Glossary
Field service & trade software terms
30 definitions. No jargon. Written for owners who actually run the trucks.
Core Concepts
Field Service Management (FSM)
Field Service Management (FSM) is software that coordinates a mobile workforce — scheduling, dispatch, work orders, invoicing, and payments — from one system.
Book of Business
The total set of active customers a company (or a single tech) has, including recurring maintenance and repeat repair customers.
Finance
Invoicing
Invoicing is billing customers for completed work — increasingly done from a mobile app the moment the job is finished, with a payment link included.
Payment Processing
Payment processing is accepting card, ACH, and financing payments through your software — usually via Stripe, Square, or the platform's native processor.
Gross Margin
Gross margin is revenue minus direct job costs (labor, materials, subs) — the money left over to cover overhead and profit.
Overhead
Overhead is every business expense that isn't a direct job cost — rent, insurance, vehicles, admin salaries, software, marketing.
Job Costing
Job costing tracks the real cost of a completed job — labor hours, materials, subs, equipment — so you can see actual profit per job, not per month.
Average Ticket
Average ticket is total revenue divided by number of jobs — a core operating metric for residential service businesses.
QuickBooks Integration
A sync between your field service software and QuickBooks that mirrors customers, invoices, and payments so bookkeeping isn't manual double-entry.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
The total revenue a customer will produce over their entire relationship with your business, including all future jobs and referrals.
Recurring Revenue
Revenue that repeats predictably each month — most often from maintenance plans, monitoring contracts, or subscriptions.
Operations
Dispatch
Dispatch is the process (and the software module) that assigns field technicians to jobs based on skills, location, urgency, and availability.
Work Order
A work order is the digital job ticket that carries all the information a technician needs to complete a job — customer details, scope, parts, pricing, and photos.
Route Optimization
Route optimization automatically orders a technician's daily stops to minimize drive time and fuel while respecting appointment windows.
GPS Tracking
GPS tracking uses vehicle telematics to show live truck location, historical routes, speed, and idle time.
Callback Rate
The percentage of completed jobs that require a return visit within 30 days — a direct measure of technical quality.
Billable Hours
The share of a technician's paid hours that are billed to a customer — everything not spent driving, at the shop, or unassigned.
SMS Notifications
Automated text messages sent to customers about appointment confirmations, en-route status, and follow-ups.
Priority Dispatch
A workflow that ranks incoming service calls by urgency (emergency, same-day, scheduled) and routes them to techs accordingly.
Sales & Marketing
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
CRM software stores every interaction with a customer — calls, quotes, jobs, invoices, notes — so anyone on your team can pick up where the last conversation left off.
Estimate (Quote)
An estimate is a formal price proposal sent to a customer before work begins. In field service software, estimates convert to jobs and invoices with one click.
Good/Better/Best Pricing
Good/better/best is a proposal format that presents three options at different price points, letting the customer self-select value instead of debating price.
Close Rate
Close rate (or booked rate) is the percentage of estimates that convert to sold jobs.
Membership / Maintenance Plan
A recurring paid plan (monthly or annual) where a customer pays for scheduled maintenance visits plus priority service and discounts.
Lead Magnet
A free resource (checklist, calculator, template) offered in exchange for a name and email — used to build a marketing list for future follow-up.
Online Booking
A customer-facing widget or page where prospects can pick a time slot and book a job without calling.
Customer Portal
A self-serve website (or app) where customers can view quotes, approve work, see invoices, and pay online.
CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote)
Software that turns a technician's list of selected services and parts into a professionally-formatted proposal with correct pricing.
Digital Price Book
A structured library of every service, part, and package your business sells — with prices — that technicians can build quotes from on the truck.
Review Generation
Automated workflows that request Google and Facebook reviews from customers immediately after a job is completed.