Housecall Pro

Vorteile

This has got to be the easiest "learning curve" I have ever experienced. Coming from a completely different industry, to manage the office here was a bit daunting. BUT - HouseCall Pro made it much easier.
a) Customers: Easy to set up customers in system, note their special preferences, create "tags" to track for where they heard about us, and contact them via emails or texts. Each account has the Zillow pic and profile of each of our customers - providing a wealth of information to us before we even arrive to service their home.
b) Employees: Love the "personal touch" of adding the photos of our team - Our customers can see who is arriving - and - with the notification system, they know when they will be there. TimeTracker makes payroll a snap, and allows employees the flexibility to check in and out while out in the field thru the app - not tied to a punch clock or computer in the office.
c) Scheduling: Easy to use, nice 'color-coding' features for each employee, with options to notify your customer of changes or not. Quickly able to schedule on the fly, thru the phone app. Can look day, week or month with a quick tab change.
d) Invoicing: LOVE it --- the team can enter in all their details, which would normally have to be transcribed from paper notes, on the Work Orders thru the phone app. Nice presentation to the customers, with immediate email invoice available, the minute the job is done and paid for. AND it flows to QuickBooks!

Nachteile

Creating "work arounds" for creating multiple sub-accounts for a main client. Sometimes, there needs to be a three layer deep ability to categorize a customer. Example: Parent Company (Main Customer), which has multiple condominium complexes (Sub Accounts of Main Customer)- each one having its own name/ billing account, and then, the need to create sub accounts for each Condo Complex (a Sub Sub Account) - for each individual Unit (for service address)

Vorteile

I no longer have to fill out work orders or contantly update customers with arrival times and scheduling. The app does it for us! It's saved me a lot of time so I can focus on other aspects of our business and has pleased our customers greatly! It's showing from the increase of reviews! The ability to link to Google and QBO are two of the best features as well as the time I save on the phone with customers playing call tag, etc. In plumbing, we are able to edit the blocks of time for unexpected repairs that come up and prevent overbooking and add segments for ongoing WIP jobs. HCP has made my work streamlined from the start!

Nachteile

There are a few features I wish that are available but that doesn't mean they won't be in the near future with their hard working support team. A subtotal line is desperately needed. I wish I got emails when my customers do so I can quickly reference what and when I sent it. Segment options for estimates would be nice since at this point you can only select one of multiple estimates. A drop down list of customers when searching for one would save me some time. Some customers have difficult spelling of names so to be able to type the first and second letter and have it bring up the customer list would be a huge help without having to press enter.

Vorteile

Housecall pro was designed with the most important things to be successful in business in mind. They are constantly improving the software, and have estabilshed a community that you can tap into to become a better business. They listen to their users and are proactive. And the mobile version works great!
I have Housecall pro fully integrated with Quickbooks Online, offer integrated online booking, offer service agreements, and impress customers with the automated texts and emails. I originally spent I don't know how many hours looking for the right software, trying to figure out what they all actually did, and tried several different programs. I even switched to another software after using Housecall for a year because I thought they were not going to develop their service agreement capabilities, but that

Nachteile

Over the past two years, there have been several issues for which I have needed to use a work around, but most of those issues have been, or are being addressed. Currently the most inconvenient issue is a somewhat clunky estimate process, and the inability to create multi-option estimates from the mobile app, but they are working to solve that issue.

Vorteile

I like the ease of use for employees and users in the field. It is simple, yet allows our company to be in contact with our customers. From the office perspective, we have reduced how many invoices we are sending the mail significantly. Our customers like receiving e-mails from us, including the invoices. The portal for payment is easy to use. There has been a significant increase in online payments through the portal.

Our employees find the app easy to use and the location services make it easy for them to find our customers homes.

Nachteile

The times on the schedule page, need to somehow be highlighted or the top of the hour bolded. It is really difficult to schedule an appointment on the week view for Friday, because the time is in the far left margin.

I would love to have the ability to make comments on the time card section. That way when I need to make a change to an employee's time card, I can also note why the change was made.

The way that the credit card payments integrate with quickbooks is frustrating, as I have to go to each transaction and manually change where it posts the payment. I would like to have the ability to designate where the payment goes. In addition, it would be nice to change the QB display name on HCP ourselves, instead of talking with customer support. One more thing, can payments affecting more than one invoice be posted as one payment, versus each individual invoice. This would make processing deposits so much easier.

Vorteile

I like the way house call works on the desk top. It is quick and easy for me to do all my daily tasks as it pertains to each individual project I have going on. It is pretty easy to navigate through. The system allows me to keep all projects organize even if we have to go back out on more then one occasion.

Nachteile

I don't like how difficult it is to search on the desk top version for a particle project. It would make it quicker and simpler to have a "1" step process to look up any project by address or contractor name. Too many steps and difficult right now to find what I am looking for.

The mobile version needs to be simpler for the ADMIN to be able to use. If I am away from the office I can only see my projects, not ALL. I need to be able to see all as the ADMIN in order to conduct business when I am away from my desk and office. Our business requires putting in the home owner address which is not the contractor's address on file. When I try to schedule a job in the field on the mobile version I can never put in the address of the home owner which is where I need my employee to go.(NOT THE CONTRACTOR OFFICE) I have to always put it in the notes and take an extra step to tell the employee address is in the notes instead of where it should be. This makes it very difficult to work with and dispatch my employee to the correct address.