FieldproxyAI-native field service softwareGuides by role
What does a finance team need from field service software?
Finance needs every completed job to become a correct invoice quickly, with nothing left unbilled: the work, parts, PO number and approved limit carried from the job to the invoice without retyping. It needs real job costing (labor, parts, subcontractors and travel against the price), billing that matches how customers are contracted (flat rate, time and materials, maintenance agreements, progress billing with retainage), and a sync to QuickBooks, Xero or Sage whose direction and rules are written down. Ask any vendor to show a list of completed but uninvoiced jobs and a month's margin by job type from live data before you buy.
- The most expensive leak is a completed job nobody invoiced: make that list visible every day.
- Know which way the accounting sync runs and what happens to an edit made on the other side.
- Job costing needs actual labor, parts, subcontractor bills and travel on the job, not just the price.
- Commercial customers need PO numbers, NTE limits and one invoice across many sites.
- Month-end should reconcile from reports, not from exports and macros.
Field service software does not replace your accounting system. This page is about what it should hand to it, and what finance should check before the operations team picks a tool.
Facts checked as of November 2026. Sources at the end of the page.
Step by step
From completed job to closed month, step by step
The records and the order are the same whether you bill homeowners, property managers or national accounts.
1. The job carries the commercial terms
Before work starts, the job holds the customer and billing entity (which may differ from the site), the PO number, any not-to-exceed (NTE) amount, the agreement or contract it falls under, the price list and whether it is billable or warranty.
2. Costs land on the job as they happen
Technician time from the app, parts taken from the van or warehouse, purchase orders and supplier bills, subcontractor charges, and travel or parking receipts photographed and attached. This is what makes job costing true rather than estimated.
3. Completion triggers the invoice draft
When the job is marked complete with its photos and signature, a draft invoice is created from the job lines: flat-rate tasks or hours and parts, with markup, tax, PO number and the customer's required format. Completed jobs with no invoice appear on a list somebody owns.
4. Review against the rules
The draft is checked against the NTE, the agreement (is this visit already covered?), the approved quote and any approval threshold, then sent. Customers who need one invoice for many sites, or a monthly statement, get it grouped that way.
5. Payment collected
On site by card (Tap to Pay on the technician's phone), by a payment link on the invoice, by ACH, or on terms for commercial accounts, with reminders that stop the moment it is paid.
6. Sync to the books
Customers, items, invoices, payments and, where supported, bills move to QuickBooks, Xero or Sage. Errors are visible in a log, not discovered at month-end.
7. Month-end
Unbilled work, work in progress on multi-visit projects, agreement revenue, receivables by age and margin by job type, customer and technician come from reports on live data.
Where it breaks
Where money leaks between the field and the books
These are problems finance and owners described on our sales calls, by trade and size.
Work done, invoice weeks later
A crane and hoist inspection firm of about 20 technicians averaged around 30 days from the work happening to the client receiving the invoice, because scope was retyped from quote to job to invoice across several tools.
Completed jobs with no invoice
A property maintenance company said won deals dropped off its CRM board once won, leaving no reminder that a finished job still needed invoicing. A commercial landscaping maintenance business wanted to be sure every visit was actually invoiced.
Hand-offs to finance
An EV charger maintenance operator and a vehicle leasing company both described the field team sending finance a manual submission so someone could create the invoice by hand.
Sync errors fixed by hand
A commercial facilities firm checked which QuickBooks pushes had failed and fixed them one by one, then uploaded vendor payments to its bank individually. An electrical contractor found quotes sometimes did not transfer to QuickBooks at all.
Subcontractor and receipt chaos
A fencing contractor spent about four days each week querying subcontractor claims (what is this for, who approved it) while receipts arrived by text, so nobody knew what a job really cost.
The wrong invoice shape
An IT field services firm was sending a separate invoice per visit when its client wanted one invoice per project reference, and a commercial facilities coordinator billed a management company rather than the store where the work happened.
