Glossary

Field service glossary.

Plain-English definitions of the terms that come up when you run or buy software for a field service business. Bookmark or cite — each term has its own anchor link.

By Anonyo Hossain, Founder of ServeHub Last updated August 19, 2026

Field Service Management (FSM): Software that helps service businesses run the workflow that happens outside an office — scheduling crews, dispatching them to customer sites, capturing work completed, and invoicing. FSM tools typically combine a customer database, calendar, mobile crew app, and billing system in one. ServeHub is an FSM platform built for small-to-mid-size service businesses.
Service Estimate: A written price quote a service business sends a customer before doing the work. A good estimate includes itemized labor, materials, applicable taxes, and a clear scope. Customers sign or reject it. In ServeHub, every estimate supports e-signature and can be converted to a contract or invoice in one click.
Service Contract: A signed agreement between a service business and customer outlining scope of work, price, terms, and signatures. For one-off jobs, a signed estimate often functions as the contract. For recurring work, a separate service agreement (sometimes called a maintenance contract) covers scheduled visits over a period (quarterly, annual, multi-year).
Work Order: An internal record telling a crew what to do on a specific job: location, customer, scope of work, materials needed, special notes. Some businesses call this a job ticket or service ticket. In modern FSM, the work order lives on the crew's phone and updates in real time as photos and notes are added.
Dispatch: The act of assigning a tech or crew to a job, on a specific day and time. Dispatching considers crew skills, location, customer schedule, and equipment. Good dispatch software prevents double-booking and lets dispatchers reassign jobs in real time. ServeHub does both, for shops up to roughly 30 crews. ServeHub does not sequence a crew's stops by drive time — see Route Optimization.
Route Optimization: Auto-ordering a crew's daily stops to minimize drive time. Critical for high-volume service businesses like landscaping, cleaning, pest control, and pool service where a crew might visit 8-15 customers in a day. ServeHub does not do this: you schedule and order stops yourself. If automatic drive-time sequencing is a requirement, ServeHub is not the right tool for that part of your workflow.
Recurring Maintenance Plan: A subscription-style agreement where customers pay regularly (monthly, quarterly, annually) for scheduled service visits — HVAC tune-ups, lawn care, pool cleaning, pest treatment, etc. Maintenance plans are the holy grail for service businesses because they convert one-time customers into predictable yearly revenue. ServeHub auto-renews these plans and generates recurring invoices.
Job Costing: Tracking the actual labor, materials, and overhead spent on a specific job versus what was quoted, to know whether that job (and that job type) was profitable. Most small shops don't job-cost rigorously, which is why they don't know which work makes money. ServeHub retired its estimate job-costing tools (material catalogues, labour rates, machine and overhead cost lines) in August 2026, because almost nobody used them: estimates are now priced from service items and sections. Estimates built before then still show their original cost lines, read-only. You can still track what a job actually cost by recording expenses against it.
Deposit Invoicing: Collecting a partial payment from the customer before work begins — usually 25-50% of the quote. Common for larger projects (HVAC installs, roofing, landscaping projects). Deposit invoicing protects the business from cancellations and funds the materials purchase. ServeHub supports e-sign + deposit invoice in one customer-facing flow.
E-signature (Electronic Signature): A legally binding signature captured digitally on a document — typically via a customer typing their name, drawing a signature, or clicking 'I agree'. E-signed estimates and contracts are valid in the US (E-SIGN Act, 2000) and Canada (PIPEDA / provincial equivalents). ServeHub includes e-signature on every estimate and contract in the base plan.
Customer Portal: A web page where customers can see their history with a service business — past invoices, signed contracts, upcoming appointments, payment methods. A portal reduces back-and-forth and lets customers self-serve. ServeHub generates a customer portal automatically for every business.
Proposal vs Estimate: An estimate is a price for a specific scope of work, often itemized. A proposal is broader — it can include the price plus a narrative pitch (who you are, why you're the right fit, methodology). For small jobs, you send an estimate. For larger competitive bids, you send a proposal. ServeHub supports both.
Service Area: The geographic region a service business operates in — usually defined by zip codes, cities, or a radius from a base location. Defining a service area helps with dispatch (don't offer jobs you can't reach), local SEO (Google understands where you serve), and pricing (drive-time-based job pricing).
Field Service Automation: Software that handles the routine, repeatable parts of running a service business without humans — auto-invoicing after job completion, auto-renewing maintenance plans, auto-sending appointment reminders, auto-following-up on unsigned estimates. The more a business automates, the more it scales without hiring office admin.
Service Ticket: Another name for a work order — the document or record describing a specific service call or job to be performed. Some industries (HVAC, IT, telecom) more commonly use 'ticket', others (construction, trades) use 'work order'. ServeHub handles both terminologies.
Mobile Workforce Management: Software that gives crews in the field everything they need from a phone or tablet — their daily schedule, customer notes, scope of work, ability to capture photos, process payment, and mark jobs complete. ServeHub is mobile-first: a native iOS app plus a mobile web app that works on any phone. There is no Android app yet, and no offline mode — ServeHub needs a connection.
Field Service CRM: A customer relationship management system specifically built for service businesses, combining typical CRM features (customer database, contact history, notes) with field-service-specific features (job tickets, dispatch, mobile crew app, invoicing). Distinct from generic CRMs like Salesforce — those aren't built for the dispatch-and-invoice motion.
Tip Collection: Letting customers add a tip on top of the invoice when paying for service. Increasingly common in residential service (cleaning, lawn care, HVAC service) — a small UX detail that materially increases tech compensation. ServeHub supports optional tipping on invoices.

