Jobber Review – Is This Business Management Software Worth It?

In this comprehensive Jobber review, we’ll be weighing up the pros and cons of this popular field service scheduling software to help you determine if it’s the right platform for your home service business.

Designed with trades professionals in mind, Jobber’s mobile app boasts more than 100,000 downloads on Google Play and countless more on the Apple App Store, with users praising its simplicity and arsenal of essential features. 

Still, after putting the platform through its paces, we found that it isn’t exactly perfect.

Does Jobber’s problems outweigh its benefits? Or does the service have enough going for it to make up for a few relatively minor faults?

We’ll answer all these questions in the review below. 

What is Jobber, and Who is it For?

Jobber combines the most useful features found in top field service management software, online booking systems, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) into one easy-to-use cloud-based platform. 

The end result is that contractors and other home services providers, such as landscaping and lawn care companies, plumbing professionals, handymen, and more, can all manage their businesses more efficiently and effectively. 

Based in Alberta, Canada, the service launched in 2011 and has spent the past decade helping over 200,000 small businesses adapt and thrive in today’s everything-digital landscape with the following helpful features:

Jobber Key Features

1. User-Friendly Dashboard 

Whether you log into Jobber via a desktop web browser or an app on your Android or Apple IoS device, the first thing that immediately becomes apparent is that the developers have put a lot of thought into the needs of small business owners. 

The Home dashboard is perfectly designed, with large buttons giving you quick access to the most commonly used tasks such as:

• Creating service requests
• Generating quotes
• Scheduling jobs 
• Sending invoices

Below that, you also get a handy at-a-glance look at your appointments for the day, including the earnings that go along with them. 

All of this saves you the hassle of wading through menus to find what you need, though, to be fair, the main menu itself is straightforward to navigate. 

To put all this another way, if you find business software can be a little overwhelming, you’ll be pleased with how clean and organized Jobber’s dashboard is. 

2. Client Management

Clients are the lifeblood of any business, so it’s no wonder that Customer Relationship Management lies at the heart of Jobber. 

New clients can be added individually, with the ability to assign multiple properties to a single owner, which makes it perfect for professionals working with property developers or commercial clients with multiple locations. 

Elsewhere, you can save your client’s contact information, manage their notification settings, and even keep track of who they were referred by, a helpful tool if you’re running a referral program to generate more business. 

And if there’s information you want to store on clients that Jobber doesn’t automatically account for? You can create custom fields for client and property records, allowing you to tailor the whole thing to best suit your company. 

Alternatively, you can import all this data from an existing contacts list using a CSV file. 

Once new clients are added, the Lead Management tool allows you to filter leads from existing customers to make it easier to manage your marketing campaigns.

Meanwhile, the customer profiles pull in data from other Jobber features to give you accurate, real-time data  on each client’s work history as well as:

• Last client communication
• Billing history
• Track customer deposits
• Scheduled appointments
• Job details and file attachments

3. Scheduling and Online Booking

Jobber’s CRM may be the platform’s most essential feature, but it’s the scheduling tools that are the real star of the show here. 

The drag-and-drop calendar gives you a monthly overview of your schedule, with the ability to add new jobs, requests, and tasks, all of which can be assigned to individual employees. 

Speaking of your staff, the calendar also allows you to add new calendar events, which is ideal for keeping track of team members’ vacation and sick days as well as public holidays when your entire operation is closed.

Over on the customer-facing side, customers can send in new work requests via your website. This sends a notification to your phone so that you can add the job to your calendar even while you’re out in the field.

One thing we were disappointed by is that the platform doesn’t allow customers to view your availability and self-book an appointment via the website. 

There is a way to do this using integration with Google Local Service Ads. However, this is only available on the Connect and Grow plans and requires you to spend money on Google Ads.

If you’re already investing in Pay Per Click advertising anyway, this is certainly worthwhile, but it’s still frustrating when you consider client self-booking is a standard feature of many other popular field service scheduling tools.

4. Quotes and Invoices

While most of Jobber’s features are great on their own, the app’s biggest strength is that they all work together so that you can track and manage a job from the second it comes in to the moment it gets paid.

Nowhere is the benefit of this more evident than with the quotes and invoices.

After receiving a new work request, you can assign it to a client and convert it to a quote with that client’s details automatically entered. 

From there, you can select from a drop-down menu of your existing services, enter their costs, and even attach any relevant files and images. 

Quotes can then be sent out to the client, and when you get the go-ahead, you can automatically input all of the information on the quote into the job tracking tool.

Once a job is marked as complete, all that data can be imported into Jobber’s well-designed invoice templates.

The finished invoice can then be sent directly to a user’s smartphone, which they can also use to make a payment.

All in all, it’s a fluent, efficient system that makes light work of any home service business’ biggest challenge; getting paid. 

5. Payments 

Jobber’s work doesn’t end once the invoice has been sent out. Using the Jobber Payments add-on, you can accept online and in-person payments. 

