Bridging the Gap: Why Your Accounting System and Your Service Management Program Should Work Together

Why just having an accounting system isn’t enough for service management

Why do you need a program for service management when you already have one for accounting? QuickBooks® or Sage50® are so common these days that it’s hard to imagine running a business without them. Accounting systems are very important to your business, but they can’t help you run your service department. Every day, people tell us how service management software makes their businesses better. We make Miracle Service, which has more than 5,000 users in 45 countries.

What it’s Like for a Service Business to Grow

It gets harder to do everyday business as your service business grows and you add more customers, service technicians, employees, inventory, and tools to fix.

The Problem with Managing Inventory

It makes sense that you would look at your accounting system to get the data you need to run your business. It can be hard to keep track of inventory. Your technicians may have a lot of cars in stock, and adding, removing, and placing orders almost every day gets old. This makes your accounting department too busy to handle all the transactions.

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There are risks involved in letting operations staff use accounting systems

Companies often give their operations staff direct access to the accounting system so that they don’t have to do this. More than just adding to your costs with extra software licenses, this can also put your business at risk by letting employees who aren’t accountants use your accounting system.

Why you need specific tools for service management

If your service company inspects customers’ equipment on a regular basis, they will need to be able to quickly find their certifications or inspection reports. You will need to come up with a way to check the timing again in the field.

Guessing What Maintenance Will Need

It’s also important to know which pieces of equipment need more regular maintenance and even to be able to guess when certain parts are likely to break and need to be replaced before they stop your customer’s business. That’s what they hired you to do, after all.

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The Spreadsheet Solution That Can’t Last

After a while, your own success starts to hurt you. More customers mean more business. Excel spreadsheets are a tried-and-true tool that many accountants use to keep track of everything.

Adding more work and making more mistakes

A spreadsheet can be used to keep track of inventory and car stock. A spreadsheet can be used to keep track of certificate renewals. A spreadsheet can be used by service technicians to record the hours and parts needed for a service call. These sheets can then be sent to accounting to be entered.

Putting faith in the “heroic employee”

Another worry is that the system depends on what we call the “heroic employee.” For it to work, workers need to learn from their mistakes when they enter data and move things around.

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Why service management software is helpful

Your current accounting system should be able to work with a good service management system. With service management software, you can schedule technicians, service equipment, manage contracts and certificates, and keep track of your inventory all in one place.

Analysis of Data in Multiple Dimensions

It’s important to remember that a service management system can handle information in more than two dimensions, while an Excel spreadsheet can only handle information in two dimensions.

Inventory management is a real-life example

Think about a common scale model that your clients ask you to fix. Since we have a record of all of these scales, we can look at their service history one by one.

Integration makes processes run more smoothly

In this case, when the service technician finishes a job, they would enter the necessary data into the service management software, such as the time and materials used.

Keeping your attention on core skills

There is a sign over the cash register in an English pub. “We made a deal with the bank,” it reads. They don’t make fish and chips and we don’t cash checks.