Switching field service software fails in one specific way. Tomorrow's jobs live in the old tool, the office starts booking in the new one, and a tech drives to the wrong list. The schedule is the thing you cannot drop. History, photos, and a prettier price book can wait a month. A 2 p.m. water heater cannot.
This is the cutover for a small HVAC, plumbing, or electrical shop leaving Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, FieldEdge, or a spreadsheet. It is also the week you can start a costing log without waiting for the new suite to feel finished. The log does not replace the board. Job costing software answers a different question: which tickets paid.
Do not turn the old board off on a Friday
Pick a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Mondays are full of leftovers. Fridays are when a missed appointment ruins a weekend. Midweek you still have office hours left to fix a job that landed in the wrong place.
The week before that day, stop adding new kinds of work to the migration. You are not redesigning flat-rate, hiring a second tech, and changing software in the same seven days. One change. The board moves. Pricing experiments wait until the new tool has been the only board for a week.
What to pull out of the old tool
Export, or write down, four lists. Each product has its own export. There is no connector in the costing app that does this for you.
- Customers who appear on the schedule for the next fourteen days, with the phone number the office actually calls.
- Every job already promised, with the arrival window, the address, and the note the tech needs. "No heat" is not enough if the note says the side door and a dog.
- Open invoices and deposits. Money that is still owed does not become a memory just because you liked a new screen.
- The price book lines you used in the last month. The full catalog can come later. The twenty items that are on this week's trucks cannot.
Leave photos, old proposals, and closed jobs from last year in the old login. You will want them once. You do not need them to roll a truck tomorrow.
Put two days in by hand before you trust it
Type tomorrow and the day after into the new tool yourself. Do not assume an import mapped "arrival window" to the right field. Open the new schedule next to the old one and read addresses out loud. One swapped street number is the failure mode that matters.
New bookings go into the new tool only after the person who answers the phone can find a customer there in under a minute. Until that is true, new bookings stay in the old tool and you copy them across the same day. A lead written on a pad "to enter later" is a lead you will book twice or not at all.
One list on the truck
Techs keep a single app for the day's route. During the overlap, that app is whichever list you have already checked against the other one that morning. Two icons on the home screen means the 10 a.m. job is in one and the 1 p.m. job is in the other, and the tech finds out at 12:30.
The office owns the overlap. A morning check, ten minutes, old schedule against new schedule, is the whole control. Write down every mismatch and fix it before anyone leaves the shop. After the second clean morning, you can stop booking in the old tool. You still do not cancel the old login.
Leave the old login alive
Keep it for thirty to sixty days, read-only if the product allows it. Unpaid invoices, a customer who says "you were here in March," and a permit number live there. Canceling on cutover day is how you pay for a month of the old tool anyway, in phone calls you cannot answer.
Tell customers about the switch when the text they receive comes from one company name and one number. Until then it is an office project. They already have a window. Protect the window.
Cost the same week, on the phone
The new suite will not tell you whether Thursday paid just because the jobs are finally on the new board. Job costing is a separate habit. On the phone you enter the customer, what you did, what they paid, time at the job, minutes driving, miles, and parts at your cost. Labor rate, truck cost per mile, and the monthly shop cost live in Settings. The shop cost starts at $1,920 and is split across the hours you log that month. There is no sign-in. Jobs stay on that phone until you export a backup or a CSV.
A drain you invoiced in the old tool can still be costed the same evening. The invoice total is the revenue. The supplier bill is the materials. The drive is whatever the truck actually did.
Rates in every table here. Labor is $45 an hour unless a table says otherwise, the truck is $0.65 a mile, and overhead is $12 an hour. That $12 is a $1,920 monthly shop cost spread across 160 hours. These are the public calculator's starter numbers. On the phone, overhead is the monthly shop cost split across the hours you actually log that month, and the open month stays a draft until it closes. One labor rate covers the job. A helper's pay goes in other direct costs.
A drain invoiced in the old tool, costed the same day
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| What they paid | $225.00 | |
| Onsite labor | 1 h × $45.00 | $45.00 |
| Travel labor | 0.5 h × $45.00 | $22.50 |
| Vehicle | 18 mi × $0.65 | $11.70 |
| Materials, your cost | $18.00 | |
| Overhead | 1.5 h × $12.00 | $18.00 |
| Total job cost | $115.20 | |
| Net profit | $225.00 − $115.20 | $109.80 |
| Net margin | $109.80 ÷ $225.00 | 48.8% |
| Profit per hour | $109.80 ÷ 1.5 h | $73.20 / h |
Open this ticket in the calculator. Change the labor rate or the miles and the fee moves with them.
The verdict is solid — 35%+ net. Do more of this work. This invoice is $47.77 over the 35% price. The field-by-field version is how to job cost a plumbing service call. Electrical and HVAC visits have their own pages. QuickBooks, if that is where the books stay, is covered in QuickBooks versus job costing. The monthly books still will not show this ticket's drive.
What you are not migrating
- A customer portal, inventory counts, and a dispatch board are features of the suite you are entering or leaving. The costing log does not grow them back.
- Do not rebuild five years of jobs so a report looks complete. Complete reports are a winter project. This week is the schedule.
- Do not change the trip fee, the diagnostic fee, and the software in the same conversation with customers. Fee changes have their own pages for plumbing, electrical, and HVAC.
If the new tool is worse at the board than the old one, go back. Sunk setup time is cheaper than a month of missed windows. The costing log can stay either way, because it was never the board.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a small shop run two field service tools?
Long enough that every job already promised is on the new board, and the office can find a customer in the new tool in under a minute. For a small shop that is often one to two weeks of overlap, then another month with the old login left open for history and unpaid invoices.
What should move on the first day?
Customers who are on the schedule for the next two weeks, open jobs, and open invoices. Five years of photos and closed tickets can wait. A tech with two apps open on the truck is how a job gets missed.
Can the costing log import a Jobber or ServiceTitan export?
No. The phone log does not import customers, sync invoices, or move a schedule. You type the ticket after the visit, or you open the same numbers in the public calculator. Keep invoicing in the tool that already sends the bill.
When do you tell customers you switched?
When the text they receive comes from one company name and one number. Until then, the switch is an office project. Customers care that someone shows up inside the window you already gave them.
Start costing the week you switch
Early access is the costing log on one phone. The schedule stays in whichever tool has the board.