[kemco]

I’m now live, this was the first day I ran fieldroutes in the field. Going to share my thoughts and what I learn when I can. If anyone else switched to fieldroutes (and is in the lawn mowing and or lawn application biz) from another company and wants to share please do.
I’m 100% confident I made the right choice for my biz. But yeah here comes the learning curve after being set in my ways using the same system for over a decade and then on top of that switching mid season yeah this is going to be fun. First couple post I’m going to share how I’m doing a mid season switch. Then we will go from there.

 

[kemco]

I’m still running the old system for obvious reasons. My mow crew is still using the old system but is putting out a one page flier at every lawn letting customers know some bullet points on the fact we are changing routing, billing, back office systems and that I am sure there will be some “bumps” in the transition but please be patient with us. This will save about 10,000 pages of printed sheets of paper per season.

i went live today with 12 spray round customers. At the end of the day (today) I went into the old system and voided out the spray appointments I competed in the new system. So far that’s the best idea I’ve come up with. Keeping it inter new system once everything looked ok.

Since fieldroutes is meant to be a paperless system, today all my spray customers received in their door hanger a different but similar one page printout letting them know that about an hour after service they would get a direct link email to view and or pay for todays service and that’s how it will be king forward and they would really be helping us by going ahead and inputting their credit card in the new system and selecting autopay as well. That was the best idea I could come ip with. They did not get a printed invoice just the flier letting them know to expect an email with a direct link to view and pay their invoice.

 

[kemco]

My first screwup… I couldn’t get each of the “appointments “ to clear out as “done”… operator error. When I got back to my office I rewatched for the 3rd time the mobile app video and quickly learned what I did wrong and then quickly sent out all the invoices via email. That’s where I am now. I look forward to questions and ideas. Maybe some will come in. Peace.

 

[CWilliams1]

We are a pest control company, and we swapped to PestRoutes (now FieldRoutes) 3 years ago. It was a steep learning curve, but it dramatically improved our efficiency. We still don't use it exactly as they propose, but I think it was the correct move.

Our time spent working on scheduling has dropped from 40 hours monthly to 8, and we really like the automatic scheduling. My biggest gripes are related to UI changes. They are constantly "upgrading", and it changes our workflow. Their recent merger/acquisition has prompted them to combine a few different software systems, and that is forcing new workflow for us. It's hard for me to teach and train my guys so often on the "new way" we have to do things.

Their customer support team is good, but their developers are not responsive. We have been asking for the ability to be able to flag an appointment as a priority since day 1, and have made no progress.

All in all, it's not a bad software choice. For the money, I think we made the right choice.

 

[kemco]

Had my first customers pay through fieldroutes today, just 5 so far that went online we’ve got to get everyone on board it’ll take a while. Many still paid on the old system (so we still got paid just would have rather them paid on field routes). Had one customer love that we can now take ach checks and that’s what they signed up to do. Another commented on how they loved getting an email “receipt of payment” which other system never did. The other texted me to tell me they really liked not having to remember login information. A lot of feedback mostly good.

Personally for me today I loved the text button on the route. I didn’t have or need to look up a number I just hit the button and texted sorry we just got rained out etc etc…” to many customers.

 

[kemco]

We are a pest control company, and we swapped to PestRoutes (now FieldRoutes) 3 years ago. It was a steep learning curve, but it dramatically improved our efficiency. We still don't use it exactly as they propose, but I think it was the correct move.

Our time spent working on scheduling has dropped from 40 hours monthly to 8, and we really like the automatic scheduling. My biggest gripes are related to UI changes. They are constantly "upgrading", and it changes our workflow. Their recent merger/acquisition has prompted them to combine a few different software systems, and that is forcing new workflow for us. It's hard for me to teach and train my guys so often on the "new way" we have to do things.

Their customer support team is good, but their developers are not responsive. We have been asking for the ability to be able to flag an appointment as a priority since day 1, and have made no progress.

All in all, it's not a bad software choice. For the money, I think we made the right choice.

I’ve now found, using or attempting to use 3 vendors that this seems to be the new norm. I wish these coders would first #1 fix anything that’s wrong with something they have already released before going on to the next best idea they had over a double mocha chino with soy milk at Starbucks.

 

[kemco]

Seemed my auto emails after service completion aren’t going out. Help wizard isn’t showing me what it says it’s supposed to show. Just fishing but if anyone knows where / how to fix it, it’s appreciated. Help wizard shows that I need to go to admin > preferences > office settings > preference “and make sure it says “yes” under “Follow up emails”. Nowhere do I see “Follow up emails” to even click a “yes” button using these steps. It’s got to be here somewhere.

 

[CWilliams1]

Go to the Customer Card, then the "Info" tab. Make sure the "SMS", "Email", and/or "Voice" box is checked, and then try again.

 

[kemco]

Been running the mobile app for pretty much the entire week. I really like it. At first I was having constant issues with it telling me “no internet connection” and would have to restart my phone multiple times during the day.. that only happened the first two days have not had any issues since so I’m thinking it was something going on with my phone or network, been running smooth since.

 

[kemco]

Everything has been pretty smooth. My main 2 issues or hurdles or what I need to figure out next is #1 how to add more than one service on an appointment. I’ve got a call scheduled for next week. Had a few customers today want mosquito spray and I was already going to be there for a regular lawn treatment but all I could figure out was do the mosquito app as a separate “appointment”. So for example Mr Collins on the mobile app took two slots for two different appointments… but yeah I know there has to be a way to add it on.

#2 Is even more important. I’ve been told there is some kind of work around but yet to see it. We do the same square footage for every lawn app. Our lawn apps are based on the sq ft. Really trying to find a way for the system to automatically track or tell me that I need to put down X pounds of fert for this lawn (automatically) so I don’t have to do the calculations. So far my implementation specialist can’t seem to get me there and said I may need to get something programmed for my needs which they will do. Just seems this is such an elementary thing that all lawn app guys would need. Still looking for this I need this badly.

 

[kemco]

One more note I absolutely love the feedback section built into the automated email invoice system. Someone’s happy great they tell me. Not happy they let me know why. That’s an entire system I might have had to buy on its own already built in… and yea you can have it automatically go to Facebook etc (I don’t do the Zuckbook). I’ll sing praises as I see them and problems I’ll point out too but so far I’m really liking.