If you are shopping around
Thinking about moving off what you are on?
I am not going to tell you the thing you are using is rubbish. Most of the big job apps do the job. If yours is working, stay on it. Blokes move here for two specific reasons, and if neither one is biting you, do not bother.
Reason one
You are paying by the head.
Nearly all of this software charges per user. That is tidy for the vendor and rough on you, because the bill goes up the month you take someone on, which is months before that person is earning you anything.
So blokes do the obvious thing and share a login. Then two people's hours land under one name and you have lost the one number that tells you what the job cost. The pricing model quietly wrecked your data.
Here you pay on how many jobs you run in a month. Your apprentice, your labourer and your subbie cost nothing to add, because their hours are the entire point of the exercise.
Reason two
You find out it lost money after you invoiced it.
Most tools will tell you a job's profit once everything is in: hours entered, parts coded, invoice reconciled. That is a report. Reports are for the accountant in October.
This costs the job while it runs. Every hour at that bloke's real rate, every part at what you paid for it, plus what your overhead adds per hour on top.
The job in that screenshot is $307.92 underwater on a $965 quote. Knowing that on the Tuesday is worth something. Knowing it in October is worth nothing.
Where the other mob still beat me
Age. They have had ten years and a room full of developers to sand every corner off. I have had one bloke and a lot less time. You will find rough edges here that you would not find there.
Offline. Screens you have already opened keep working out of range. Clocking on and adding materials still need signal. Full offline entry is the next big build and it is not done.
Integrations. The mature products plug into a long list of accounting, supplier and payment systems. I do the job side properly and hand your accountant a clean CSV.
Support hours. They have a support team. You get me, usually within the morning, unless I am under a car.
If that trade is the wrong way round for you, stay where you are. I would rather say so than sell you something that does not fit.
Look at a demo business before you move anything.
Jobs and margins already in it. Nothing to set up, nothing to import, no card. Then decide whether it is worth shifting your real work across.