Service Autopilot Reviews

“Has become a burden

Pros

At first I really liked it but once the team changed the way hours are recorded in the software I grew to despise it. What was supposed to make our work easier has become a recurring issue that I just can't escape from fast enough.

Cons

I'm frustrated because you don't seem to hear what the real issue is, you're not addressing it and all I get are excuses instead of proper fixes.

“Great product with friendly team

Pros

Honestly, I love everything about it. I rely on pretty much all of their features and each one genuinely saves me time and helps me do a better job for my clients. The team behind it is brilliant. I bill every client by credit card and I'm paid the next day almost without fail. My workflow is as simple as selecting all the invoices for the week, clicking "charge cards," and that's it. Their merchant fees are the lowest I've ever seen which is a big win for my business. The automations feature is priceless to me and has transformed how I work. For example, when a new client is added I automatically send a welcome email, a FAQ letter and even mail them a pack of brownies with a welcome card. After spring and fall cleanups I notify clients by text or email to let them know the job is done and they always appreciate it. Renewals used to be so stressful but now an automation sends an offer in the spring and clients simply click or text back to my office number through Service Autopilot. If they don't respond, SA handles the follow-up. I also use their QuickBooks sync so my accountant can log in and find everything ready for tax time. I could keep going, this software is great and their support is so friendly that I recommend giving them a call.

Cons

Sometimes it feels like they can be a bit braggy. I'll be honest they're the best tool I've used, no doubt about it but it can come across like they're showing off. I'd prefer if they paced new feature releases a touch slower so they don't intimidate other companies or users. Dominating the competition is one thing but completely humiliating them feels unnecessary. I probably sound dramatic and I'm a fan but this has bothered me for years and I needed to say it, a bit more compassion and modesty would make them even more likable.

“Way too many bugs

Pros

In my experience the software is planned to include a lot of features. The developers aim to enable many powerful capabilities. For example, automations really help take pressure off our office team.

Cons

I've run into far too many issues. My team and I have filed literally hundreds of bug reports that still haven't been addressed. Support will log a ticket but I rarely see anything actually resolved. Every day we're forced to double-check dozens of items because Service Autopilot either fails to capture data consistently or records it wrong. It feels like they don't have a proper quality control process in place. They even pushed a heavily promoted live broadcast to showcase new features recently and that presentation fell apart too. I couldn't help but laugh a little because it only reinforced my belief that SA consistently drops the ball when it comes to delivering a reliable experience for customers.

“Annoyed with the unreliability

Pros

It has a lot of features including routing, assigning jobs to crews, managing client data and more

Cons

I've lost count of the problems, there are just too many. It's become a running joke in our office. The app is glitchy and even after three years of using it we keep uncovering one bug after another. Payments we've entered have mysteriously disappeared and simple capabilities like reliably searching for payments or other records are inconsistent. It feels like the team is in such a mad dash to ship the newest feature that they never stabilize the older ones. The snow-plowing functionality is completely different from the lawn-care side which is bizarre and forces me to learn two separate methods for building routes and dispatching crews. Overall it's frustrating and makes daily operations harder than they should be.

“Nice time tracking feature

Pros

I appreciate the automatic billing, being able to track dispatched jobs and manage dispatches and the foreman's app works reliably. Overall work tracking and time tracking perform well for me.

Cons

Have had problems with the QuickBooks sync and I notice occasional glitches when adding jobs in the field, plus from an owner's perspective the mobile functionality is very limited.

“Excellent value for money

Pros

We've discovered that this program packs a huge range of features for the price, offering far more capability than you'd expect for the cost. It's a modest investment for a tool that ends up saving both time and money in many different ways. We had initially been using a system built just for lawn care to manage a variety of service tasks and it simply wasn't meeting our needs anymore.

Cons

At first it required a real investment of my time to figure out exactly which features would suit me best and that learning curve can be intimidating. Still, if you commit the time to learn the platform, I believe it pays off and the software ends up working well for you in the long run.

“Not suitable for accounting operations

Pros

I find it simple to receive payments and generate invoices.

Cons

Honestly, scheduling client appointments isn't very convenient. There are so many steps and several different windows to complete a single action. If maintaining smooth, consolidated accounting is important, I would seriously reconsider using this platform. Its bookkeeping features are frustrating and when I call support they repeatedly tell me, 'well, this isn't accounting software.' A number of relatively simple improvements could make it much friendlier for accounting workflows like syncing with QuickBooks to reflect credits and refunds automatically. Instead I end up juggling two applications that don't integrate cleanly. If I need to pull detailed service call histories for customers, this won't work. It's really a dealbreaker for my operations.

“Lovely automation features

Pros

I really like the automation features. They let me send automated messages for marketing, collections and more and include automated arrival preferences as part of that Automations feature set. From the app I can text clients directly and create To Do's for my team which helps keep everyone organized. Job Costing looks like it could make it much easier for me to assess whether I should raise prices on under-performing accounts. Overall it's saved me a lot of time entering leads.

Cons

I've been put off by the closed API because it feels like you commit to this platform and can't integrate as freely. You end up owning and being owned by this one piece of software. Support isn't available on my schedule and I've had to wait for callbacks that sometimes come at inconvenient times. The company's rapid growth and the push to add features fast seems to have created a backlog of unresolved issues. I also wish I could open a client account directly from the calendar because that simple workflow is missing. Syncing with QuickBooks Online has caused me headaches at times and scrolling through a client's receivables is awkward since you have to click to load more transactions.

