Ryan CobblerJobber (field service software)

Jobber: what happened when Danny's lawn crew added a fifth guy

Filed Time 4 min read Length 843 words

A pickup towing a trailer loaded with two commercial zero-turn mowers, parked outside a brick building

Danny, my nephew, runs a lawn crew. Last April he added a fifth guy and the whole system broke. The system was a group text. Jobs went out at 6am, answers trickled back all morning, and twice a week two trailers showed up at the same house while a customer on the other side of town waited. He called me from a curb and asked, "Is this a software problem or a me problem?"

It was a list problem, and a shared list is what Jobber sells. One calendar holds every job. The crew sees their day on a phone. The customer gets a text with an arrival window and a payment link when it is done. That is the product. It does not pretend to be anything fancier, which is the thing I like most about it.

What it costs

From their pricing page, checked this month. I pay for this one myself, so the numbers matter to me.

  1. Core: starts at $29 a month billed annually. One user. Scheduling, quoting, invoicing, client records.
  2. Connect: starts at $99 a month. Adds automated reminders, payment collection, QuickBooks sync, time tracking.
  3. Grow: $199 a month month to month, $149 billed annually. One user, $29 a month per extra seat.
  4. Plus: from $399 a month with five users included. Crew scheduling, custom reports, an AI receptionist. You call sales for this one.

Annual billing saves up to 25 percent. The free trial needs no credit card.

Danny runs Grow because he wanted the automated reminders. $149 a month plus one seat for his lead guy at $29. Call it $178 a month, $2,136 a year, for a five man crew. The three newest guys read a printed route sheet in the trailer, because seats cost $29 a month and their phones are from the Obama administration. He did the math on six seats and said no. Correct answer.

I run Core myself, one seat, $29 a month, $348 a year. Nine maintenance clients, their monthly checkups, the invoices. A one man shop does not need Grow, and Jobber is one of the few software companies whose cheapest tier is not a sandbox full of padlocks.

The setup at the lawn crew

Numbered, because Danny did these in the wrong order the first time and we started over.

  1. Typed every recurring property into the client list. Address, gate code, service package, mowing height. Two evenings, not one, because he kept stopping to argue with me about the mowing heights.
  2. Built Monday's route on the calendar by dragging jobs into order. The drag-and-drop calendar is the part reviewers keep praising and it deserves it. Moving a job takes one second.
  3. Turned on the client hub, where customers see their jobs, pay invoices, and approve quotes. Danny's customers are not app people. It works in a browser and it looks like a bill, which they understand.
  4. Set the recurring jobs to repeat weekly through October and stop.
  5. Sent the first invoice from the truck at the curb. Danny reported the customer paid it before he had pulled off the street.

Total setup: two evenings. Ongoing: $178 a month at Danny's shop, $29 at mine. The first season he billed it back inside three weeks, because he stopped eating jobs that the group text lost.

What will annoy you

The per-seat pricing is the big one, and the TechRadar review from June called it "a tax on your growth," which is exactly right. Every guy who touches the schedule costs $29 a month. A six man crew paying six seats is in Plus territory at $399. Price your headcount before you fall in love with a tier.

Reporting is thin. Danny asks me "who makes me the most money per hour" and the answer involves exporting a spreadsheet, which he will never open. The reviewers say the same thing. If you are a data person, look elsewhere.

The jump from Grow to Plus is $149 to $399, and the thing that gets you there is crew scheduling and reports. There is no gentle middle. And month to month billing runs 25 percent more than annual, so indecision has a price tag.

The furnace sticker version

Recurring jobs are the filter-change sticker on a furnace. The sticker works when you happen to be standing at the furnace on the right day. If you are not, you breathe dust until October. Danny's old system was a sticker. A property got cut when somebody remembered it. Recurring jobs in Jobber are the sticker that texts the crew on the right day, every week, whether Danny remembers or not. He has not missed one since May.

What to do Monday

Start the free trial and put tomorrow's real jobs on the calendar in the order you will actually drive them. Then send the arrival text to the first customer and read it out loud. If it sounds like something a customer wants to get, you have found your system. If it sounds like spam, fix the wording before you send the second one.