The Jobber Card Reader costs $59.99 plus tax and shipping. This is undoubtedly a little steep, especially when you consider that industry leader Square offers their best-selling Point of Sale tool for only $49. 

Still, adding the reader to your account makes it easy for clients to pay you right on their doorstep without having to do anything more challenging than tapping their credit card on your hardware. It saves you the headache of signing up for yet another service provider.

Alternatively, if you choose the option we discussed earlier of sending an invoice via text or email, clients can follow the link in the message and pay online. 

Beyond all that, there’s one thing we really like about Jobber’s payment processing and one thing that we’re less impressed by. 

The thing we love is the Instant Payouts feature. 

Usually, when you make a payout request, your earnings take up to two business days to arrive in your bank account.

However, for an extra 1% fee, you can receive every penny in seconds. 

We’re less thrilled about the fact that there’s no option to take payments via the Jobber app. 

We’ve seen numerous business management and Point of Sale tools that will allow you to scan a customer’s card into their app via a smartphone camera and use that as payment. Here, there’s no such option, meaning you’re forced to shell out for the Jobber Card Reader or use an alternative POS provider, the latter of which isn’t such a good deal if you’re trying to manage your entire business from one app.

6. Marketing and Communications

The app doesn’t just do an excellent job of managing existing jobs. It also provides valuable tools to generate new clients and increase repeat bookings.

Users on the Grow plan can take advantage of the platform’s effortless MailChimp integration to run targeted email marketing campaigns.

There’s also an impressive feature that allows you to send personalized postcards to your contacts’ mailing addresses with announcements, promotional offers, thank yous, and even birthday greetings, a great way to integrate traditional marketing with your online efforts.

Elsewhere, the addition of real-time, two-way communication between customers and field technicians, appointment reminders, and automated follow-ups all help to generate more work and convert one-off clients into loyal, long-term customers. 

7. Third-Party Integrations

One thing that sets Jobber apart from its competitors is that it’s compatible with a wide range of third-party tools, which expand the platform’s capabilities, making it easier to manage your entire operation from one central location.

Sure, Jobber may not be the only service that offers integration with QuickBooks Online, but it is one of the few we’ve seen that play well with all of the following:

Stripe, Square, and PayPal Express for payment processing

• FleetSharp for tracking field staff
• Thumbtack for generating leads and bookings
• Fundbox and FundThrough for managing cash flow gaps
• Hatch for two-ways client communication
• NiceJob website creator
• SendJim relationship marketing platform.

8. Other Useful Jobber Features 

Along with all the above, Jobber also features the following essential tools. 

• Create job checklists to ensure work is thorough and consistent
• Track your team’s progress with in-built employee management and time-tracking tools
• Batch invoicing
• Real-time analytics with over 20 different reporting options 
• Expense tracking
• Route optimization to cut down travel time, saving you costs and improving customer satisfaction in the process
• A self-serve client hub to ensure customers are always fully informed at every stage of a project. 

How Much Does Jobber Cost?

Jobber is one of the most affordable business management apps on the market right now. 

A free trial is available that gives you the freedom to test drive the platform without restrictions for 14 days. This trial doesn’t require a credit card to sign up, so you can be sure that you won’t be charged even if you forget to cancel. 

If you do decide to stick around and make Jobber an integral part of your business, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the following low-cost packages:

Jobber Lite – $9 per month

Includes:

• 1 x user
• Unlimited clients
• Client portal available 24/7
• Quotes and invoices
• Online payments. 

Jobber Core – $35 per month

Includes everything in the Lite plan, plus: 

• Schedule jobs
• Work order management
• Add photos, notes, and file attachments to jobs
• Analytics and reporting. 

Jobber Connect – $85 per month

Includes everything in the Core plan, plus: 

• Custom forms and checklists
• Routing
• GPS tracking
• Online booking
• One-way client messaging
• Automated reminders
• Automatic payments
• QuickBooks integration. 

Jobber Grow – $175 per month

Includes everything in the Connect plan plus: 

• Two-way client messaging
• Lead management
• MailChimp integration
• Packages and upsells
• Automated follow-ups 
• Zapier integration

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Jobber Worth It? Our Final Verdict

From appliance repair businesses to electrical contracting specialists, any home service business looking to improve their customer service and streamline their day-to-day operations should at least try Jobber’s 14-day free trial.

Sure, the platform is far from perfect. The lack of an in-built feature that allows clients to see your availability and book an appointment was a disappointment for us, as were the higher-than-average payment collection fees, particularly the $59.99 charge for the card reader. 

However, if you can overlook all that, you’ll find a lot to like.

Few business management tools we’ve used (and trust us, we’ve used a lot of them) can match Jobber in terms of user-friendliness, while the impressive array of features and the fact that all these features work in harmony with one another to streamline your operation should no doubt appeal to any business owner looking to stay ahead of the game. 

Already put the platform to the test and found it isn’t found you? Check out our review of PocketSuite, a popular Jobber alternative for service-based businesses.