Have you been looking into software that can help streamline and organize everything from invoices to teams?
We love software and are convinced that the right software can help any business streamline and make more money.
For this Jobber software review, we rolled up our sleeves, opened an account, looked under the hood to see all what this does. Below is our findings.
Jobber is a life-saving app for small businesses in the Home Service sector. With a few, minor, shortcomings, I found this app has almost everything a small business owner needs to stay on top of their daily jobs. Nearly half of the labor force in America is employed by a small business, but most of these businesses close down within their first five years. Jobber can help you manage your daily costs, invoices, work orders, and staff. This keeps you on top of your competition and ahead of everyone still using cluttered file folders full of spreadsheets.
Let’s take a deeper dive into Jobber and see what this software has to offer.
What is Jobber software?
Jobber is a full-service organizational software for small businesses. You can manage customers, work orders, invoicing, payments, and staff all in one convenient app. This software lets you track and manage most aspects of your Home Service business all on our platform.
Jobber features CRM, scheduling, integrated calendar, invoicing, teams, expenses and materials tracking, as well as integrating with Quickbooks for easy financial management.
Jobber’s Client Manager is fairly impressive and worth highlighting. The CRM allows you to track customer histories, quotes, work orders, and attach documents to that particular order. The added document feature is a real highlight. You can add photos from the work site, reports from your team out in the field, or anything else you could imagine. Those documents can then be synced and attached to invoices, work orders, and even other clients. If you’ve ever had to manage dozens of similar jobs, Jobber makes sharing information between these jobs a snap.
Jobber’s also features a top-notch invoicing service. You can track payments and batch process invoices. Jobber’s paid tiers also process credit card payments so you don’t have to run a separate service just for collecting the cash you’ve earned. As a bonus, the invoicing comes with pre-designed templates. That was a huge relief as it means no more awkward Excel invoices and a professional look.
On the client-side of things, Jobber really does help take a load off managing customer needs. Their software’s Client Hub lets customers place new orders, approve invoices, get automated assistance, and, most importantly, pay for work all in one convenient site. Jobber can also send clients custom notifications about work in progress, invoices, and other custom messages.
All in all, Jobber is capable of streamlining most aspects of a Home Service business’ daily needs, but which small businesses would this be good for?
Who is it for?
Jobber is aimed at small Home Services businesses. If you are regularly sending employees out in the field to do work in-home or office settings, Jobber is probably a good fit for you.
This app features employee tracking and job updates that your staff can add to orders. This is a lifesaver for being able to track where all of your work is on any given day. You can also track your expenses through Jobber and your material costs. For a small business, Jobber really does track and manage just about every aspect of your work. While Jobber is a great choice for small businesses, if your line of work is very small, Jobber might not be the best choice for you.
If you are a very small business owner, Jobber might not be right for you. This software really shines when you run a company that is sending employees, or teams of employees, out to worksites every day. It’s also aimed at businesses that are bringing in a higher volume of invoices. If your small business doesn’t do fieldwork or only has one or two employees, Jobber might not have much to streamline for you.
So you like what Jobber has to offer and your company is still small, but large enough to need some streamlined software solutions. Now you need to know how to set this software up.
What’s Involved with Setting it Up?
Jobber is very easy to set up. As you saw in the screenshot of the Jobber home screen, all you need to do to get started is click the giant, green “Start Free Trial” button. After you click, you’ll be asked to enter an email, password, company name, your name, and phone number. After all that basic info, Jobber will ask you to select from a range of Home Service business lines. After selecting, Jobber offers to customize its layout to match common needs for that industry. This can save tons of time specializing in your content. I chose to stick with the default layout so you can see Jobber in its most neutral state.
After your signup is done, you can hop into Jobber’s dashboard. On the left panel, you can quickly access all of Jobber’s actions and quick menus. These will give you access to all of Jobber’s features fairly easily. From your dashboard, you can also access your settings, the help center, and your calendar.
After you’ve gotten the hang of Jobber’s layout, you can manage every aspect of your account through Jobber’s settings. This gives you full control over your account. You can manage your service payments, update your contact information, and reach out to Jobber’s Customer Support. If this all sounds like a lot of information up front, that’s because it is. But don’t get too worried, Jobber makes sure you have the training tools you need to get on board fast.
When Jobber first starts up, you will be prompted with some tutorials for getting started. These will help you learn the ropes while you transition from your old system to Jobber’s integrated network. Speaking of ways to integrate Jobber, let’s take a look at what devices you can use this software on and what other applications Jobber can work with.
Devices
When you first download and log into the Jobber app, you’ll be greeted by a wave of tutorials. These will walk you through all the basic features offered on the app. The app is fairly basic and allows you to add new jobs, manage timesheets, add clients, and control your Jobber calendar.
The app allows you to add new jobs fairly easily. The app functions are similar to most calendar apps which allow you to set new dates, events, and reminders. Setting a new job in the Jobber app also sends that job to your main devices and lets all your employees see that new work has come in. Speaking of employees, the Jobber app also lets you manage your timesheets.
Managing timesheets can be such a hassle. Jobber simplifies the process by having employees submit timesheets over Jobber. This sends them to both the main web service and the app. You can approve timesheets through the app which is a huge bonus. If you work the kind of business that has you out in the field with your staff, you can approve everyone timesheets at the end of the day and save yourself all the hassle of needing so much “office time” at the end of the day.
