and send them individually. I then have to delete the prior years services and convert the estimate (pre-pay letter) into a whole new package. For a few hundred customers this process takes 90 hours! Customer information is split up between multiple screens and the jobs history for each has to be manually looked up by pulling up prior invoices. Support answers the phone but has not fixed even one of these issues nor has answers.

Service auto pilot

Pros

I really like the web based interface and the ability to work from virtually anywhere. It makes billing much easier since the workers clock in and out of jobs and invoices are generated automatically

Cons

Setting it up is very time consuming and tedious if not done exactly correct it a pain to figure out where something went wrong.

I switched from a different scheduling software to Service Autopilot.

I can track almost everything about my business in Service Autopilot.

Pros

I like that I don't need different software to handle different functions. Service Autopilot handles almost everything. Employee time clock, GPS, scheduling, CRM, estimates, job communications, automations and more.

Cons

It can become expensive as mobile users are added. It can be difficult to learn because it is complex. Once you understand the system, it is not difficult to use.

Good software

Pros

Dispatching, time clock, QB on line integration I hear is coming now, tracking when it use to work, affordable and for the most part easy to use

Cons

The app no longer gives GPS tracking of the employee or the location of their trucks, now when we download the app on the iPad it no longer requests to use the app location, this is a much needed feature for us and will probably cause to find new software as SA can't seem to give us an answer as to why this is no longer requesting their location, on our iPads that we have not reinstalled the app it still requests their location.

Buggy Program, Frustrated my clients on a regular, very detailed... gives for a hard learning curve.

I have been able to warn other lawn care providers to avoid it.

Pros

With enough time and learning you can do most things you would like on this program. Customer service is polite.

Cons

Buggy, client portal doesn't work with clients about 10% the time, overly complicated set up. I have used other programs like this and you are up and running in a few days.

This is a great system for 2008 when it we released, but old and very clunky now. Not easy to use at all, but has most features you could want if you spend a few weeks learning it and go to the class on it. Customer Support is always kind but can't help you with linked programs; so, you may call 3 different companies to fix one problem. Value for the money... not worth it. Only use this program is they fix the glitches and you want to hire someone full time to do just this program. Just don't waste your money and time otherwise.

great customer service interface

got us organized all in one and save time and time is money.

Pros

all in one great routing program easy to learn and transition from a desktop base to a cloud base. plus you can get access to your data anywhere with a WiFi and a data plan

Cons

the customer portal I think is a bit too expensive.

Everything you can think of with more on the way!

This software is incredibly powerful! We are trying to get our money's worth out of it by utilizing more and more of the features, but there is so much more we can do with it that we're not doing. Customer support is incredible! I chatted with customer support about an issue (after waiting in queue for a whole 15 seconds), and a week later, I got a hand-written card in the mail thanking me for my patience and my business. We used to keep paper route sheets and proposals. We went to mobile app use and eliminated the route sheets and were able to translate jobs directly to invoices! We were taking 2 days to invoice and when we set the system up properly, it went to just a bit over a day to complete all of our invoices! Then, we moved from typed up proposals to using templates and rate matrices through the system and clients can sign the actual proposal right online, two clicks of a button and the jobs are scheduled (work-order notes and all) and then it auto invoices. Everything stays in the system and is easily accessible from anyone in the field! i.e. "Did Mrs. Jones sign up for a fall cleanup? Let's check the system to see which services she accepted on her proposal." or "When were we here last? Just touch "Job History" and it shows the last year's worth of visits. This has saved countless hours and makes our business so much more professional; "Mr. Smith, I just got a note and a picture here from one of our techs in the field, he was just there and the note says there was a car parked in front of the back yard gate so he could not get in, we can come back tomorrow." One of the challenges is getting a handle on every little feature of the app. The Snow Plowing dispatch is packed with features and it can be just the slightest bit complicated. But once we get the hang of it (like every other part of their system), we will be that much more efficient, professional, and PROFITABLE! Well worth the money! Put your SERVICE on AUTOPILOT!

Pros

Robust reporting allows me to see things like "revenue per lead source" and "actual time/budgeted time", job costing, payroll, sales commissions, lead conversion rates and much, much more. A seamless process that takes Lead to proposal to contract to job to invoice to payment to receipt of payment to thank-you note! Targeted marketing and targeted cross-selling with "Sales Campaigns". Mobile dispatch that allows for constant communication between office staff and technicians in the field. Asset management and tracking. Mobile signature and payment on invoices and proposals make quick sales and quick payment possible. AMAZING CUSTOMER SERVICE!

Cons

A bit of a learning curve because of all the awesome features. There are videos that are incredibly helpful, they just take some time to get used to.

Overall, we like the price / feature / values and have been using several years.

Pros

It does the most of the basics and has an awesome upside. Like the cloud based, the vision of it, and potential to make a huge difference. The customer service is pretty good and responsive.

Cons

It is somewhat buggy but had gotten a lot better. They work on it a lot to improve. The reports have a lot to be desired. It would be nice to have ToDo and Job notifications / texts based on time / date. Tracking and feedback on suggestions for improvements and requests would be nice.

The best solution on the market. period.

Pros

This program is the best thing to ever happen to my company. It is extremely user-friendly and incredibly efficient to use. The team at Service Autopilot have put major thought into creating a superior product, that actually automates many aspects of my business.

Great features! Poor response time.

Overall, we are pleased with this product, however, the database issue may become a deal breaker for us. Customer service has been excellent for assistance on how to use the software, unless you have a major complaint, in which case, we've received no call back, as the issue needed to be escalated up the chain.

Pros

This product has a great user experience. The screens are easy to comprehend and it flows well, so any user is able to learn it quickly. It provides the crews with the ability to check in and out of each client site, providing real time data, requiring less admin time to enter it. And we love it's ability to sync with QuickBooks, which has worked very well.

Cons

The database response time when scheduling is very slow, which costs us a lot of time everyday waiting for it to load multiple times as we navigate from screen to screen. This software requires jobs (work orders) to be scheduled to a waiting list and then dispatched for scheduling, unless it's a recurring job you set up to automatically populate on a specific day/schedule. When loading the waiting list and the dispatch board, it can take over 30 seconds to load, sometimes longer. This is costing us time and money and would be very ineffective for larger organizations. We would be considered a small company. We've brought this issue to ServiceAuto Pilot's attention, with no response as to whether they plan to resolve it. Only other major con to be aware of is the mobile app works on smart phones with a downloadable app, but does not work on a tablet. The main website works on a tablet, but not fully, as it's not supported and the screen doesn't scale/convert to this device.

Service Autopilot Review

Pros

We started using Service Autopilot December 2016 and it has streamlined our operations! Frees up so much time that we didn't have before and not sure why we waited so long to make the move. Routing capabilities, dispatch board, crew manangment, invoicing. Its a CRM that continues to get better. The best benefit... it has allowed us to focus more on the business so we can grow faster!

Cons

It took a little time to set up but that's really not an issue. For us, we waited to long to make the switch to SA.