The Best Electrical Contractor Software
Electrical contractor software provides real time updates on projects, work orders, and bid estimates. We reviewed the top platforms on the market to help companies of all sizes, from independent contractors to commercial service providers.
- Customizable reporting
- Full construction management solution
- Integration with AutoCAD and Revit
- Fully integrates with QuickBooks
- Large library of training tutorials
- Offers 24/7 customer support
- Batch invoice creation
- Integrates with QuickBooks and Xero
- Real-time scheduling and dispatching
Electrical contractor software provides electricians with the tools to automate project scheduling and time tracking, estimating and bidding, and even customer management. Using our review methodology, we’ve evaluated the best electrical contractor software on the market. Here are our top picks:
- Procore: Best Overall
- Housecall Pro: Best for Independent Contractors
- Jobber: Best for Scheduling
- ServiceTitan: Best for Technician Tracking
- Electrical Bid Manager: Best for Estimating
- Service Fusion: Best for QuickBooks Users
- Workwave Service: Best for Dispatching
- BuildOps: Best for Quotes and Proposals
- Connecteam: Best for Employee Management
- ThermoGRID: Best for Residential Electricians
Procore - Best Overall
Procore is our top pick for electricians seeking field service management and contractor software. The system integrates with tools like AutoCAD and Revit, making it a good fit for electrical contractors who require detailed planning and tracking capabilities. It also integrates with accounting systems such as QuickBooks Online and Sage to help manage the financial aspects of electrical contracting projects.
Other Procore highlights include automation capabilities, such as automating emails, document sharing, and photo archiving. This is a timesaver for electricians who are busy moving between jobs in the field.
Housecall Pro - Best for Independent Contractors
Housecall Pro for its intuitive UI and low starting costs. It can automate scheduling, client database management, and invoicing. These factors help make it a good choice for small businesses, independent contractors, or brand-new electrical companies. The mobile app is also usable remotely, another benefit for smaller businesses or solo contractors.
A free trial of Housecall Pro is available. Monthly and annual subscriptions are available, with annually paid plans receiving a slight discount. Single-user plans start as low as $59 per month when billed annually.
Jobber - Best for Scheduling
Jobber is well-suited for mid-sized electrical contractors. One useful feature is its real-time scheduling, which allows you to stay flexible for job delays, new assignments, and route changes throughout the day. When a tech’s schedule is changed, they’re alerted on their phone so they can stay up-to-date. Other key features, like batch invoice creation and GPS tracking, align well with the operational needs of these businesses.
ServiceTitan - Best for Technician Tracking
ServiceTitan provides live technician tracking, a valuable tool for electrical contractors who need to know where everyone is at all times. This is especially useful considering the software’s cloud-based nature, as all users get access from anywhere. Technicians in the field and managers in the office can stay in contact with one another and keep customers informed about any service changes.
Other strengths include Service Titan’s capability to effectively manage estimates, jobs, dispatching, and job costing. While it presents new users with a learning curve, the system fits medium to large organizations.
Electrical Bid Manager - Best for Estimating
Electrical Bid Manager’s EPIC pricing connects the system with local electrical suppliers, helping you accurately price your bids. The catalog contains 1.8 million material entries, including over 20,000 standard electrical and low-voltage items, ensuring you can find the exact part you need when building your estimate.
The EPIC pricing tool also helps you compare different costs to negotiate more effectively with suppliers. It includes the suggested retail price and the average benchmark price you would expect to pay. From there, connect your favorite distributors to see your negotiated pricing to compare, ensuring you’re getting the best deal. This way, you can be more informed on the current market for commonly used material items and boost profitability by lowering overall costs.
Electrical Bid Manager includes the EPIC pricing tool on every plan, which is great if you’re a smaller company and don’t need an advanced package. Pricing starts at $800/year, but you will have to request a quote to find exact pricing details for your business.
