What features should trade job software have?
Feature lists are long because length sells. The list that matters is nine items, and one of them never appears on a comparison page.
Last updated: September 2026
The nine that matter
- One job record holding customer, site address, priority, assignee and status. Everything else hangs off this.
- A calendar you can see and drag, with the visit attached to a person and to the job.
- Quotes with line items, VAT, validity and a deposit, and a way for the customer to accept without printing anything.
- Invoices raised from the job, numbered on issue, emailed as a PDF, payable without friction.
- Payment recording, including part payments, so the outstanding balance is a fact rather than a subtraction.
- Completion evidence: a write-up and photographs attached to the job, which is what settles disputes.
- Document storage on the job: certificates, RAMS, warranties, in the place the work lives.
- Customer communication that leaves a record, rather than a phone call nobody can point to later.
- A phone experience good enough to use in a van, because that is where the work happens.
If a product covers those nine, everything else it does is upside. If it misses two, you will be running a second system for them within a month.
The one nobody lists
Behaviour when something goes wrong. Nobody demonstrates it and nobody writes it on a comparison page, but it decides how you feel about the product in year two.
What happens when you cancel a job, void an invoice, refund a deposit, delete a customer who asked to be forgotten, or move a booking three times? Good products make those paths explicit and record who did what. Poor ones let you edit an issued invoice, which feels convenient exactly once.
Ask about these specifically. The answers are short and extremely informative.
Four features that are usually oversold
- Route optimisation. Genuinely valuable at fifteen vans. At three, clustering work by postcode does the same job for free.
- Live vehicle tracking. Sold as efficiency, usually experienced as surveillance, and rarely changes a decision in a small team.
- Automated marketing. Trades work arrives by recommendation far more than by campaign. Do the completion report well and the recommendation follows.
- Dashboards with a dozen charts. Six numbers you act on beat forty you glance at. If you cannot say what a chart would change, it is decoration.
Where Dispatch fits
Dispatch covers all nine, and they are on every plan: the job record with five clear statuses, the week calendar with double-booking warnings, quotes with deposits accepted from a link, invoices numbered on issue with card payment into your own bank account, part payments recorded, completion reports with up to twelve photographs required before a job can be completed, compliance documents attached for the life of the job, job chat with the customer, and a mobile-first browser app.
On the awkward paths: cancelling a job requires a written reason and records who did it, an issued invoice is voided or credited rather than edited, and erasing a customer requires the owner to type the customer name back before the jobs, notes, reports and photographs go.
On the oversold four: none of them exist here. No route optimisation, no vehicle tracking, no marketing automation, and a deliberately small dashboard of six tiles you can act on.
Features to check against your own trade
Beyond the nine, a few trades have a genuine extra requirement, and it is worth being specific rather than hoping:
Compliance-led trades need document storage and expiry visibility. Contract cleaners and maintenance rounds need recurring visits. Subcontractors in construction need CIS deduction handling on invoices. Businesses with several properties per customer need the site address separated from the billing address.
All four exist here, two of them switched on in Settings rather than on by default, which is exactly the sort of thing to establish before you commit rather than after.
How to use this list
Print the nine, take them into a demo, and ask to be shown each one on a real job rather than described. A feature that cannot be demonstrated in ninety seconds is usually a feature that exists on the roadmap.
Then ask the question from how to choose between apps: what does this not do? The honest answer to that tells you more than the nine ticks.
Questions
Essential features: FAQ
What features does a trades business genuinely need?
One job record, a draggable calendar, quotes with deposits, invoices raised from the job, payment recording, completion evidence, document storage, customer messaging with a record, and a phone experience good enough for a van.
Which features are usually oversold?
Route optimisation and vehicle tracking for small teams, marketing automation in a trade that runs on recommendation, and dashboards with a dozen charts nobody acts on.
What should I check that nobody demonstrates?
The awkward paths: cancelling a job, voiding an invoice, refunding a deposit, deleting a customer. Good products make these explicit and record who did them.
Should an issued invoice be editable?
No. It should be voided while unpaid or credited once paid. Editing an issued invoice is convenient exactly once, and awkward at every year end afterwards.
Keep reading
More guides for trades and service businesses
All nine, on every plan
Jobs, scheduling, quotes, invoices, payments, completion photographs and documents. No feature gates between tiers.