ServiceM8

Xero

QuickBooks

Stripe

Zapier

Google Calendar

£25

ServiceM8 Starter, per month, UK pricing

14 days

Free trial, no card needed

1.70% + 20p

Stripe fee through ServiceM8, three day payout

10 weeks

Admin time UK tradespeople lose every year, HeyBRB 2026

Why ServiceM8 (and when it is wrong for you)

UK plumber checking a job on an iPhone in a customer's kitchen

ServiceM8's full field app is iPhone and iPad only. Android engineers see a stripped-back read-only view.

ServiceM8 has been the default job management tool for small UK trades businesses for the best part of a decade. Founded in Darwin, Australia in 2009, it now claims more than $35 billion of jobs managed worldwide and operates in over 40 countries. The reason it spread through the UK so quickly is the pricing model. You pay per job, not per user. A sole trader with three subcontractors pays the same as a sole trader on their own.

The Starter plan is £25 a month for 50 jobs. Growing is £59 for 150 jobs and unlocks the electronic forms most UK trades actually need (gas certificates, EICRs, condition reports). Premium is £119 for 500 jobs. The free trial is 14 days, no card, full features. You can do the setup in this guide on the trial and only upgrade once you have a real customer paying through it.

The trade-off is honest and worth saying upfront. The full field app is iOS only. Android engineers can install ServiceM8 Lite, but it is read-only with checklists; they cannot run quotes, take payments, or write up a full job card. For a one-engineer business that already has an iPhone, this is irrelevant. For a five-engineer business where two have Samsungs, you are either buying refurbished iPhones at £80 to £150 each or picking a different platform. Be clear-eyed about this before you spend an afternoon.

When ServiceM8 is the wrong choice. Heavy CIS subcontracting where you need granular tax handling beyond what Xero or QuickBooks sync can provide. Compliance-heavy commercial work where you need bespoke audit trails (Joblogic or Commusoft handle this better). Or a team where more than half your engineers are on Android with no appetite for switching.

For everyone else (sole traders, small heating firms, electricians up to about 15 engineers, locksmiths, locks and security installers, roofers, drainage), the question is not whether to pick ServiceM8. The question is how to set it up so you do not waste the first three months working around your own mistakes. If you are weighing this against other platforms, the Tradify weekend setup walkthrough covers the same ground for the main alternative used by UK trades.

Before you start: the 10 minute prep

Open a blank document and write down six things. This bit takes ten minutes and saves you two hours of doubling back later.

Your trading name and address exactly as you want it printed on quotes and invoices.
Your VAT number if registered. If you trade under the VAT threshold (£90,000 as of April 2024), note that too; it changes how you set tax rates.
Your standard payment terms in plain English. "Payment due on completion of works" or "Net 14 days from invoice". Pick one.
A logo file, transparent PNG, at least 600 pixels wide. If you do not have one, run it through Canva for fifteen minutes before you start.
Your top 10 line items from your usual jobs. Boiler service, full bathroom install, fuse board upgrade, CP12 test, whatever you do most. Get the prices and VAT rates clear before you start typing.
Bank details and Stripe account. If you do not have a Stripe account yet, open one at stripe.com before you start the setup. It takes about ten minutes and Stripe will ask for company info that ServiceM8 will then pull in automatically.

Do this in one sitting. The setup is not difficult, but it benefits from concentration. Block out three hours, brew a coffee, put the phone face down. Stopping halfway and coming back a week later is the single most common reason firms end up with a half-finished ServiceM8 account that nobody trusts.

Step 1: Create the account and customise the basics

Tradesperson at a kitchen table setting up software on a laptop

The browser-based admin app is where 90 percent of setup happens. The iOS app comes later.

Go to servicem8.com/uk and click "Start Free Trial". Enter business name, country (United Kingdom), email, and a password. No card required. You land in an empty admin dashboard.

