Software for installers: what it must do every day, from quote to maintenance visit

What must software for installers be able to do?

Software for installers carries the whole course of a job: the quote and the invoice, the scheduling of breakdowns and maintenance, an app in which the technician completes their work order with a signature, every installed unit per customer and site with its history, the maintenance contracts and certificates, the parts in the van and e-invoicing via Peppol.

How to compare suppliers and which general questions to ask in every demo is covered in choosing field service software. This article looks at the choice from the installer’s point of view: heating, plumbing, heat pumps and air conditioning.

Where an installer’s work gets stuck

• Breakdowns come in by phone, by email and on a technician’s mobile phone, and nobody sees them all.
• The technician sets off without knowing which unit is on site or what was replaced last time.
• Paper work orders are typed in again in the evening, and some of the hours and parts never make it onto the invoice.
• The maintenance customers and their due dates are in a spreadsheet that one person keeps up to date.
• The part is in the warehouse while the technician is at the customer’s.
• A business customer asks for an invoice via Peppol, and the accountant does not know which package it should come from.

What is different for an installer?

Six things weigh more heavily for an installer than for other service companies.

1. The unit is at the centre. A boiler, a heat pump or a water heater has a brand, a model, a serial number, an installation date and a warranty, at a fixed site. The history belongs to that unit, even when a property manager (syndic) manages several buildings.
2. Statutory maintenance with a certificate. For boilers, each region imposes a frequency and a certificate: see the boiler maintenance certificate. The software must carry that due date for each unit.
3. Installation, breakdowns and maintenance in one company. An installation is a project with a quote, an order form and several days of work. A breakdown is short and urgent. Maintenance is scheduled months ahead. All three have to fit on the same schedule.
4. Seasonal peaks. Boilers in the autumn, air conditioning in the summer: the planned maintenance must not push out the breakdowns. How to schedule this is explained in preventive maintenance.
5. Parts in the van. Whether a breakdown is fixed in one visit often depends on what is in the van.
6. Private customers and businesses mixed together. Since 1 January 2026, Belgian companies liable for VAT have had to send each other structured electronic invoices; the obligation does not apply to outgoing invoices to private individuals (efactuur.belgium.be, in Dutch, accessed on 31 October 2026). What that means for you is explained in e-invoicing via Peppol; discuss it with your accountant.

Installer software: what it must do, area by area

Work order software: the technician app

What a work order app must be able to do and how to move away from paper is explained in the digital work order. For an installer, there is one more question: does the technician see in the app the unit they are working on, and do they link their work order to that unit?

Free work order software and Excel: what they cover, and where they stop

A shared calendar, a spreadsheet with due dates, a free app to have a work order with photos signed, and the accounting package for the invoices: for a self-employed installer with a limited number of customers, that can be enough. It pinches where those separate tools need to know about each other:

• The work order does not know the unit. What the technician found does not end up in the boiler’s history.
• The due date does not create a visit. Someone has to read the spreadsheet and schedule the visit.
• Hours and parts are typed in again from the work order to the invoice, and from the work order to the stock list.
• You cannot see who changed what, and you have to arrange yourself who may see what.
• The customer calls for their report or certificate, because they cannot look it up anywhere themselves.

Demo checklist, seen through an installer’s eyes

1. Play out a breakdown, from the call to the invoice.
2. Register a boiler with its serial number and then open its history.
3. Create a maintenance contract with a visit every two years and show when the visit appears.
4. Show where the official certificate is kept and how the customer finds it.
5. Complete an intervention without a network, with photos and a signature.
6. Record a part taken from the van and then show the van’s stock.
7. Turn an accepted quote into an installation.
8. Send one invoice via Peppol and another by email.
9. Show what the customer sees in their portal.
10. Ask what the software does not do for your trade, such as registers or forms per type of unit.