The Jobber app also has a fully integrated calendar that syncs with all your other Jobber apps and devices. This calendar can schedule pretty much everything the Jobber web service can. You can add and manage new jobs as well as update client information through this part of the app. This can be a lifesaver for managers out in the field who need to update information on the fly, but don’t have access to all the tech they left behind at the office.
Eagle-eyed readers will have picked up on this by now, but Jobber is a web app. This means that it will run on anything that can handle the internet and a basic website. The major downside to the app is that it redirects users to the website for anything more than the features listed above. This isn’t that big of a deal, but it is annoying to have to bounce back and forth between your mobile devices web browser and the Jobber app. Future updates could easily fix this, but for now, it’s a workable problem.
Since Jobber is a web-based service, any device that can run the internet can run Jobber. You won’t have to worry about your team needs to run the same device or the added overhead cost of supplying employees with their own devices just to keep everyone in sync. Your employees can either download the app or just use the browser-based version and stay up to date out in the field. We’ll mention how employees can use this app as well as owners, but let’s take a look at some other features first.
Automation Capabilities
Jobber has some impressive automation features.
Right off the bat, I was impressed by how much it automated invoicing. After you upload client and job information, Jobber can then produce just about any kind of invoice you would ever want. If you have tons of recurring orders from regular clients, Jobber can set up and schedule timely invoices and keep you on top of billing without having to sort through a small mountain of paperwork.
Jobber also helps automate contact with customers. The customer end of Jobber features “customer service” messages that you can set. You can also automate messages to clients which can do everything from reminding them about invoices, let them know about promotions, and even use Jobbers tracking software to let customers know when one of your employees is on the way for a job.
These features might seem basic, but the lack of frills takes care of the hassle. It’s more important that software like this automates all of the boring and tedious day-to-day work which leaves you free to handle the more complicated and important work throughout the day.
Marketing features
Jobber comes with a few marketing features that help a small business owner get the word out. Jobber is integrated into social media which allows you to share information across platforms with your clients.
Did you just finish a big job and you want to share pics of a job well done to future, and current, clients? Just use Jobbers Instagram, or other social media features to send the pic out along with a custom message. This is a huge time saver. Rather than having dozens of apps to manage your social media marketing, Jobber just takes care of everything in the house.
We already covered how Jobber can send custom messages to clients, but you can also use this feature for marketing. Just remember that every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to leave a positive impression in your ongoing “word of mouth” campaign. Jobber’s custom messages can be altered to match your branding and leave a consistent experience with your customers.
Features
Jobber comes packed with just about every feature you would need to maintain the day-to-day operations of a small, Home Service business. The first and most important aspect of all of this is Jobber’s Calendar.
Jobber runs out of this calendar. This charts your jobs, manages, which employees are sent to which locations, and further tracks just about every aspect of your work. The calendar is fully integrated with the rest of your account and it’s probably best to think of this screen as your Jobber home base.
These reports really make Jobber stand out. While you’ve been busy entering client information, collecting payments, and working hard, Jobber has been putting this information together into all the reports you’d ever need. You can track which clients make you the most money, which lines of work are best for you, and keep an eye on employee performance.
Jobber’s timesheet function is another great feature. Not only can employees add their own timesheets, but Jobber also keeps track of who has been to which job site through its tracking software. You can approve and amend timesheets and the fly. All of this simplifies payroll which is one of the most complicated aspects of being a small business owner.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Can save hours of paperwork
- Have your whole workflow managed in one place
- Once you get the hang of it, Jobber could save you money and lead to more clients
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- You need to get the whole team using it to really make it pay off
- Can be costly for very small business
Integrations
Jobber is integrated with just over a dozen apps. All of these apps can either work directly with Jobber or work perfectly alongside it. Being integrated into the digital environment is the key to succeeding in today’s online age. Having an app like Jobber working alongside your email and social media just makes the whole process much easier.
Customer Support
I gave the customer support a call and wasn’t really expecting an answer. You know how these services are. If you do get through to someone, it’s going to be in some faraway call center staffed by poor, overworked souls who don’t have the power to fix your problem in the first place.
I also called on a federal holiday to add to the challenge.
To my surprise, not only did I get through, but it was to a real live person who also worked for the company! Jobber is staffed by both American and Canadian employees which gives them dual coverage for either country’s common holidays.
If person-to-person help is a little too slow for you, Jobber also has a video library of tutorials. These cover everything from setup to getting the most out of the service. Don’t be afraid to spend some time scrolling through the library and learning about Jobber.
Overall Rating
- Ease-of-use: There is a learning curve with Jobber. This software offers a lot of customizability and tons of features. Jobber could add a few more tutorials to simplify the learning process. 4 out of 5 stars.
- Customer support: Jobber, like most of our companies, is a small business. Their staff knows what it’s like to run a small business and you can tell that when you call. Jobber’s customer service gets 4 out of 5 stars.
- Features: This is where we really can’t complain. For a small business owner, Jobber really does it all. 5 out of 5 stars.
- Value for money: Jobber’s pricing plans are very reasonable for the services offered. Remember, time is money and Jobber will save you time. 4 out of 5 stars.