Does ServeHub actually do these things?

Most of them, and here is the list with the gaps left in. ServeHub does estimates, e-signatures, deposits, invoicing, card payments, scheduling, recurring plans and a website. It does not do offline sync, drive-time route optimization, or estimate job costing — that last one was retired in August 2026.

Field service capabilities, and where ServeHub stands on each
Capability	ServeHub	Detail
Estimates and quotes	Yes	Section-based, priced quantity × unit price, with optional sections the customer can tick on or off.
E-signature	Yes	Built in. Records the signer's typed name, a timestamp, the IP address and optional geolocation.
Deposit invoicing	Yes	A percentage or a fixed amount off the signed agreement, with the balance still owing recorded.
Card payments	Yes	Through your own connected Stripe account. ServeHub does not enable ACH or direct debit for you.
Scheduling and dispatch	Yes	One crew calendar, addresses on appointments, and a warning when you double-book somebody.
Route optimization	No	Nothing sequences a crew's stops by drive time. You set the order yourself.
Offline mode for crews	No	ServeHub needs a live connection. Nothing queues up to sync when signal returns.
Mobile app	Yes	Native iOS app plus mobile web. No Android app yet.
Recurring maintenance plans	Yes	Recurring invoices on a schedule, with automatic payment reminders that stop when the invoice is paid.
Estimate job costing	No	Retired 16 August 2026 — material catalogues, labour rates, machine costs and cost lines. Pre-retirement estimates still display read-only.
Job expense tracking	Yes	Record expenses and receipts against a job, and log crew time on it. Real money spent, not a projection.
Customer CSV import	No	No bulk import and no CRM connector. New leads do arrive automatically from your website form and the estimate widget.
Licence and insurance document vault	No	There is no document vault. You attach files to an individual invoice yourself.
Customer portal	Yes	Customers view documents, sign, and pay without creating an account.
Website for your business	Yes	AI-generated and publishable on every plan, including free. Your own domain on Plus and Pro.

All of this in one place.

ServeHub bundles every workflow above — estimates, contracts, invoicing, dispatch, recurring plans — into one system. There is a free plan, Plus at $20/month and Pro at $55/month, and users are unlimited on all three. New accounts get a 7-day trial of the paid features.

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ServeHub

Field service glossary.

Does ServeHub actually do these things?

Where these terms turn into work

All of this in one place.