Service Genius!

Service Business Software

We offer software for a variety of service business industries

A service business is one which has to cater to a large set of customers, providing them with specific services for a fee. The service business provides its expertise and its services through employees trained in the specific skills they are providing to the clients. Starting in the United States, the service business sector has grown since the 1970s. More and more couples were both engaged in full-time paid work, and family incomes were growing. People wanted – and needed – more quality leisure time, so looked to outside service companies to perform tasks that might have been done by one of the partners in earlier days.

A service business is one which has to cater to a large set of customers, providing them with specific services for a fee. The service business provides its expertise and its services through employees trained in the specific skills they are providing to the clients. Starting in the United States, the service business sector has grown since the 1970s. More and more couples were both engaged in full-time paid work, and family incomes were growing. People wanted – and needed – more quality leisure time, so looked to outside service companies to perform tasks that might have been done by one of the partners in earlier days.

The current version of Service Genius offers:

Job Scheduling

Schedule jobs by any frequency you can image! Daily, monthly, weekly, once every 10 days, first Tuesday of the month, and more! When you set up a job, you can define an ongoing Jobs Template for recurring jobs, This template includes:
Type of work, including
Accounting information, including
Employee/s and/or Team’s assigned;
Job Notes:
Reminder type:

Customer Information and CRM

You can record all usual basic information for each customer or prospect. Thoughtful Systems and its predecessor companies, under the direction of Murray Gordon, a management and IT consultant and systems analyst, began producing software for a window cleaning company based in New York’s toney Hamptons district back in 1986. That window cleaning business had 4 branches, each one in a different Hampton, and thousands of customers, many of them wealthy new Yorkers in the finance industry, the movie industry and others. Due to the seasonal nature of the Hamptons position, the software had to allow for differing schedules for various periods of the year. In Summer, it was window cleaning once a week perhaps, whereas in the winter, when houses sat empty, window cleaning was rare, but houses needed to be checked for things like freezing pipes, snow removal and so on.

The software needed to be able to define and maintain schedules for all the tasks these demanding clients wanted, and be able to assign suitably qualified employees (or subcontractors) to the jobs. In addition, the software needed to handle bulking, invoicing and production of statements on a monthly basis. There were many details that had to be considered. For example, some customers wanted their invoices sent to their nice Hamptons houses in the summer, but to their New York City addresses in the winter months. Some employees were paid on an hourly basis, whereas some subcontractors received a percentage of the amount charged for the job,. There were even a few who had fixed pay arrangements – they received a fixed dollar amount for each job completed.
The software had to handle management of the employees’ hours, and the gross pay that was due to each employee or subcontractor each pay period. Gross pay amounts and number of hours worked were to be exported to a dedicated payroll program, such as ADP. (These days, we export to QuickBooks, Xero, Sage and MYOB as well.)
This was a challenging project at the time. There were no other service business software programs available at the time. Business owners were not very familiar with software, and advantages of using powerful software to run and manage a business. At one of the first trade shows we attended, one attendee said yes, he wanted good software – he’d been looking around for good, soft cloths for cleaning windows for some time! Nowadays, everyone is familiar with computers, and with a variety of software programs that run on them. Not only that, but also mobile software – apps that run on mobile devices – smart phones, IPads, IPhones, Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets, and hundreds of other mobile devices.
High tech has finally entered the arena for these service businesses and made the management of such businesses more scientific and professional – thus cutting down on the time it takes to run a successful service business, and providing valuable data which can be mined to reveal trends in the business, and thus help make better decisions for future years regarding the running and management of the business.

What Service Genius Business Software can do for You:

Service Genius was developed by the team that produced the Scheduling Manager Gemini, a highly successful service business software application developed over a period of more than 30 years! During that time, we have listened to feedback from our users. Each month, we sit down and review requests from users for new and modified features. We add in items that are requested by many users. Also, sometimes a particular user has very specialized needs and wants the software to handle very specific situations. In some cases, our Customer Success business analysis professionals – the in-house “geniuses” – analyze a company’s structure and its detailed requirements, and modifies the software to handle these very specific situations. The amount paid for these modifications is minuscule in comparison to the dollar savings that result from having software that “fits like a glove”.

