When field service software is priced per technician, the number to count is not how many technicians you have today but everyone the vendor treats as a billable user across the next year. That can include office staff, subcontractors and seasonal crew, and add-on modules may be charged on top of the seat price.
Read the definition of a user in your plan before anything else. The word on the pricing page and the word in the agreement are not always the same.
Who counts as a user
- Field technicians with the mobile app. This is the obvious seat.
- Office staff: dispatcher, customer service, bookkeeper. Some plans include a number of office logins, others charge for each one.
- Owners and managers who only look at reports. Ask whether a read-only login is charged.
- Subcontractors who need to see a job and mark it done. Ask whether there is a limited login, and what it cannot do.
- Seasonal crew. Ask whether seats can be removed mid-term or whether you pay for the peak count all year.
- Apprentices and helpers who ride along. If they share a truck and a tablet they may not need a seat, but check the terms on shared logins.
Write the answer beside each group. The aim is a headcount by month, not a single number.
Add-on modules outside the seat price
The seat price covers the core: scheduling, dispatch, job records and invoices. Other things may be separate lines. Look for customer texting (which can be charged per message or per number), online booking, marketing and review requests, price book tools, inventory, fleet tracking, advanced reporting and phone integration.
Payments need their own note. Card processing is charged by the processor on every transaction whatever software you use, so keep it out of the software total and compare it separately.
How the bill moves when you add a truck
A new truck is seldom just one seat. It may be two technicians, a tracking device subscription, more text messages, and possibly a step up to the next plan tier if your current one caps users. Ask the vendor to price the change in writing before you hire.
As an illustration only, suppose a seat costs 50 dollars a month and a new truck brings two technicians plus 30 dollars of add-ons. That truck adds 130 a month, or 1,560 a year, to a bill you may have stopped reading. Use your own figures, not these.
Totalling it for next year's crew
Take the headcount by month you wrote down, including the summer or winter peak, and price each month. Add the modules. Add the flat platform fee if there is one. Our calculator for software billed per seat will turn that into a yearly and a three-year total. It is a free calculator that works only on the numbers you enter.
- Price the crew you plan to have, not the crew you have
- Include every office login, not only the trucks
- Note the renewal date and the notice period for reducing seats
- Check whether annual billing locks the seat count for the term
If the total is comfortable, rented software is probably serving you well and there is no reason to move. If it has become one of your larger overheads, it is worth reading our guide to renting versus owning business software, which covers the risks as well as the savings.
For contractors who do decide to own, Hiro rebuilds the parts of the system the crew really uses for one flat monthly price with no per-seat fees, so adding a truck does not change it. The page for home service contractors describes what is commonly rented and what can be rebuilt.