An example: an installer of boilers and heat pumps

An installer with five technicians installs heat pumps and maintains gas and heating-oil boilers, for private customers and for a few property managers. The owner takes the checklist to two demos, together with the planner and a technician.

The owner asks to register an existing boiler, to complete a breakdown on that boiler with the mobile phone in flight mode and then to create the invoice. For a property manager, the owner asks for an invoice via Peppol. At each step, the technician notes what they would miss in the field. Afterwards they compare the answers, and keep a separate list of what a supplier could not show.

How it works in Digitalnatie Service Suite

• Quotes: Service Suite calculates prices, VAT and totals. A confirmed quote becomes a sales order, from which you create the intervention, the project, the maintenance contract or the invoice. See invoicing.
• Schedule: day, week, map and route views. You drag an intervention from the queue of unscheduled interventions to a technician; absences and working hours are taken into account. See planning.
• Technician app: the app opens in the browser, without an app store. Without a network, the steps, the report, the photos, the signatures and the parts keep working. The customer signs, or the technician notes why not. See the mobile app.
• Installations: you register every unit with a customer and a site, with its brand and model, serial number, installation date and end of warranty. Its file shows, among other things, the interventions, the maintenance history, the breakdowns and the documents. See the customer file.
• Maintenance: a contract covers one installation or a whole site, with a frequency. Once a day, Service Suite creates the intervention for every visit whose date has been reached. Per contract, you choose whether the visit, the hours above the minimum and the parts are billable or included in the contract. You keep certificates in the installation’s documents, and you can make them visible to the customer. See maintenance contracts.
• QR code: each installation can get its own QR label. Whoever scans it reports a breakdown without an account, and the report in principle becomes an intervention by itself. See QR codes.
• Van: the technician records the parts taken from their van in the intervention. The office sees the stock and the shortages for each van; a replenishment request is approved by the person in charge, and then the warehouse validates the transfer. See stock and parts.
• Invoices and Peppol: on a completed intervention, accounting creates a draft invoice with the billable hours and the parts used. If your organisation and the customer are on Peppol, you choose Peppol when sending; otherwise the invoice goes by email with the PDF. Peppol registration is done at the start, together with Digitalnatie.
• Customer portal: the customer sees their interventions, reports, invoices, installations and the documents you made visible, and can report a problem there. More in the customer portal.
• Price: the amounts are on the pricing page.

Good to know:

• A quote is not sent by email from the application: you mark it as sent and send the PDF yourself. There are no quote templates.
• The user guide describes no F-gas register and no separate form per type of unit. An official certificate is filled in by the certified technician as the rules require, and you keep it as a document with the installation.
• Paying online is not possible in the customer portal.
• There is no transfer from one van to another.
• The positions on the map are those of the last action in the app. There is no live GPS tracking.

Frequently asked questions

What software does an installer need?

An installer needs software that connects quotes and invoices, the scheduling of breakdowns and maintenance, an app for the technician and a register of installed units. On top of that come the maintenance contracts, the parts in the van and e-invoicing via Peppol for business customers.

Is there free work order software for installers?

There are free apps and templates to fill in a work order with photos and a signature. For a self-employed installer with few customers, that can be enough. With several technicians, maintenance contracts and stock in the van, you have to link that data and type it in again yourself.

Does an installer have to invoice via Peppol?

Since 1 January 2026, Belgian companies liable for VAT have had to send each other structured electronic invoices, according to efactuur.belgium.be. The obligation does not apply to outgoing invoices to private individuals. Discuss with your accountant what that means for your customers.

What does software for installers cost?

The prices of Service Suite are on Digitalnatie’s pricing page. Also ask every supplier what the start-up, the training and the import of your data cost, and what is optional.

Does Service Suite keep an F-gas register or the maintenance certificate?

The Service Suite user guide does not describe an F-gas register or an official regional certificate. You do register every unit with its history, schedule maintenance with contracts and keep certificates as documents with the installation, visible to the customer if you wish.