“Easy to use

Pros

It's great that scheduling is built directly into the platform. I find it simple to handle and it really helps me keep track of my clients.

Cons

For my part, I sometimes struggle to work out the schedule and decide what arrangement suits me best to keep everything organized.

“Convenient for estimating

Pros

Found the estimating tools extremely easy to manage.

Cons

I often work out in the field and I've noticed the app takes a long time to load which makes on-site work frustrating.

“Useless reporting feature

Pros

For recurring jobs, I find scheduling simple to set up and keep up.

Cons

Reports are basically worthless and nothing runs on its own like you'd expect from an 'autopilot.' I end up having to invent workarounds for almost every task I try to complete. They're constantly pitching paid upgrades and extra features yet some essential functions are still absent.

“A feature-packed tool that cuts labor costs

Pros

Being a small business owner, I've discovered it has so many features that it significantly reduces our labor expenses and hands control directly to me. To customers, everything appears extremely professional, so much so that people often assume my company is bigger by far than it actually is.

Cons

Honestly, I can't think of any drawbacks because it delivers value far beyond its price and when I complete the training modules they show me how to get the most out of it.

“Highly customizable

Pros

One of the things I love is how customizable the system is. I can export every bit of my data whenever I want and pull Excel reports if I prefer, although the built-in reports are already very thorough. For any service business, this program will cut down major headaches by automating so many tasks. Service Autopilot smoothly manages routing, invoicing, marketing, CRM and accounting. It also copes with high sales volumes without breaking a sweat. Because it's cloud-based, I can access it from anywhere at any time and overall I'm very happy with this software.

Cons

Did have to invest a fair amount of time upfront to configure my account exactly how I like it. In my experience that extra setup can feel difficult at first but it's a big positive because you only have to do it once. After the initial work is done, I ended up saving a ton of time so the early effort pays off in the long run.

“Huge timesaver

Pros

Frees up about 60 hours of my time each month. I no longer have to depend on spreadsheets that take ages to update every day and week. It enabled our growth. We've brought on two additional staff members who each handle about 40 yards daily on average (more than 60 on Fridays). Service Autopilot also offers a wealth of guidance and coaching on scaling our operations. The price isn't low, however the return is worth it. We charge everyone's credit card and thanks to SA we can bill all customers with a single click and with money flowing in daily we don't run into cash flow problems. We perform the jobs and we collect payment the same day or within the week.

Cons

My experience with their automated routing has been disappointing at best. Because we run more than 20 stops a day divided between two crews, the routing feature in SA doesn't work for us. Thankfully I already knew how to plan routes using Road Warrior.

“Critical for my service-based business

Pros

For running a service-based business, I find this tool absolutely essential. It's highly capable and organizes administrative work so much that managing operations feels effortless. I wouldn't launch a service business without it.

Cons

I honestly can't come up with many downsides. The price might be the only thing some people complain about but I can easily justify the monthly fee given how much more efficient it makes my business.

“Awesome customer service

Pros

Finding and looking up customers is super simple. Their customer support team is well-trained and always on hand to help whenever I need them. When they don't have an immediate answer they call me back as soon as they've tracked it down. They also offer lots of tutorial videos to build my software know-how.

Cons

The huge amount of functionality means it genuinely takes months to uncover everything the software is capable of. It's not exactly a downside, more that you can't know what you haven't yet discovered about its features.

“Centralized solution for storing client data

Pros

One of the things I really appreciate is how much data it can store and how it keeps every client detail in one place, from a client's schedule to their financial accounts, photos, correspondence and more so I don't have to search across different systems.

Cons

Getting up to speed with the many functions and learning how they all connect can be a bit of a chore. I found figuring out how everything ties together somewhat tedious.

“Extremely complicated

Pros

There are a lot of options for customizing this software and I like the flexibility it offers. Unfortunately, getting everything set up and actually understanding all those features felt like a full-time job so if you only need a subset of the functionality I would recommend choosing a much simpler service such as Dropbox or TSheets instead.

Cons

My experience was pretty rocky as the software actually crashed QuickBooks for me and it took about 2.5 days to import all of my QuickBooks data. There were persistent bugs and setup errors that slowed things down and the onboarding material is presented almost entirely as long, slow conversational videos which made it painfully inefficient to extract the specific information I needed. I tried calling support multiple times but they seemed to be closed by the time I got home on most nights. On top of that, I kept getting marketing emails about their conventions even after unsubscribing twice and those messages kept arriving for months. Finally, when I tried to cancel, the process felt far more complicated than it should have been.

“Helpful training videos and support staff

Pros

I love how the dispatch board is organized so I can adjust the view to my needs, by client, status or which resources are assigned etc. It lets me pull up notes and view photos from the field in real time and makes it simple to communicate with supervisors. The custom invoice templates are a nice touch and because it syncs with QuickBooks we've cut down the time we spend billing customers. On the client screens I can track every estimate, service and message. Service Autopilot also stores detailed information about each property and keeps full job histories. The training videos are helpful and the support team has been consistently polite and patient when I call with questions.

Cons

There isn't much that bothers me about Service Autopilot. It can feel a bit sluggish at times, although since it runs in the cloud I blame my internet provider or other external factors. From what I've seen, they have improved this area significantly.

“Accessible from any device

Pros

Being cloud-based lets me get to it from any of my devices when I'm on the move which I really like. I also find the layout very simple and easy to use.

Cons

Scheduling hasn't really saved me much time using this so I don't see the efficiency gains. I'd rather keep using Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar for free instead.