Service Fusion - Best for QuickBooks Users
Service Fusion is on our list thanks to its integration with QuickBooks, a popular accounting software often used by electrical contractors. It’s important to note that the integration is somewhat limited, as users can only sync with one income account. This can cause issues for businesses with more complex accounting needs.
Service Fusion can manage detailed entries for jobs, including recurring jobs, with functionalities like adding photos, contracts, and other documents to jobs. This makes it a good solution for electrical contractors who need to maintain high levels of organization and communication.
Workwave Service - Best for Dispatching
Workwave Service is a field management system suited to electrical contractors due to its key strengths, which streamline operations and improve productivity. The software manages everything from scheduling jobs to dispatching workers. There’s even a live dispatch view to show where workers are located. The mobile and desktop applications connect field workers to the office, providing critical visibility into all field activities.
BuildOps - Best for Quotes and Proposals
BuildOps made our list due to its ability to generate quotes and proposals for electrical jobs. It also has invoicing capabilities, covering the entire job costing process from start to finish. Along with the financial side of operations, BuildOps has project management capabilities.
BuildOp also has a mobile app for field technicians. Those remote features streamline communication and operations between office staff, customers, and technicians.
Connecteam - Best for Employee Management
Connecteam brings electrical contractors, technicians, and customers together. The app has features like time tracking, employee scheduling, checklists and forms, and employee engagement.
A free version is available for businesses with under 10 users, such as independent electrical contractors. The most expensive plan is $99/month for the first 30 users, making Connecteam affordable even to mid-size operations.
ThermoGRID - Best for Residential Electricians
ThermoGRID helps small to mid-sized field service businesses, including electricians, manage operations. One feature we liked was the Smart Dispatching tool, which assigns jobs based on technician skill and availability. It ensures the right employee gets matched to each task. The software also offers a high degree of customization to fit your exact workflows.
What is Electrical Contractor Software?
Electrical contractor software is a field service management solution for electricians and other qualified electrical technicians. Applications range from project scheduling modules to payroll management systems. These businesses can get real-time project updates, organize work orders, and generate accurate estimates using electrical contractor software.
Electrical workers are in a unique situation: some work comes directly from property owners, while a construction company subcontracts others. Many electricians accept both types of work, meaning they must address both in their back-office processes. Whether you work in electrical construction or as a home repair technician, an all-in-one electrician software can help you streamline your business practices to focus more on the electrical work you do in the field and less on the tedious paperwork.
Key Features
- Project Scheduling: Update your project schedule based on customer requests, general contractor requirements, or your own work schedule.
- Job Costing: Create accurate estimates for each project you bid on. Consider labor costs, material takeoffs, equipment usage, and other factors in your job costing.
- Construction Accounting: Calculate internal company finances like income, purchase orders, payroll, and job expenses.
- Time Tracking: Accurately track employee hours for wage calculation and tax management.
- Payroll: Automate check printing or direct deposit. Follow IBEW union pension and reciprocity rules if necessary.
- Bid Generator: Use custom templates to bid on big electrical contracts using a set format for internal consistency.
- Document Storage: Organize and store important documents like invoices, customer information, maintenance contracts, work orders, change orders, timesheets, and bid proposals in one easy-to-access location.
- Customer Management: Keep detailed records of existing and new customers to maximize job opportunities. Send invoices and accept customer payments as well, including from credit cards.
- Mobile Field Service: Collect and report on data from the field like labor time, material usage, and equipment. Communicate with onsite workers via mobile notifications.
Primary Benefits
Electrical contractor software makes your business easier to manage in several ways:
Streamline Project Scheduling and Dispatching
As an electrician, your schedule depends upon other people. Whether it’s the client themselves or other contractors, your work window depends on their availability. Unfortunately, that can make it hard to create a consistent schedule for you and your team. And if you don’t know the schedule for your current project in advance, it’s hard to take on new work orders without risking overlaps.
