ServiceYak alternatives: what to look for

What ServiceYak actually is

ServiceYak is job management software for Australian trade businesses. One plan, $37 per user per month ex GST — or $370 a year per user, which works out at $30.83 a month — with every feature included. No tiers, no feature gating, and no caps on quotes, jobs or invoices. Thirty-day free trial, no credit card, no lock-in contract, cancel any time and take your data with you.

It covers the run from enquiry to payment: quoting on site from saved rates, jobs with photos, notes and checklists, scheduling with push notifications to the crew, timesheets with per-person labour rates, invoices that chase themselves by email and SMS, card, PayTo and PayID payments, 16 reports across four suites, and a sync to Xero and QuickBooks so your bookkeeper isn't retyping anything.

There are two things in it you won't find in most of this market: AI meeting summaries that turn a recorded site walk-through into a sendable recap, and Yak AI, which drafts quotes, jobs, invoices and purchase orders from a plain-English instruction. Both come with a monthly allowance on the standard plan, and an optional AI Suite add-on at $12 per user per month if you use them heavily. There is also a one-page website for your business at $7 a month for the whole workspace, published to your own domain.

Where ServiceYak isn't the answer

This is the part most software pages leave out, so here it is first. If any of the following describes your business, something else will serve you better and you should go and find it.

• You work out of mobile reception. ServiceYak needs a connection. There is no offline mode and there isn't going to be one — it's a settled product decision, not a roadmap item. If your crew regularly works in basements, roof cavities or past the edge of coverage, this is disqualifying and you should weight it accordingly.
• Your books are in MYOB. We sync with Xero and QuickBooks only. Several apps in this market reach MYOB and we don't.
• You carry stock. There's no inventory or stock control in ServiceYak, and it isn't planned. If parts move between a warehouse and your vans and somebody has to account for them, that's a different class of software.
• You run staged commercial projects. Project phases, progress claims and retention aren't things we do. That's the heavy end of the market and it's not where we build.
• You need regulation-seeded safety forms. ServiceYak has job and visit checklists you build yourself. They're useful and they are *not* SWMS templates seeded from regulation. If you need a signed SWMS off a template, we can't give you one.
• Your day runs out of a shared Google Calendar. We have our own calendar with day, week and month views, but no Google Calendar or iCal feed — so a schedule other people write to from outside won't join up.

What to ask of any job management app

Whatever you end up on, these are the questions that separate a shortlist. Ask them of us too.

• What's the price, and what's the price at my seat count? If it isn't published, that's your first finding. If it's a "from" price, ask what it's from — per user, per month, inc or ex GST.
• Which features are on which plan? The entry tier is rarely the one you'll end up on. Price the tier that carries what you actually need, not the one on the billboard.
• Is there a cap on my work? Some apps meter jobs per month. Find out before your busiest quarter, not during it.
• What costs extra? Add-ons, per-message SMS, card fees, setup, training. Add them up before you compare anything.
• Does the mobile app do what the desktop does — on both platforms? Install it and have whoever's on Android run a real job end to end. This is the single most useful hour of any trial.
• Does it connect to my accounting package? Not "does it integrate" — does it reach the specific one your BAS comes out of.
• What's the contract? Minimum term, notice period, and whether an annual prepayment is refundable if it doesn't work out.
• How do I get my data out? Ask before you put five years of work in.

How to test a shortlist properly

Demos are performances. They're driven by someone who knows where everything is, on data that was made for the demo. What tells you anything is your own work.

• Quote two real jobs in each app, from a real price list, and count the steps. Ours is five from the quote list to a sent quote.
• Run one job all the way to a paid invoice. Schedule it, assign it, put photos on it, add a variation, invoice it, sync it to your accounting package.
• Give it to the crew for a week. If the people on site won't use it, the data stops arriving and the whole thing degrades into an expensive spreadsheet. This is the failure mode that kills most rollouts.
• Do it in the same fortnight across every app on the list, on the same jobs, so you're comparing like with like rather than memories a month apart.

Our guides on switching job management software and rolling it out to a crew go through the mechanics — they're written to be useful whichever app you land on.

Who we do suit

Having been specific about who we're not for, here's the other side. ServiceYak fits best where:

• You're between one and about ten people, doing residential or light commercial work with jobs measured in hours and days rather than months.
• Nobody's job title is "system administrator". You want something usable in an afternoon, not a configuration project.
• You'd rather have one plan than work out which tier you need, and you don't want a feature you're paying for to turn out to be on the next one up.
• Your work volume is going up and you'd rather that didn't change your software bill.
• Your books are in Xero or QuickBooks, and you want the invoice to land there without anyone retyping it.
• Half your crew is on Android. The app is the same on both, which is worth checking rather than assuming — of us and of anyone else.

The whole price, in one place

There's one plan and one number: $37 per user per month, ex GST, in Australian dollars, on a GST-itemised invoice. Annual is $370 per user — two months free, or $30.83 a month.

• Every feature is in it. No starter tier that withholds purchase orders or reporting, and no premium tier above it.
• No caps on your work. Unlimited quotes, jobs and invoices. The only monthly allowance anywhere is on AI, because AI runs on compute we pay for every time it's used.
• The only two optional extras are the AI Suite at $12 per user per month, which raises the standard allowance of 20 Yak AI requests, 5 hours of meeting notes and 20 document scans per person to 200, 50 hours and 200; and a one-page website for your business at $7 a month for the whole workspace, not per seat.
• Seats move with you. Add one when you take somebody on, drop it when the season turns. You pay for the people in the workspace.
• 30 days free, no credit card. The full plan, not a restricted trial — nothing is charged unless you enter billing details at the end.
• No lock-in. Monthly or annual, cancel any time, take your data with you.

If you're moving from something else

The runbook below is the same whatever you're moving from, and most of it is about not bringing too much with you.

1. Settle the disqualifiers first. Offline, MYOB, stock, staged projects, SWMS templates, a Google Calendar feed. If one of those is load-bearing in your week, stop here — better to know now than three weeks into a migration.
2. Export before you cancel anything. Client list and job history out while the old subscription is still live. Afterwards it's a support ticket, if it's possible at all.
3. Rebuild your rates and line items first. This is the asset that makes quoting fast, whichever app holds it. Load your kits and templates before you quote anything real.
4. Don't migrate history. Completed jobs rarely justify the effort. Keep the old system read-only as an archive, pick a start date, and run every new job in the new place from then on.
5. Connect the books and prove one invoice. Xero or QuickBooks, one real invoice, all the way through to the right account — before you trust it with a month of them.
6. Get the crew on it in week one. If the site data stops arriving, everything downstream degrades. Put a real job in front of them on day one rather than a training session.