The options
How the main tools hand off to accounting
| Tool | QuickBooks | Other accounting | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jobber | QuickBooks Online; on the current integration the sync is one way from Jobber to QuickBooks in real time. 'There is no active sync with QuickBooks Desktop.' | Xero, one way from Jobber into Xero, on Connect and Grow. | Treat Jobber as the source of truth and make edits there. |
| Housecall Pro | QuickBooks Online and Desktop. The Desktop integration runs through the QuickBooks Web Connector and pushes job line items and payment methods into QuickBooks Desktop. | Not covered in the guide we read. | Needs default service, discount and gratuity items created in QuickBooks Desktop. |
| FieldEdge | QuickBooks Online and Desktop on every plan. | Also lists Intacct among its integrations. | Warehouse inventory is for those on QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise with Advanced Inventory. |
| ServiceTitan | Certified two-way integration with QuickBooks Online and Desktop. | Sage Intacct, NetSuite, Viewpoint Vista and others. | Positions itself for complex billing: AIA, progress, retainage and lien waivers. |
| Fieldproxy | Two-way with QuickBooks Online, Desktop and Enterprise. | Xero, and a deep two-way Sage integration including bills. | Invoices drafted from the completed job; one price per company with unlimited users, so finance staff need no extra seats. |
As of November 2026, from each vendor's own help center or product pages (sources below). Integrations change; ask to see the sync working with your own books before you sign.
Worked example
A worked example: finding the unbilled work
Say a commercial plumbing and HVAC contractor completes about 400 jobs a month: 250 reactive, 120 maintenance agreement visits and 30 project visits on four multi-visit jobs. These are made-up numbers to show the method.
Unbilled: finance runs a daily list of jobs marked complete with no invoice. On the first run it shows 37 jobs older than seven days. 22 are agreement visits, which are covered by the monthly agreement charge and should be marked as such so they stop appearing. 9 are reactive jobs waiting for a technician's parts list. 6 are genuinely forgotten, at an average of $480 each: $2,880 of work that would otherwise have been written off or found months later.
NTE: 41 of the reactive jobs came from a facilities client with a $750 NTE on each. Two drafts are over the limit. One has an approved increase attached and goes out; the other is held until the technician's photos and the increase request are sent, because the client's portal rejects invoices above the NTE.
Projects: the four projects bill by milestone with 10% retainage held. Finance sees the amount billed to date, the retainage held per project and the remaining budget against actual cost, so work in progress at month-end comes from the report rather than a spreadsheet.
The test for any software: give the vendor last month's completed jobs and ask for exactly these three views in the demo.
Before you buy
What finance should check before the company buys
Good signs
- A live list of completed jobs with no invoice, with an owner and an age.
- Invoices drafted from the job, carrying lines, PO number, photos and signature.
- Job costing from actual time, parts, purchase orders, subcontractor bills and receipts.
- PO numbers, NTE limits and billing entities that differ from the work site.
- Agreement billing, progress billing and retainage handled in the system.
- The sync direction, objects and error handling written down, and shown working on your books.
- Payments by card on site, payment links and ACH, with reminders that stop on payment.
Red flags
- The sync is one way and edits in the books are silently overwritten or ignored.
- Your accounting version (QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage) is 'on the roadmap'.
- Job costing means price minus a guessed cost.
- One invoice per visit is the only option for a customer who wants one per project or per month.
- Every finance user adds a paid seat.
In Fieldproxy
Setting it up in Fieldproxy
Fieldproxy is set up around how you bill, live within a day, with free assisted migration of customers, sites, agreements and price lists.
Invoices from the job
Completed jobs become branded invoices with the line items, photos and signature already on them, in each customer's format, with PO numbers, NTE amounts and one invoice across many sites where needed (see /solutions/custom-estimates).
Nothing left unbilled
Ask Command Center (/agents/command-center) or ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot through the MCP server (/mcp) for 'completed jobs with no invoice' and get the list from live data; the Scheduler agent (/agents/scheduler-agent) can email it every morning.
Job costing and margin
Time, parts, purchase orders and subcontractor costs on the job, with revenue and margin per job, team, account or region (see /solutions/custom-estimates#job-costing).
