Housecall Pro

Vorteile

I LOVE this software! It does absolutely everything for me and makes it so easy for me to run the behind the scenes part of my business. Housecall Pro is super easy to use, the app interface is very clean, and it totally streamlines my interaction with the customer from their first phone call, through to the completion of the job, and beyond. Housecall Pro makes every part of my carpet cleaning business so much more efficient.

Nachteile

I wish that the user had greater control in customizing messages that are sent to their customers. For instance, Housecall Pro sends a text and an email asking for a Google review and a review on Housecall Pro when the work is complete, but I have little control over the content/message of that communication. Another example is that I have little control over the content of the "On My Way", or the "Job Finished" texts that get sent to my customers on the day of their appointments. I would love to be able to send more personalized messages to my customers, so that they seem less generic and bland.

Vorteile

Many things. I like the payment options I can give to clients, the calendar sync, estimates, postcard integration, support systems etc.

Nachteile

Sometimes it takes a while to load on the customer's end so they think it’s not working. I think it’s just because it’s encrypted though.

Vorteile

Housecall Pro has a robust amount of features in an affordable package.
The main interface is fairly easy to use
Dedicated online fan base on Facebook that is a ton of help

Nachteile

No official support phone line from the company. They utilize a chat bubble on their website for support and have little to no way of escalating a problem to speak with someone.

The implementation of new features comes fast and furious. The features are not always perfected before implementation and are buggy

Vorteile

HCP is marginally useful for scheduling.

Nachteile

1) No way to document when a client accepts your proposal, which means No CONTRACT. Even if your customer accepts your estimate, you have no documentation of such. This, of course, means that you do not have a contract with the customer, and you have no hope of being paid for the work you did. Kind of a huge problem.
2) Inability to control alerts and messages to customers. It's either ON or OFF -Customers receive annoying alerts every single day you're on the job -at least a half-hour before you begin work...so like 6:30 every morning...Or, no alerts at all. That's your only choice
3) Every interaction with Customer Support ends with "No you're not able to do that, but we'll forward this to our engineering team." Every single interaction. All of them end like this. Nothing is ever resolved -at least in our experience.
4) The product development team keeps churning out more and more features to charge for -when the infrastructure of what they've already built is woefully lacking in usability.
5) When a job takes more than one day to complete, there's an option to add what they call a Segment. You can add as many segments as you like for multiple-day jobs, but each successive segment is blank. So if you want your crews to know what their scope of work is -or if you want them to have access to the attachments you added -you have to re-attach and resubmit your scope of work for every single segment you add.
6) I could go on and on -but I think my time would be better spent

Vorteile

Seamless integration with Quickbooks is the most important feature. Once we learned to categorize where we wanted charges to show in QB such as "Labor" or "Material & Supplies" then reconciliation became easy. Software is easy to navigate and customize. Scheduling service for our customers is a major feature and increases customer confidence. Our A/R has improved dramatically. More of our customers use the pay online feature and the ability to accept cc payments is a huge plus. Admin settings allow to set cc minimum payments and employee access through mobile app.

Nachteile

Would love have an attachment icon in customer history window indicating service calls that have attached photos or documents uploaded without having to open each one individually. I would also like to have the ability to record customer equipment Model & Serial #'s and connect services to particular equipment. Example: Customer has (5) individual air con systems. Enter Model & Serial #'s, and name systems. Then all future service at that site can be attached to a particular piece of equipment with the ability to run a report. Options for "Summer" & "Winter" maintenance to run reports for recurring future would also be on my wish list.