Fortunately, electrical contractor software includes scheduling applications to make creating and updating project timelines simple. Drag-and-drop tools help you avoid scheduling conflicts to take on more work or make adjustments whenever availability changes. These calendars can then be shared with the team so everyone sees the correct schedule. Without scheduling software, you don’t have to fix overlaps yourself.
If you regularly work on multiple sites at once, coordinate between different teams and locations with ease thanks to dispatching modules. You can update the entire team about critical job details so everyone knows what to expect, where to be, and when to show up.
Organize Work Orders and Make Accurate Estimates
Working as an electrical contractor can mean a lot of paperwork. If you’re spending all your time on project management and you’re missing out on time, you could be working. Electrical contractor software saves paperwork like work orders and project invoices for you. You can stay focused on your business needs while your important papers are kept organized online.
Electrical estimating can take time which takes away from actual electrical work. If you want to save time and money when you bid on a big construction project, calculate potential costs using an estimating module provided by electrical contracting software. These solutions use material takeoffs, equipment costs, and even subcontractor costs to create an accurate cost estimate you can develop into a professional-looking bid for your clients and customers.
Ease Payroll Management
Managing payroll for electrical technicians can be a hassle. And if you subcontract out on big projects, you have to figure out the intricacies of paying temporary or contract workers. Payroll applications streamline the entire process, including tax management! Some solutions include QuickBooks integration. With a payroll-specific solution, you can choose to pay employees through check printing or direct deposit.
If you are a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) or hire workers who are part of the union, you’ll need to make sure your payroll accounts for pension and reciprocity rules. General accounting software may not be able to address these needs the way an industry-specific solution can.
Improve Contractor and Client Communication
As an electrician, you can go from working with a general contractor on a new construction site one day to repairing blown fuses in a family home the next. Chances are you don’t communicate with subcontractors the same way you do with individual clients. While some contractors resort to using different phone numbers to keep customers separate, you can instead manage all your communications in one application so you can provide timely responses to everyone.
Miscommunication in the contractor business can be unforgiving. A missed service appointment can lead to lost time and wages, in addition to negative customer satisfaction. If you’re working on a big project with multiple subcontracting teams, you’ll need a communication system to stay up-to-date on construction progress. Project management solutions keep all your documents together so you can see project progress at a glance.
Mobile Apps for Easy Access Anywhere
Being on the job site means spending a lot of time away from the office. As a field service business, you’ll often encounter problems when away onsite. If you have an urgent invoicing issue, don’t worry! Cloud-based field service management software lets you access everything you need from a mobile device. No need to drop everything and get back to the office, just grab your phone and go!
Mobile device compatibility with cloud-based electrician software makes dispatching easy too. If you need more workers in the field, just use the software to contact your techs instantly. Apps allow for increased availability on both smartphones and tablets, whether they are iOS or Android.
Do you offer emergency home services? Cloud-based electrical contractor software lets you take service calls anywhere and get back to clients faster. Instead of rushing back to the office to get to a desktop, you can find out what they need, check your shared schedule, and arrange for a team member to go all from one mobile device, as long as you have Internet access.
Pricing Guide
Whether you’re an independent contractor or the owner of an electrical contracting business, you need affordable software. While some electricians settle for general construction software, others will use separate products to cover each task, such as time tracking or estimating software. However, it’s beneficial to use an all-in-one, industry-specific solution for all your business processes, as integrating separate solutions can slow down the total system and quickly add up the costs. Fortunately, there are a wide range of affordable electrician products available.
Subscription rates for electrical contractor software solutions start at $7 per month on a per user basis for single-application solutions. More expensive plans with ERP-suite functionality reach $169 per month per user. Setup fees, training, and implementation will add to the initial costs. In contrast, perpetual license fees begin at $3,000. Free demos and trials are often available for contractors wanting to test out solutions.
By implementing software, all the time you once wasted manually going over paperwork can now be spent working.