Agreements and projects
Maintenance agreements billed monthly or annually with renewals drafted ahead; projects with change orders and progress billing (deposits, milestones and retainage) and budget against actual.
Payments and chasing
Tap to Pay on the technician's phone, payment links for card, ACH, Apple Pay or Google Pay, and reminders that stop on payment. Autopilot (/agents/autopilot) drafts the chase for unpaid invoices and a person approves before it sends.
Your books
Two-way sync with QuickBooks Online, Desktop and Enterprise (see /integrations/quickbooks), Xero, and a deep two-way Sage integration including bills.
How switching works
How switching to Fieldproxy works
We move your data over and set the system up to the way you already work. Fieldproxy replaces the old tool; it does not run alongside it.
Show us last month
Bring last month's invoices, your agreement and project billing rules, your chart of accounts and the reports you build at month-end.We set up billing your way
Invoice layouts, price lists, PO and NTE rules, agreement billing and the accounting sync are configured before the demo, on your own data.Reconcile one week side by side
Run a week's invoices through Fieldproxy into your books and check them against the old process before switching over.
FAQ
Questions people ask
- Should field service software or the accounting system be the source of truth for invoices?
- Pick one and write it down. Most companies create and edit invoices in the field service software and treat the accounting system as the ledger. Check what the sync does to an edit made in the books; on Jobber's current QuickBooks Online integration, for example, the sync runs one way from Jobber to QuickBooks.
- Does it work with QuickBooks Desktop?
- Many tools only sync with QuickBooks Online, and Desktop integrations usually run through the QuickBooks Web Connector, which Intuit describes as the place to set up and manage connected apps. Fieldproxy syncs two ways with QuickBooks Online, Desktop and Enterprise; see the setup at /integrations/quickbooks.
- How do we stop completed jobs going uninvoiced?
- Make the invoice draft automatic on completion, and run a daily list of completed jobs with no invoice, aged and assigned to a person. Agreement visits covered by a recurring charge should be marked so they do not appear as false alarms.
- Can we bill one invoice per project or per month instead of per visit?
- Ask for it in the demo with your own customer. Commercial and project customers often want one invoice per project reference, per site group or per month; the software should group visits that way rather than forcing one invoice per visit.
- How do we handle progress billing and retainage?
- The project needs a contract value, billing milestones or a schedule of values, retainage held per invoice, and a running total of billed, retained and remaining. If the tool cannot hold those, finance ends up running a parallel spreadsheet.
- Do finance staff need paid seats?
- On per-user pricing, usually yes. Fieldproxy is one price per company with unlimited users, so finance, office staff and technicians are all included.
Sources
Competitor details on this page come from the vendors' own pages and documentation, checked as of November 2026. Plans and prices change, so check the vendor's current page before you decide.
- Jobber Help: QuickBooks Online integration (one-way sync, no QuickBooks Desktop sync): https://help.getjobber.com/hc/en-us/articles/115009616147
- Jobber Help: Jobber and Xero integration: https://help.getjobber.com/en/articles/jobber-and-xero-integration/
- Housecall Pro Help: QuickBooks Desktop integration onboarding guide: https://help.housecallpro.com/en/articles/4327479
- FieldEdge pricing and plans: https://fieldedge.com/pricing/
- ServiceTitan vs BuildOps (ServiceTitan's page): accounting integrations and complex billing: https://www.servicetitan.com/comparison/servicetitan-vs-buildops
- Intuit: Set up QuickBooks Web Connector: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/install-products/set-quickbooks-web-connector/L4Vp7VI44_US_en_US
- Stripe: Tap to Pay: https://docs.stripe.com/terminal/payments/setup-reader/tap-to-pay
- Jobber pricing (QuickBooks Online and Xero sync): https://www.getjobber.com/pricing/
Related
Keep reading
- What a dispatcher needs from field service software
- What an operations manager needs from field service software
- Tracking not-to-exceed (NTE) limits on work orders
- What syncs between field service software and QuickBooks Online
- What is the best field service software for a 5-10 person HVAC team?
- Cheaper ServiceTitan alternatives for small plumbing and HVAC companies, without payment processor lock-in