Field Services

Field Services · vertical overview and map of the tabs

The Field Services vertical adapts SellioCRM to businesses that send a technician out to the customer: HVAC, plumbing, electrical, installation, roofing and building maintenance. The center of gravity moves from the opportunity to Customer, Property, Equipment, and the unit of work becomes the job with its visits. It all lives on a single screen with eleven tabs, and it is optional: until you turn it on, nothing changes in your CRM.

Field service is work that only counts when somebody physically shows up at the right address, with the right part, at the agreed time. An ordinary CRM models that badly because it is built around the negotiation. Here the center is something else: the customer has one or more properties, each property has equipment installed, and it is on that equipment that jobs happen, year after year. That shift is what lets you answer questions an opportunity list never answers, such as how many times that condenser has already failed and whether it is still under warranty.

💡 To turn it on: Settings, then Verticals, and enable Field Services. If you open the screen while the vertical is off, it shows the notice and the Activate in Settings button, so an administrator can fix it on the spot.

Where the vertical lives and what it is not

Once it is on, the Field Services item appears in the menu, and it opens a single screen with eleven tabs. Do not confuse it with two neighboring screens that exist independently of it and have their own articles: the Field service screen, which dispatches service orders in the standard CRM, and the Field visits screen, which records a rep's or technician's check-in and check-out with location. Those two keep working exactly as before; the vertical does not replace them, it covers the whole business of a company that lives by sending crews into the field.

The eleven tabs

Overview: the numbers for the day, with Properties, Open jobs, Equipment and Alerts, plus the list of Equipment alerts and the Technicians board with everyone's status. The figures respect your location scope and your permissions.
Properties: the customer's property records, with the access block front and center, the on-site contacts and the equipment installed.
Jobs: the work order itself, with type, priority, problem description, status progression, visits, checklist and notes.
Dispatch: the day's board by technician, with the scheduled visits, the Conflict warning and the Unassigned column. It updates automatically.
Communication: messages to the customer over SMS, Email, WhatsApp or In-app, with your own templates and full respect for consent.
Forms: checklist and inspection templates per trade, filled in on the job, with non-conformance flagging and supervisor approval.
Routes: builds the optimized visit order for a technician on a date, from the properties that have coordinates.
Bookings: takes in booking requests and confirms or rejects them with a reason, checking the service area and availability.
Replacements: turns aging equipment into sales by scanning for replacement opportunities out of the alerts.
Production: tracks larger construction jobs on a board by stage, with change orders, punch list, permits, takeoffs and insurance claims.
Commercial: service agreements for corporate customers, with response time, per-work-order cap, purchase order requirement, approval limit, recurring inspections and a billing rollup by site.

The full life of a call

A request comes in on the Bookings tab, or you create the property directly on the Properties tab.
On the Properties tab, fill in the access block: access notes, gate code, keys, animals on site, parking, time restrictions and security rules. This is the information that keeps a technician from driving out and never getting in.
On the Jobs tab, pick the property, the job type and the priority, write the problem description and click Add job.
Schedule the visit and lay it out on the Dispatch board.
On the Routes tab, build the technician's order of stops for the day and publish it.
Use the Communication tab to reach the customer with an Appointment reminder and an On my way message.
On site, the job checklist and the inspection forms record what was done.
Advance the status through to Completed, generate the estimate or the invoice, and follow it to Paid.

Example: Northgate Air takes an emergency request at 8 a.m. The address falls inside a covered service area and there is availability, so the booking is confirmed. The job is created as an Emergency with Urgent priority at the Sunrise Bakery property, whose access block warns that there is a dog loose in the yard and that entry is around the back. The technician is dispatched, the status moves through En route, On site and In progress, and then sticks at Needs parts. The dispatch board shows the reason immediately, and the coordinator reschedules the completion for the next day without having to call anybody.

The statuses that tell the truth

The list of job statuses is deliberately long, because a stalled job stalls for many different reasons, and calling them all Pending hides exactly the thing that needs action. Besides Draft, Scheduled, Dispatched, En route, On site, In progress, Completed, Invoiced and Paid, there are Paused, Needs parts, Needs approval, Needs second tech, Cannot complete, Rescheduled, Canceled, Awaiting parts, Awaiting approval, Awaiting payment, Awaiting permit, Awaiting customer and Weather hold.

Permissions and prerequisites

Turning the vertical on is up to whoever administers the organization, under Settings, Verticals.
Once it is on, access follows the permissions of your user role, and the Overview figures respect your scope.
Messages to the customer over an external channel only go out when the customer has opted in to that channel.
The Routes tab depends on properties that have latitude and longitude. Without coordinates, a property cannot be routed to.
The Bookings tab depends on the service areas you have registered; without them, there is nothing to check the address against.

Frequently asked questions

I turned the vertical off, did I lose the data? No. Turning it off hides the screen; properties, equipment and jobs stay stored and come back when you turn it on again.
Do I have to use all eleven tabs? No. Properties, Jobs and Dispatch already carry the operation. Production, Replacements and Commercial serve specific cases.
Does the route promise an arrival time? No. It orders the stops and estimates travel; real traffic is not predicted, and the dispatcher can always reorder.
Can the customer follow along on their own? Yes, through the customer portal, which has its own article in this same area.
Voice capture, camera capture and offline use on the technician's phone are not part of this release.

Open this article inside the system →