Click Settings (cog icon, top right) and work through the Preferences tab in this order:

Company details: trading name, address, phone, website. This is what prints on customer-facing PDFs.
Logo: upload the transparent PNG you prepared.
Timezone: Europe/London. Do not leave it on the default Australian zone.
Currency: GBP. This locks throughout the account; you cannot change it later without a full account migration, so get it right now.
Date format: DD/MM/YYYY. ServiceM8 defaults to MM/DD/YYYY because of its US user base.
Email signature: a single block of text that gets appended to every email ServiceM8 sends on your behalf. Keep it short. Name, mobile number, company name, Gas Safe or NICEIC number if applicable.

The free trial gives you full access for 14 days. The countdown starts the moment you click "Start Free Trial", so do not sign up two weeks before you intend to actually use it.

Step 2: VAT setup and the price book

This is the step most firms get wrong, and the one that causes invoice chaos six months in. Spend forty minutes on it now.

VAT rates

Settings > Preferences > Tax Settings. Add three rates:

VAT Standard: 20% (boiler installs, repairs, most labour and materials).
VAT Reduced: 5% (qualifying energy-saving materials and certain residential conversions).
VAT Zero: 0% (new build dwellings; certain energy-saving installations under the temporary zero-rate that runs to March 2027).

If you are going to connect Xero or QuickBooks in Step 5, you can also let ServiceM8 import the tax rates from your accounting system. I prefer to set them up manually first. It forces you to think through which rates you actually use.

Domestic Reverse Charge (CIS)

If you sub-contract through CIS-registered builders, the Domestic Reverse Charge applies. ServiceM8 does not handle DRC natively. You enable it in Xero or QuickBooks at the customer level, and the correct tax treatment flows through when ServiceM8 syncs the invoice. Set this up in your accounting software before you do Step 5.

The price book

Settings > Items. This is your saved library of line items: services, materials, fixed-price jobs. Three things matter here:

Use clear, customer-facing names. "Boiler annual service" not "BAS". The line item text appears on the quote and the invoice; the customer reads it.
Set the default VAT rate per item. A CP12 gas safety test is 20%; an A-rated heat pump install can be 0% under the energy-saving relief. Get this right at item level and it flows correctly into every job.
Build the 10 you do most. Do not try to build a 200-line price book on day one. Start with your ten highest-volume items, add the rest as you quote them in real life.

The most common setup mistake. Entering line items at gross price and then trying to add VAT on top. ServiceM8 expects net prices in the price book; it adds the VAT on the quote and invoice. Enter £100 (net) with a 20% rate and the customer sees £120. Enter £120 (gross) with a 20% rate and the customer sees £144. Get this wrong and every invoice for the next month will be £20 too high or £20 too low.

Step 3: Quote, invoice and email templates

Branded PDF quote previewed on a tablet on a wooden workshop bench

Customise the quote and invoice PDFs once. ServiceM8 then uses them on every job.

Settings > Document Templates. ServiceM8 ships with five default PDFs: Quote, Invoice, Job Card, Receipt, Statement. Edit each one in this order:

Quote. Add your logo, terms and conditions, and a one-sentence note above the line items ("Thank you for the opportunity to quote on this work"). The default version is fine and most firms leave it. The single change worth making is to add a "Quote valid for 30 days" line at the bottom; it removes the awkward conversation when prices have moved.
Invoice. Same logo, plus your payment instructions, bank details, and a clear "Pay online" instruction once Stripe is connected in Step 6.
Job Card. The internal version that engineers see on site. Leave the default unless you have a specific reason to change it.

Then Settings > Email Templates. Edit two templates:

Quote Email: the email body sent when you press "Email Quote" on a job. Three to four sentences. State the price, attach the PDF, end with "any questions, give me a call". Resist the urge to make it elaborate.
Invoice Email: similar pattern. State the amount, attach the PDF, mention the pay-online link if you have Stripe set up.

One template, not five. ServiceM8 lets you make multiple quote and invoice templates for different job types. Resist this on day one. One quote template and one invoice template works for 95 percent of trades. Add complexity only when you have a real reason for it.

