Field service planning software: plan your staff and jobs in one overview

Field service planning software: plan smarter and save time

Monday morning, quarter to seven. A technician calls in sick. There are five stops on their route and the first customer expects them within the hour. Who takes over? Who has the right qualifications? Who is nearby? That information is spread across three different places and the phone is already ringing.

With Simple-Simon’s field service planning software, you can see in one screen who is available, which skills they have and how full their day is. You drag the job sheet to another technician and they receive the update on their phone within seconds. No phone call needed.

And as a business owner, you can see what really matters: how many hours are being sold, how many hours are idle, and whether you still have capacity next week to take on that extra job.

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Monteur gebruikt de Simple-Simon werkbon app op een smartphone tijdens het werk.

What is field service planning software?

Field service planning software is a digital system that lets you schedule, adjust and track job sheets, technicians and appointments. You plan based on availability, skills and location. The schedule is kept in one central place, and your technicians see it live in the app on their phone.

With Simple-Simon, the difference compared with a calendar or Excel file is the connection between planning and execution. A calendar only shows an appointment. What you schedule on the digital planning board becomes a job sheet, including customer details, checklists, materials and a signature. What your technician enters in the job sheet app is available back at the office within seconds. This makes planning, execution and invoicing one connected workflow instead of three separate systems.

Most companies that switch come from a whiteboard on the wall, an Excel file that is already outdated as soon as it is shared, and a WhatsApp group where planning changes get lost between photos. Simple-Simon replaces all three with one screen, and your first job sheet can be in the system within five minutes.

Monteur krijgt uitleg over de Simple-Simon werkbon app tijdens een praktijktraining in de werkplaats.

The right technician for the right job

With Job Sheet Type PRO, you can record which certificates each employee has, which types of jobs they are qualified to carry out and which region they work in. When scheduling a job, Simple-Simon shows you who is both qualified and available. You do not have to remember it yourself or ask a colleague.

Plan based on skills and certificates, so you never send someone who is not qualified to carry out the job.
Plan based on region and travel time, so your technician does not have to drive across the city twice.
Plan based on availability, including leave, sickness and contracted hours.
See immediately who still has capacity and who is already fully booked before assigning the job.

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Workforce planning: who works when and who still has capacity

Workforce planning in Simple-Simon is not about a rota on the wall, but about the day-to-day deployment of your team. For each employee, you can see their working hours, leave, contracted hours and the jobs already scheduled.

For the planner, that means more control: you can fill empty slots in the schedule without calling around and immediately see when someone is becoming overloaded. For the business owner, it means insight: you know whether your team is fully booked or whether there is still room for extra work.

See the availability of your entire team on one screen, by day or by week.
Fill gaps in the schedule with work that already needs to be planned.
Move jobs between two technicians by dragging them. Both receive a notification.
Give self-employed and external technicians access to their own schedule without giving them access to your administration.

Work planning: from separate job sheets to a fully scheduled week

You start the week with twelve job sheets and five technicians. Work planning is the step where those twelve job sheets are assigned to the right person on the right day.

In Simple-Simon, you do this on the digital planning board: create the job sheet and drag it to a technician and a time slot. The job sheet appears in their app straight away, including the address, description, checklists and attachments. What used to take a morning of phone calls now takes fifteen minutes of dragging and dropping.

Recurring work can be added to a recurring schedule. Maintenance visits and service contracts then appear in the schedule automatically.

Want to see how it works first?

Half an hour, your screen and ours. We walk through a job the way you would plan it, from job sheet to invoice.

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Bezoeker bekijkt een live demo van het digitale planbord van Simple-Simon op een laptop tijdens een vakbeurs.

Capacity: do you have more work than manpower?

You do not want to find out halfway through the week that twenty more hours of work have been scheduled than your team can handle. In Simple-Simon, you compare scheduled hours with available hours by day, week and employee.

See that one technician is overloaded while a colleague still has capacity? Simply drag the job sheet to the other technician and the hour registration moves with it automatically. This helps you distribute the workload fairly and prevents one technician from consistently carrying the heavier weeks.

If you work with maintenance contracts, you can look further ahead. Simple-Simon shows which customers are due in the coming months and how much capacity you will need. That way, you already know in September whether you are likely to be short of a technician in spring.

Planner werkt achter meerdere beeldschermen op kantoor voor het plannen van de buitendienst.

Urgent job or sick leave: reschedule within a minute

An urgent job comes in. You immediately see who is nearby and who still has capacity. You drag the job sheet to that technician and they receive the notification on their phone within seconds. The technician who was originally scheduled automatically sees their updated planning.

A sick leave works the same way. You divide the sick technician’s route among colleagues who still have room in their schedule. No chain of phone calls and no uncertainty about who is expected where.

Connect your planning to your accounting software or ERP

Simple-Simon integrates with more than 80 accounting, CRM and ERP systems, including Exact, SnelStart, AFAS and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The hours and materials your technician records automatically flow into your administration.

This means your planning does not operate in isolation. A completed job sheet becomes an invoice without anyone having to re-enter the data.

Curious?

Want to see how Simple-Simon makes your field service planning easier to manage? Book a demo today and see how to plan your entire week on the planning board.

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Questions about field service planning

Why should I switch from Excel or WhatsApp to field service scheduling software?

In Excel, your schedule is a snapshot: as soon as you share it, it’s out of date. Your technicians work from yesterday’s version and every change costs a phone call. With a planning board, everyone sees the same up-to-date schedule and a change appears on the technician’s phone within seconds. More importantly, the schedule is tied to the work order, the hours and the invoice, so you never enter anything twice.

Does field service scheduling software also work for a small team or a sole trader?

Field service scheduling software pays off from a single technician, because the time savings come from the admin work, not from the size of your team. Simple-Simon is used by sole traders as well as by businesses with dozens of field staff. You pay per user and adjust the number of licences each month, so you can start small and expand as your team grows.

Which industries is field service scheduling software suitable for?

Field service scheduling software is designed for businesses whose technicians or service staff work on location. Simple-Simon is used in industries including installation engineering, plumbing, electrical engineering, refrigeration and heating, drainage, security, fire safety, cleaning, landscaping, machine maintenance, door and gate engineering and commercial kitchen equipment. The underlying process is the same in all of them: scheduling, carrying out the work, recording and invoicing.

What should I look for when choosing field service scheduling software?

Focus on five things. Does the app work offline, so a technician can keep working without a signal? Is the work order in the same system as the scheduling, or do you still have to retype everything? Does it connect to your accounting software? How quickly are you up and running: days or months? And are you tied to an annual contract? Not with Simple-Simon. You don’t sign a contract, you pay per user per month and you can cancel monthly. You pause or change licences yourself whenever your team shrinks or grows. Simple-Simon is up and running within a day and connects to more than 70 systems.

How much does field service scheduling software cost?

Simple-Simon costs €30 per user per month. That includes the planning board, the work order app, time tracking and material tracking. There’s no contract and no minimum commitment; you adjust the number of licences each month. You can try Simple-Simon free for two weeks.

Does it work on Android too?

Yes. The Simple-Simon app works on Android and iOS, on both phones and tablets. So your technicians can use their own phones, and you don’t need to buy any new devices.

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Complete for €30 per month, per user

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