A ServiceM8 setup is configuration, not installation. A Certified Partner builds your job categories, quote and invoice templates, job cards, price list, accounting connection and automations around how you actually quote, then trains your crew. A standard setup is done inside a week. Add migration and team training and it runs two to three weeks.
I am a ServiceM8 Certified Partner, so read the rest with that in mind. What follows is the actual sequence of a setup, including the parts you could do yourself and the parts that are worth paying for. If you decide to do it alone after reading it, that is a fine outcome.
What ServiceM8 setup involves, step by step
Nine steps, in this order, because each one depends on the one before it. Get the order wrong and you rebuild templates twice.
- Scope call. How you quote today, how you get paid, how many people need a login, what tool you are on now and how much history is coming across. This is where the number comes from.
- Account and tax basics. Company details, GST settings, default tax rate, financial year, time zone, job numbering. Boring, and everything built after it inherits it.
- Services, job categories and badges. Your diary should read at a glance. Categories cover the type of work, badges flag the things you filter on later: warranty, commercial, urgent, repeat customer, needs a certificate.
- The price list. Labour rates, callout fees, common materials and the packaged jobs you sell over and over. This is the step that turns a 25-minute quote into a three-minute one.
- Quote and invoice templates. Your logo, your terms, your payment details, your deposit clause, GST shown properly, and wording that sounds like you rather than the default receipt.
- Job cards and forms. The checklists, sign-offs and certificates your crew fill in on a phone with dirty hands. Build them once and reuse them for years.
- Xero or MYOB, and payments. Accounting connected with the right account mapping, plus card payments or payment links so an invoice can be paid on the spot.
- Automations, booking and messaging. Appointment reminders, quote follow-ups, overdue invoice chasers, review requests, and online booking if the work suits it.
- Training and go-live. Separate sessions for the office side and the field side, recorded, then a follow-up a fortnight later once the real questions have shown up.
Here is who does what across those nine steps. All timings assume a small business with staff.
| Stage | What we do | What we need from you |
|---|---|---|
| Scope and quote | Ask the questions, give you a fixed number | 15 minutes on the phone |
| Configure and build | Steps 2 to 8 above | Logo, terms, price list, GST details |
| Migrate and connect | Export, clean, import, connect accounting | An export from your old system |
| Train and go live | Two or three recorded screen shares | About three hours of diary time |
Your total involvement is roughly four hours. The rest happens without you sitting there.
The settings most tradies get wrong
The same eight things, in nearly every account I audit. None of them are hard. They are just buried, and nobody goes looking for them at nine on a Sunday night.
- The default tax rate. Set before you build anything else, or every price list item and template carries the wrong GST treatment and you fix them one line at a time later.
- No price list. The single biggest one. People sign up, quote from a blank line every time, and never get the speed the software was bought for.
- Everything typed into the job description. If you would ever want to filter or report on it, it needs to be a badge or a category, not a sentence in a text box.
- Default templates left alone. A quote with no terms, no deposit clause and no payment details is a quote you will chase. Your terms are a setting, not a conversation.
- Automations switched off. Quote follow-up at three days and again at seven, invoice reminder at seven and fourteen, appointment reminder the day before. This is the part that pays the setup fee back.
- Staff set up as full admins. Your technicians do not need to see margins or edit prices. Permissions take ten minutes and save an awkward conversation.
- Replies going nowhere. Customers reply to reminder texts. If nobody is set to receive those messages, you have built a channel that only talks outward.
- Accounting mapped to one catch-all code. Map income to the codes your accountant already uses and month end stops being a re-coding job.
Nine times out of ten the problem is not that ServiceM8 cannot do it. It is that nobody switched it on.
Add the extras nobody budgets for while you are in there. ServiceM8 charges for SMS beyond your plan allowance and takes a percentage on card payments, so check the current rates on servicem8.com/nz/pricing (as at July 2026) before you turn every message into a text.
Migrating from Tradify or Fergus without losing job history
Be straight with yourself about this one: completed job history does not move cleanly between platforms, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. There is no direct connector between Tradify, Fergus and ServiceM8. A migration is an export, a clean-up and an import.
What comes across:
- Clients, contacts, addresses and phone numbers
- Your price list and rate card
- Open jobs and jobs already scheduled
- Your quote and invoice wording, rebuilt as ServiceM8 templates
What does not:
- Completed job history as live records
- Photos attached to old jobs
- Message threads with customers
- Half-finished quotes sitting in the old tool
So you handle history as an archive instead of pretending it will land intact. Export your completed jobs and invoices out of the old system, keep them somewhere searchable, and keep the old subscription open in read-only for a month or two. It costs you one more month of a subscription you were cancelling anyway, and it means nobody is stuck when a customer rings about a job from two years ago.
The cut-over runs in this order:
- Pick a quiet day. Never a Friday, never your busiest week.
- Keep quoting in the old tool right up to go-live.
- Client and price data goes in the night before.
- Anything mid-flight gets finished where it started.
- New work starts in ServiceM8 from day one, and the old tool goes read-only.
Do it that way and there is never a day where your team does not know which system holds the truth. That is the actual risk in a switch, not the software.
How long it takes and what it costs
A standard setup is usually done inside a week. Setup with migration and team training takes two to three weeks, and most of that is waiting on data exports and finding an hour in your diary, not build time.
What each option involves:
| What you are buying | What it covers | Typical timeframe |
|---|---|---|
| Standard setup | Steps 2 to 8 above, built around how your trade quotes | Inside a week |
| Setup, data migration and team training | The same, plus your client and price data moved and the crew trained | Two to three weeks |
| Ongoing help after go-live | Changes, new forms and new automations as you need them, no retainer | As needed |
| 15-minute intro call | A straight answer on which of those you need | This week |
Three things move the price: how many staff need training, how much client and job history is coming across, and how many forms and automations your trade needs. A solo operator starting fresh is a small job. A six-van outfit shifting ten years of clients off Fergus is not. We do not publish a rate card for that reason, and you get a fixed number on the first call, not after the work starts.
Our fee is separate from your subscription. You pay ServiceM8 directly for the software, and it is charged on how many jobs you create each month rather than how many staff you have. The current plans and what they actually cost to run are set out in ServiceM8 pricing in NZ.
If your account is half set up, or you are still quoting off a notebook, that is the work. The full scope, the two packages and how remote training runs are on ServiceM8 setup and training, and the wider picture including ongoing help sits on ServiceM8 setup and support. Book the free 15-minute call and we will work out which package you need, or whether you need one at all.