Step 4: Add staff and set permissions

Settings > Staff. Click "+ Add Staff Member" for each engineer, apprentice, and admin person. ServiceM8's per-job pricing model means adding a fifth engineer costs you nothing extra; the cost is in the jobs they complete.

For each person, set three things:

Role: Staff (engineer), Manager (can see all jobs and reports), or Admin (full account access). Most engineers should be Staff. One person should be Admin (usually the owner). Only promote to Manager when there is a genuine supervision need.
Mobile number: required for SMS notifications and for two-way customer messaging.
Hourly cost (optional, Premium plan only): used for job costing if you want to know real margin per job.

An invite email goes to each person with login details. They will need to download the iOS app and sign in. The Android engineers in your team get the ServiceM8 Lite app, which shows them the schedule and any checklists they need to tick off, but they cannot create or edit jobs.

The Android problem, head-on. If half your team is on Android, do not try to make ServiceM8 work by half-measures. Either buy refurbished iPhone SEs (about £80 each from CeX or Music Magpie) for field staff and use those purely as work phones, or accept that this is not your platform. There is no third option that ends well.

Step 5: Connect Xero or QuickBooks (UK)

Laptop screen showing accounting dashboard tiles next to a notepad with handwritten figures

A working accounting sync is the difference between five hours of bookkeeping a month and twenty.

This is where ServiceM8 stops being a glorified diary and starts paying for itself. Done properly, every invoice you issue from ServiceM8 lands in Xero or QuickBooks within seconds, with the right VAT treatment and the right line items.

Settings > Add-ons > Browse Add-ons. Find Xero (or QuickBooks Online UK) and click Install. You will be redirected to log into your accounting account and approve the connection. Then come back to ServiceM8 and configure four things:

Default sales account: usually "Sales" or "Sales of Goods and Services". Ask your accountant if you are unsure; getting this wrong means a five-minute fix per invoice in Xero.
Default tax rate: should map to your "20% (VAT on Income)" Xero rate, not "20% (VAT on Expenses)". Check this carefully.
Customer sync direction: "ServiceM8 to Xero" is right for most. ServiceM8 becomes the master record for customers and Xero just receives them.
Auto-send invoices to Xero: turn this on. Every time you mark a ServiceM8 job as invoiced, the invoice appears in Xero ready to send or already sent.

ServiceM8 is a Xero Preferred App partner and a QuickBooks Platinum Intuit App Partner, so both syncs are well-supported and stable. The Xero side has had more years to mature and tends to be the recommendation for most UK trades.

If you use Sage, there is no native connector. You either need a Make.com or Zapier middleware, which adds £20 or so a month and some configuration time. There is a full guide to that path on the Academy: connecting Sage to ServiceM8 via Make.com.

Step 6: Connect Stripe for card payments

Settings > Add-ons > Stripe. Install, log into your Stripe account, approve. The connection completes in about 30 seconds.

Once connected, every invoice you email out includes a "Pay Now" button. The customer clicks it, types their card details into a Stripe-hosted page, the payment lands in your Stripe balance, and ServiceM8 marks the invoice as paid automatically.

The numbers worth knowing:

Fee: 1.70% plus 20p per UK card transaction processed through ServiceM8's Stripe integration. So a £500 invoice costs you £8.70 in card fees.
Payout time: 3 business days from payment to your bank account. Stripe Express settlements can shorten this but the standard is fine for most trades.
Refunds: handled inside Stripe, not inside ServiceM8. Process them in the Stripe dashboard and the refund flows back through.

You cannot pass the card fee on to customers in the UK. Under the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012, amended in 2018, businesses are prohibited from adding a surcharge for card payments by consumers. Either absorb the 1.70% into your pricing or do not offer card payment. Trying to add a "card payment fee" line on your invoice is technically illegal and gets nasty fast if a customer complains to Trading Standards.

If you charge for plant hire or supply-only and want to recover card fees, the rules are different for business-to-business transactions; talk to your accountant. For all consumer work, build the cost into your rates.