Also, you can record information regarding the customer’s work location. Record information for as many work locations as you want! (This feature was suggested to use more than 25 years ago – a user had clients like Burger King, who had many locations to be serviced, but wanted all invoices, etc. to be sent to one billing address.)
Record accounts information, including

User-defined fields: There are several user-defined fields which can be renamed by you to anything you want! There are over 100 user-defined fields for each location!

Public notes: Notes to be included on Work orders which help alert employees to relevant information concerning eh customer

Private notes: Notes that can only be read or modified by select office personnel. (Never printed on work orders, invoices, etc.)

Time-stamped notes: You can record notes each time you have any kind of interaction with a customer or a prospect. This includes phone calls, emails, text messages, etc. This is another incredibly useful feature, allowing you to keep a detailed record of all contacts with each customer or sales lead.

Employee Information

You can record all relevant employee (or subcontractor) information in this section of the software. This includes all basic information (name, address, etc.) as well as social security (NI) number, etc.’
Also, record payroll information for the employee, including

Accounts Receivable – Invoices, Statements, etc.

When you record appointment completion information in Service Genius, an invoice is automatically generated for the appropriate amount for the job. You can tell the software to send out these invoices automatically by email as they’re created.

If payment is made at the time of the appointment, this is recorded, too.
You can review all transactions by clicking the convenient “Accounts” icon n the customer screen.
If customer is paying by credit card, that info is recorded, and the charge is processed by one of our credit card processing partners. The funds are deposited in your bank account the next day! (Note: Requires you to sign up with one of our approved credit card processing companies)
Run Accounts Receivable reports at any time – showing amounts due and/or amounts paid by each customer.

Service Codes

Define as many service codes as you like in Service Genius. Service Codes allow you to classify all scheduled work and jobs performed according to the type of work performed.

If you are using the QuickBooks interface, these Service Items will be synched with the service codes in QuickBooks, Similarly, if you are using Xero or Sage Accounting.

Sales Tools and Sales Analysis

You can record information concerning each lead (prospect) in the software. You can then get statistics from Service Genius showing what percentage of leads are converted to paying customers periodically.

Also, run Sales reports, showing sales by customer for any period you choose, or sales by Service Item, allowing you to see which services you offer are the most profitable!
Also, run Budget vs Sales reports, showing the difference between what you expected you would make in a given month (or week, or year) compared to what you actually made.

Multi-Function Job Completion process

When you indicate an appointment has been completed, several events occur simultaneously:

If you are using our mobile app, SM-Mobile, then completion information is imported from the mobile app.

SM-Mobile – Our Mobile App

SM-Mobile works in conjunction with Service Genius, so that employees in the field can be informed about appointments and record information concerning them. All information recorded is transmitted back to the head office. It also functions as a timekeeping app.

Some of SM-Mobile’s features”

Have Invoices paid online – get paid quicker

Invoices can be sent to customers by email. The invoice has a “Pay Now” button. The customer clicks that button, records credit card information for payment, and the invoice is paid! Your money is in the bank in no time at all.

In Conclusion:

Service Genius is an online program that will help make your service business more efficient, and help you both in the day-to-day running of your business and in the ongoing analysis of business successes. It’s built-in business intelligence! Service Genius provides you the tools so that you can benefit from its brilliant features and become a service business genius yourself.

Service Genius has been created by Thoughtful Systems, a software development company specializing in providing software for a variety of service industries, with over 30 years’ experience. The software is affordable and is supported by professional, smart and friendly support technicians, who will answer your questions, and give you advice on the best ways to use the software for your particular business!

We are constantly working on improving the software, and adding new features. We also are unique in that we provide bespoke custom features for clients that need the software to work in specific ways for their business! Call us to discuss your needs.
Call today to arrange a no-obligation free trial! No credit card required.