Fleet & Van Software for Trades and Field Services
For an electrician, plumber or maintenance team, the van is a mobile workshop and the diary is the business. Smart Strix dispatches the day's jobs to each engineer, tells customers the van is on its way, and turns finished work into an invoice before the tools are packed.
Why would a trades business use fleet software?
Because the problems that sink field-service days are fleet problems in disguise: which engineer is nearest the emergency call-out, whether the customer knows anyone is coming, whether the boiler-swap photos exist when a complaint arrives, and whether Tuesday's job was ever actually invoiced. A trade with three vans has the same coordination problem as a courier with thirty — Smart Strix solves it at a size and price that fits a small firm.
How does job dispatch work for field engineers?
The office books work onto the dispatch board and drags each job onto an engineer; it appears in their app with everything attached. Each engineer's day is an ordered list of appointments, so the 8am boiler service, the 11am call-out and the afternoon quote visit run in sequence rather than by phone call. Skill tags on each person — Gas Safe, 18th Edition, working-at-height — mean the job that needs a specific qualification goes to someone who holds it, and the assignment optimizer can rank candidates by proximity and experience when an urgent call-out lands mid-morning.
Can customers see that the engineer is on the way?
Yes — this is the feature that ends the "between 8 and 6" window. Send the customer a signed tracking link and they watch the van approach in their browser: your electrician is on the way, visibly. Links expire on a timer you choose (5 minutes to 14 days), so the customer sees the van for that visit and nothing more. In the office, the live map shows every van and job via the engineer's phone — no tracker fitted, no fitting cost. GPS tracking comes with the Advanced plan.
How is completed work evidenced?
Engineers photograph the job — the leak before, the repair after, the installation as left — and capture the customer's signature in the app at handover. Photos and signed completion live on the job record permanently, which settles most "the work wasn't finished" conversations before they start. Vehicle check-in/out photos, MOT and insurance expiry alerts and fuel logs keep the vans themselves in shape, since a trade's van off the road is a day of cancelled appointments.
How do invoicing and accounting work?
Quote, job, sign-off, invoice — one thread. Invoices progress through draft, sent, viewed and paid (you'll know when the customer opened it), reminder schedules and late fees chase the slow payers so you don't have to, and partial payments handle deposits on bigger installs. When an invoice is ready for the books, it exports to Xero or QuickBooks over an OAuth connection — a clean one-way export rather than an overpromised sync.
Which trades does Smart Strix suit?
- Electricians and electrical contractors running multiple vans
- Plumbing, heating and gas engineering firms
- Property maintenance and facilities teams
- Locksmiths, glaziers, pest control and other reactive call-out trades
- Landscapers and installers whose crews travel between sites
Anything from a two-van partnership to a 50-vehicle contractor fits. Starter (up to 3 drivers) suits most small firms and it's free to begin — the pricing page has the full comparison.