Step 7: Forms for gas certs, EICRs and condition reports

This is the bit that turns ServiceM8 from a quoting tool into a complete field-service system. Forms live on the engineer's iPhone, get filled in on site, signed by the customer, and attached to the job with a PDF generated automatically.

Settings > Add-ons > Form Store. Browse and install the forms you need. The ones most UK trades will want:

CP12 Landlord Gas Safety Record: the standard 14-point check for rental properties. Pre-loaded.
CP2 Commercial Catering: for any work in commercial kitchens.
Gas Service & Maintenance Record: for annual boiler services on owner-occupied properties.
Site Risk Assessment: for any commercial site visit.

The form store includes electrical safety forms, but they are written to Australian (Victorian) standards. UK electricians need either custom-built forms (which ServiceM8 lets you create from scratch in the form designer) or off-the-shelf UK templates from third-party suppliers like Hazel Whicher, which sells full sets of UK-compliant ServiceM8 forms (EICR, EIC, MWC, PIR) for a one-off fee.

Forms require the Growing plan. Electronic forms are not available on Starter. If gas certificates or EICRs are central to your work, you need at least the £59 a month Growing plan. For most heating engineers and electricians, that pays for itself in the first week through faster turnaround on CP12s and EICRs that customers get emailed before the engineer leaves the drive.

Step 8: Configure the iOS field app

Heating engineer in a van checking a job on an iPhone before driving to next call

The iOS app is where the day actually happens. Spend ten minutes per engineer getting it set up properly.

Search "ServiceM8" in the App Store and install on every engineer's iPhone or iPad. Log in with the email and password from Step 4. The app downloads the account and is ready to use within 60 seconds.

For each engineer's device, walk through these settings before they take it on a real job:

Location permissions: set to "Always" for GPS tracking and route optimisation. If your engineers are nervous about being tracked, set it to "While Using" instead; you lose route data but keep job-arrival times.
Notifications: turn on for new jobs, messages, and dispatch changes. The whole point is the phone telling them when something changes.
Camera and Photo Library: must be allowed. Engineers will take photos of every job and attach them automatically.
Bluetooth: needed if you plan to use a card reader (Stripe Terminal or similar).
Offline mode: ServiceM8 syncs automatically when there is signal and queues up changes when there is not. Tell engineers this so they do not stop work in a basement boiler room thinking the app is broken.

The iOS app handles 95% of what an engineer needs: see their day, view job details, take photos and notes, complete checklists and forms, get a customer signature, generate an invoice, and take card payment. The remaining 5% (creating new staff, changing global pricing, building custom forms) is done in the web admin on a laptop, not the phone.

Step 9: Run a single test job end-to-end

This is non-negotiable. Before you put a real customer through this system, run one test job from start to finish using your own details. It takes 15 minutes and finds every gap in your setup.

Create a new client: use your own name and a real email address you can check on your phone.
Create a job for that client. Add 3 line items from your price book.
Send the quote: ServiceM8 emails the branded PDF to your inbox. Open it on your phone. Check the logo, terms, line items, VAT calculation, and total.
Accept the quote using the "Accept Quote" link in the email. Confirm the status flips to "Accepted" in ServiceM8.
Schedule the job to yourself on the iOS app. Confirm it appears in your engineer diary.
Start the job on the iOS app. Take a photo. Complete any form you installed (e.g. CP12). Add a note.
Complete the job. Sign as the customer using your finger. Convert to invoice.
Email the invoice to yourself. Open the email, click "Pay Now", pay with a test card or a real one for a £1 line item.
Verify the invoice appears in Xero or QuickBooks within 60 seconds with the correct VAT, line items, and amount.
Verify the payment shows in your Stripe dashboard and marks the ServiceM8 invoice as paid.

If any step fails or looks wrong, fix it now. Send yourself the test invoice again if you change a template. Do not skip this; the cost of a customer seeing a half-broken invoice in week one is much greater than the 15 minutes this takes.