How to Automate ServiceCore

ServiceCore counts units, not appointments

Portable sanitation is a rental business that happens to drive trucks. A unit goes out, stands on a site for a week or a season, gets serviced on a cycle, and eventually comes back. The money is in how long it stays out and how few miles it takes to keep it clean.

ServiceCore is the software built for exactly that, used by portable toilet, septic, grease and dumpster operators to run the office and the yard from one tool. Customer and Job Management holds the sites, contacts and custom pricing. Inventory Management shows where every unit physically is on a map, and how many will be free on a date somebody is trying to book.

That second screen is what separates this trade from other field service work. A service app asks who is going where today. A rental operator also has to know what is still standing on a job site nobody has mentioned in three months.

The general contractor decides when you get paid

The route is the manageable part. The customers are what generate the office work.

A large construction account will not pay against an emailed invoice. It wants that invoice entered into its own billing portal on a pay application cycle, with a signed lien waiver attached, and in many states a preliminary notice served early in the job. Miss the monthly cutoff and the money moves out another thirty days.

The same site changes without telling anyone. The trailer moves, the crew doubles, the job finishes two weeks early and four units stand on a closed lot earning nothing.

Then the event side, where a city wants a permit application and a site plan before the units arrive, and the disposal end, where the treatment plant issues a ticket per load to be totalled against what was charged. None of that is on a route sheet. All of it is a person with a browser and a drawer of logins.

ServiceCore

Invoices where the money is released Each construction client's billing portal fed on its own pay application cycle, with the lien waiver attached and the cutoff met.

Units off dead sites Project schedules watched on the contractor's own system, so a job that finished early becomes a pickup instead of idle stock.

Disposal costs reconciled Tickets pulled from the treatment plant account and totalled against what was charged out, per load and per route.

Rental billing cycles and the route are the solved parts

ServiceCore covers the operating core of this business properly, and it is worth setting up fully before adding anything to it.

Schedule, Routing and Dispatching is drag and drop, routes optimise with a click, and jobs can be scheduled from suggestions based on closest location, total miles and job count. The ServiceCore mobile app gives drivers turn by turn directions, records actual service times, marks a job completed, partially completed or unable to complete, and captures photos, signatures and extra charges. Inventory Management maps every unit and shows availability on a calendar, so a rep can quote a date without guessing, and damage is logged with a fee attached. Billing and Account Receivables batch-invoices hundreds of customers in one click, on industry standard billing cycles with customisable rental rates and surcharges, and aging reports show every unpaid balance. A Customer Portal, Pro Messaging and QuickBooks fill in the rest.

Look at what those have in common. Each acts on a record ServiceCore already holds.

The general contractor's billing portal, the city's permit system and the disposal facility's account hold records it does not, and those decide when an invoice becomes cash.

Every unit on a finished site is either billed or lost

The gap between the yard and the money is a set of logins the company already has.

Invoices lodged in each construction client's billing portal on its pay application cycle, with the lien waiver attached, so they are in before the cutoff rather than a week after it. Preliminary notices served while the window is still open. Project schedules read off the general contractor's own site, so a job that finished early becomes a pickup instead of four units on a closed lot for a month.

Disposal tickets collected from the treatment plant account each week and totalled against what was charged out, a real cost that almost nobody checks. Special event permit applications tracked through the city portal, the approval date matched to a delivery already on the calendar. Municipal and school bid boards watched for the sanitation contracts that go out once a year and get missed by anyone not looking. Failed cards on recurring rentals caught at the processor before a customer quietly stops being billed.

Keep the customer end human. Reading portals, gathering tickets and building a pay application can run overnight. Anything a customer receives should be drafted and read first.

The office side of a rental can run without the office

Getting paid means signing into the general contractor's portal and putting the invoice where it will actually be drawn from. That job does not also need to know the route.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens a construction client's billing portal, a city permit system, the disposal account or the card processor, reads what is there, and squares it against what ServiceCore already knows about the units and the rental.

It runs on a schedule you choose, in your own private environment, and you can watch a run or stop it. Anything a customer would see is prepared and waits for approval.

Every workflow below is built already, and each one lists the sites it signs into.