PestBossPro Blog — Quarterly Plans & Recurring Service

Choosing Recurring Pest Control Software: What to Check Before You Switch

Plenty of software claims to handle recurring service. Generic field-service tools let you repeat a job. The big pest-control platforms do a lot, often with a price and a setup to match. For an owner running one to a handful of trucks, the question is simpler: will this software keep my plan customers serviced, billed and happy without adding work? Here is what to check.

Start With the Mistakes You Want to Stop

The list in Mistakes Running Recurring Pest Plans and How to Avoid Them makes a good shopping list. For each mistake that costs you today, ask how the software would prevent it. If the answer is “you would have to remember,” keep looking.

1. How Does It Schedule Recurring Visits?

This is the most important question. Ask whether recurring visits are scheduled by fixed dates or by days since the last completed visit.

• Fixed dates mean every rain week and reschedule has to be fixed by hand, and late visits can leave two treatments too close together.
• Days between visits mean each account comes due a set number of days after its last completed visit. Quarterly at 90, bi-monthly at 60, monthly at 30, yearly at 365.

Also ask what happens to a skipped stop. It should stay due until it is done, without anyone rescheduling it.

2. Can You See Who Is Due on a Map?

A list of due accounts helps. A map of them helps more, because routes are geography. Check for:

• A live map and list of every account that came due.
• Colors for not due yet, due now and overdue, with a sensible grace period before overdue.
• A fast way to turn a group of due accounts into a route, such as circling an area.
• One-time jobs on the same list as plan visits.

See The Waiting List Map for Recurring Pest Control: Not Due, Due and Overdue Pins for how this works in PestBossPro.

3. Does It Handle Programs, Not Just General Pest?

Most pest companies run more than quarterly service. Check that one address can carry several recurring services, each on its own schedule, and that you can sell multi-visit package plans with prepayments:

• Mosquito season as monthly service or a package.
• Rodent bait-station checks with station notes on the address.
• Yearly termite inspections that come due on their own.

4. How Do Customers Sign Up and Pay?

• Sign-up forms with card capture, usable on your website and in the driveway.
• One-click conversion from a sign-up to a client, with no retyping.
• Estimates priced off the property, using measured square feet and perimeter, approved online.
• Auto-charge on completion or on a schedule, with past-due follow-up.
• Monthly account billing for commercial customers with several locations.
• A customer app where customers update their card, see invoices and pay.

5. How Does It Keep Customers Informed?

Check for customer-chosen alerts (night before, when they're next, when the technician arrives), automatic on-the-way and arrived texts from the tech app, post-treatment instruction emails, two-way texting and a live route view for the customer. Ask how texting is billed. PestBossPro plans include 500, 1,000 or 2,000 segments a month, sent and received, on Start, Pro and Crew.

6. Does It Keep Application Records?

Recurring routes mean a lot of treatments. Software that records what was applied at completion, with products, active ingredients, EPA reg. no., rates, area treated, target pest, site, weather and technician license number, saves hours of paperwork and helps you keep the application records many states require. Software does not satisfy any state rule for you, so check your state's lead agency rules and the label for every product.

7. Can You Get Your Customers In?

Ask about import. A CSV import that places addresses on the map automatically means your existing customers show up as pins without being typed in one by one. Ask whether one client can have several addresses, and whether you can add tags and custom fields to sort plan types and cancellation reasons.

8. Will Your Technicians Use It?

The best scheduling in the world fails if technicians do not use the phone app. Check that it runs on the iPhones and Android phones they already carry, without an app store download, with a personal PIN, the day's stops in route order, notes on each card and simple Start, Skip and Complete buttons.

9. What Does It Cost?

Look for simple pricing without per-feature add-ons for the basics. PestBossPro plans are Start at $59, Pro at $89 and Crew at $199 per month, with recurring service and the Waiting List on every plan and a 14-day free trial with no credit card.

Try It With Your Own Customers

The surest test is a trial with real data. Import a slice of your customers, set up your services and run a week of routes from the Waiting List. If it saves time in the first week, it will save far more over a year. For the full picture of recurring service in PestBossPro, see the recurring pest control software overview.