Service Autopilot Software

Excellent support personnel.

Pros

Ability to grow the business with this software. I looked around quite a bit and settled on SA for its current match to me needs and potential for future growth. It also has a strong management foundation.

Cons

Learning curve as with any new software.

Pros

Saves me 60 hours per month. No longer have to rely on spread sheets that take forever to update daily and weekly. Made it possible for us to expand; have hired two new employees serving 40 yards per day on average (60+ on Friday). Service Autopilot also provides extensive advice and coaching on how to expand our business. It is not cheap, but you get solid value for the money. We use credit cards to bill everyone and with SA we can bill everyone with one click, and since we have cash coming in daily, there are no issues with cash flow. We do the work, we get paid the same day or week.

Cons

Their computerized routing software is poor at best. For us, we do more than 20 stops per day in two crews, the SA routing software is a fail. Luckily, I had already learned how to route by using Road Warrior.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Extremely customized and detailed client and employee management features. The dispatch boards and calendar views are amazing and offer flexibility.

Pros

Features! This software can literally do anything you need it to! I have tried just about every maid service software out there and Service AutoPilot is hands down the best one and offers the most customizability and different functions! Also the amount of reports you can run through SAP is unreal! You can easily get a snapshot of your business at your fingertips. I love it!

Cons

It does take some time and patience to learn and get everything set up. The positive is you can layer your learning to help the process be more smooth. The other positive with that is it takes time to fully learn and utilize all of the functions because it really does so much!

Service Autopilot has truly helped minimize the workload on office staff and has given us a mobile solution to going paperless. With many customizable options it is suitable for large scale companies to any small service company. Truly a great asset to have on your side.

Pros

Ease of use, productivity, and support.

Cons

There is so much it can do, that there is a learning curve to implementing everything.

Advice to Others

It's great to have.

Pros

Easy to use. Service autopilot has revolutionized our business. Since we started using it over 2 years ago, business has become better, bigger and easier to manage. Start using it now and your life will forever be better as a service company owner!

Cons

The reporting is a little lacking, but always getting better and they know it.

We simply could not run our business without Service Autopilot. We have been with them since the beginning of our business. They are constantly adding and improving their software and what they offer, which in turn improves our business. I highly recommend this to anyone in the service industry it will change how you run your business.

Service Autopilot is fantastic! It saves me time every week so that I can focus on other task at hand. Best customer service I have ever dealt with as well.