How much does software for a service company cost?

How much software for a service company costs is determined mainly by the pricing model: you pay either monthly for each user, or a flat fee for the whole company, or an ERP licence with a service module plus implementation. ServisBook costs EUR 20 per user per month with all features and the first 30 days are free. It pays to compare the total cost over three years, not the monthly amount.

• The three-year total decides: start-up, normal use, team changes and the end of the contract.
• Each model spreads the money over time differently, so amounts for a single month cannot be compared.
• The most expensive item is usually paid in your own hours, not to the vendor.
• With ServisBook the total is simple to calculate: people with access × EUR 20 × number of months.
• Company size changes which item outweighs the others in the total.

Why is comparing the price for one month not enough?

Because the monthly price describes only one month of normal use, and in practice that does not happen straight away. Before it comes the start-up, during it the number of people changes, and at the end there is the notice period and moving the data elsewhere.

Two offers with the same monthly amount can therefore work out completely differently over three years. One has the entire cost spread across the subscription, another adds implementation in the first year and a maintenance fee in the following ones. A third is cheap until the company outgrows its tier.

That is why it pays to calculate one fixed period for all offers. Three years is a reasonable length: the first year carries the start-up, the next two show normal use, and over that time the team usually changes too.

You will find the current price of ServisBook on the pricing page. This article deals with how to assemble the total cost for your company from the pricing models.

How do the costs of the individual models behave over time?

One model is even, another climbs in steps, a third has most of its costs at the start. The table describes typical behaviour, not specific products:

Two rules follow from the table. The more the number of people changes during the year, the more it matters how quickly the payment goes down. And the more money falls into the first year, the more expensive it is to find out that the system does not suit the company.

How to calculate the total cost over three years?

The procedure is the same for every offer you have on the table:

1. Add up the people with access, not the employees. The dispatcher, technicians, managers, whoever will only view. Note seasonal reinforcements separately along with the number of months they will work.
2. Multiply the price of access by the number of people and 36 months. With a fixed amount per company, check whether your planned growth will push you up a tier. With licences, add annual maintenance for all three years.
3. Add the one-off start-up according to the offer: data transfer, setup, training. If it is charged by the hour, multiply the estimated hours by the vendor's rate.
4. Add your own hours: how much time the dispatcher spends on setup and how much the first month is spent running the old and new plan side by side. Multiply them by your hourly rate.
5. Add the extras that are not in the base price: additional modules, guaranteed support, integration with other programs.
6. Calculate the end of the contract: how much notice period you will still pay for and how much the data export costs.
7. Compare the totals and for each write down what is missing from it or what is only an estimate.

The most common mistake is to put the monthly price of two offers side by side when one of them also has implementation in the first year. The second most common is to leave out step 4, because nobody invoices your own hours. How to value an hour of a technician or dispatcher is explained in the article What a lost technician hour costs.

What does such a calculation look like with ServisBook?

The example company has six technicians and one planner, and in summer takes on a helper for installations for four months. So seven people need access to the app all year round and an eighth for four months a year.

Plus the other steps:

• Steps 3 and 4: the company uploads its customers itself from an .xlsx or .csv file, the rest of the start-up is the dispatcher's hours. If it wanted setup done by us, this is charged at an hourly rate that we state before the work begins (clause 6.4 of the terms and conditions).
• Step 5: the pricing has no tiers or paid modules, everything in the feature overview is in the subscription. Guaranteed availability or support is agreed separately (clause 13.4) and the terms reserve the right to charge for new features or exceeding usage limits (clause 6.3).
• Step 6: see the next section.

The total in the table applies at today's price. Under clause 8.9 it may increase every year on 1 January by the rate of inflation, so it is a lower estimate.

For other team sizes, the next table shows only the subscription total over three years:

Monthly and annual amounts are given on the pricing page.

How much does the end of the contract cost?

Most companies only calculate this item when they need it. Yet it decides how expensive a mistake is.

With ServisBook you pay in advance for a calendar month (clause 8.3) and a paid month is not refunded, even if you no longer use it (clause 8.5). The notice period is one month, but it only runs from the first day of the month following delivery of the notice, and the subscription continues to be paid for it (clause 18.2). Notice delivered in mid-March therefore means paying for all of March and all of April.

You receive your data in a machine-readable format if you request the export together with the notice or no later than 30 days after the end of the contract (clause 11.2). Until 11 January 2027 an hourly rate is charged for it, from 12 January 2027 it is free of charge (clause 11.3).

With other offers, ask the same: how long the commitment is, whether the rest of the period is paid for, and in what format and for how much you get your data. A multi-year contract with no option of earlier termination means that in step 6 you also add up all the remaining months.

Which item outweighs the others by company size?

With team size, not only the total changes but also what carries the most weight in it.

Around three people, your own hours make up most of the cost. The subscription is small and one person can handle the start-up in a few afternoons. A fixed amount designed for larger teams here also pays for seats the company will not fill.

Five to eight people is the size where offers diverge the most. It depends on seasonality and on how many people really need access. Here it pays to do the three-year calculation for two or three offers side by side.

Around twelve people and more, the weight of the start-up and support grows, because more orders hang on the plan at once and an outage costs more. A system that, besides the plan, also keeps stock and accounts only pays off where you will really use that integration. If it is mainly about who goes where and when, you pay in licences for parts that will lie idle too.

For all sizes it holds that the most expensive system is the one that is not used. A spreadsheet in Excel costs nothing on an invoice and a lot of hours in operation. Where that line lies is shown by the comparison of ServisBook with Excel.

How to tell whether it pays off for the company?

You set the three-year total against what the company saves over the same period, and you measure the savings on your own operation. Nobody can honestly give a general figure for the return, because coordination costs every company differently.

In practice this means measuring, before rollout, the number of duplicate and wasted site visits, calls per arranged appointment and the time to build the weekly plan, and after a month of use measuring the same again. The procedure is in the article Will planning software for technicians pay for itself?.

The trial month is the cheapest opportunity for this. During the thirty free days you will learn two numbers that belong in the calculation and that no offer contains: how many hours the start-up took you and how many people really needed access. If you do not order anything after the trial, the account switches to read-only mode (clause 5.3) and nothing gets paid automatically.

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