Customer satisfaction is the lifeblood of a profitable electrical service business. Yet, with so many hands involved in the processes, satisfaction may be hard to achieve. This is especially true if adequate management systems are not set up. One must-have cloud-based business software system is a GPS app for electricians.
The issues that produce less than ideal service tend to occur in the field when electricians are out of sight.
A GPS app allows you to see the bigger picture of field service activities. It lets you track electricians’ real-time location, arrival and departure times from customer sites, and other day-to-day activities.
We tested numerous GPS tracking apps and found four solutions that work best for electrical businesses. In this guide, we’ll shed light on how each tool works, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses.
Looking for the Best Employee GPS Tracking App for Your Electrical Business?
The best GPS apps streamline electrical service workflows, from job scheduling and dispatching to location and time tracking. Here’s a sneak peek of the best GPS apps for electrical contractors:
Timeero — Best Overall GPS App For Electricians with Segmented Tracking
Apploye — Best For Tracking Time for Field Electricians
Lystloc — Best For Tracking Electrician Time and Location
Kickserv — Best For Scheduling and Dispatching Electricians
Top 4 GPS Apps For Electricians: A Closer Look
The best GPS app for electricians helps businesses dispatch field techs and monitor them every step of the way during their shifts. The electrician apps on our list have unique capabilities. While some automate the entire process, others excel in specific aspects of daily workflow. Take a look at the apps that made our list to find a GPS solution that meets your needs:
Timeero — Best Overall GPS App For Electricians
Timeero Android and iOS apps are easy to use.
Timeero is an all-in-one GPS tracking app designed to help electrical businesses improve service delivery. Besides scheduling and dispatching electricians, it lets you track their time, mileage, and GPS location.
Efficient Job Scheduling and Dispatch
The Timeero scheduling feature simplifies dispatching of electricians.
If you have service-level agreements in place, you need to get jobs scheduled and done quickly to meet target goals. That’s easier said than done, especially when dealing with an influx of emergency requests.
You need fast-thinking dispatchers and an efficient scheduling system, like Timeero, to assign employees with the right expertise to the right tasks. Timeero's easy-to-use scheduling feature is designed to reduce the time spent creating and managing schedules while minimizing the risk of delayed service.
The dispatcher can schedule a job before the customer even hangs up the call. They only need to click a day on the calendar, add the job title and description, and select an electrician.
When they publish the schedule, the electrician gets an instant notification so they know their next assignment. Each job has an address, so the electrician won’t struggle to navigate to the site.
If you have recurring jobs – for example, if you do home maintenance every month – schedule the task once and set the repeat type to monthly. This takes scheduling repetitive tasks off the dispatcher’s plate, giving them more time to focus on the emergency cases.
Track Real-Time Location with an Efficient GPS Tracker
Timeero is the best electrician app for tracking real-time location.
Customers won’t choose to hire your business again if electricians keep arriving late or missing service appointments. But it can be difficult to eliminate late arrivals due to traffic jams, bad weather, and some electricians taking detours for scenic purposes.
Timeero’s real-time GPS location tracking instills accountability throughout your field teams. As a result, every electrician abides by the company’s service delivery guidelines and policies.
As a manger you can open the “Who’s Working” tab to see where electricians are at any time of the day. When electricians know you have access to their location, they are bound to stick to the designated route and won’t miss customer appointments.
Location data also comes in handy when dispatching electricians for emergency jobs. When a customer calls in with an emergency, you’ll instantly know which field technician is close by to handle the case quickly.
Route Replay
The route replay function recreates an electrician's trip when clocked in. You can see the exact driving route they took and where they stopped. Route replay also makes it easy to monitor electricians driving habits, such as driving speed, and warn any offenders. Better routing and improved driving behavior reduce fuel waste and boost the safety of employees.
Accurate Remuneration with Automatic Time Tracking
It’s a norm for electrical businesses to pay electricians different hourly rates based on experience. For example, the experienced electricians in your team earn better pay than junior-level electricians.
For fair remuneration, electricians must be paid according to their level of skillset. Timeero’s time tracker helps solve the wage determination conundrum. The managers will simply set the rate for each electrician and leave the rest to Timeero.
During clock-in, Timeero requires the electrician to choose the assigned task. They can switch between tasks as they complete them without causing confusion about their earnings. The app computes the electrician’s earnings based on their predefined hourly rate.
Come the end of the month, you’ll need to generate employees’ timesheet reports and forward them to the accounting department for payments. Timeero also integrates with accounting software such as QuickBooks, Gusto, and Paychex. The accounting department can export the timesheet report to your preferred accounting system to expedite remuneration.
Stop Time Theft With Geofencing and Facial Recognition
Geofencing prevents employees from clocking in outside their designated job site. Facial recognition takes photos of team members as they clock in and compares them to their saved profiles. In case of a mismatch, it flags the timecard and alerts the manager via email notifications.
Bill Clients Accurately With Segmented Tracking
Timeero automates time tracking, making it easy to compute employees’ hours worked.
Generally, you can’t use an employee’s work hours to bill clients because time cards usually include driving time. To bill the client fairly, you must compute the hours the electrician spent on the repair. But how do you calculate repair time from the electrician’s total time spent on the job?
Timeero came up with a unique solution called Segmented Tracking. Suppose an electrician is scheduled to do five repairs in a day. They will clock in at the start of their shift, get on with their duties, and clock out at the end of the shift.
Timeero tracks their trip based on the stops they make. You’ll see when the electrician arrived at and left each customer location. It calculates the total time they spent on each repair job, giving you the figures needed to bill customers accurately.
Besides that, Segmented tracking gives you the total driving time vs actual time spent on the job. These are indispensable metrics for a forward-thinking electrical business. Remember that the more time electricians drive, the less time they work.
Reducing drive time increases actual work hours, meaning electricians have time to handle more service calls. This translates to more income for your business.
Minimize Expenses with Suggested Mileage
Timeero suggests the shortest route.
The suggested mileage feature helps reduce driving time and is ideal for electricians handling recurring work orders.
It analyzes the electrician's trip to a location and suggests the shortest route. Ensuring electricians take the shortest route minimizes expenses that eat away at your bottom line, such as fuel and vehicle maintenance costs.
By taking the shortest route, electricians can arrive early for their job. This way, they will have more time to complete the work order in a way that meets the customer’s demands. Learn more in our full Timeero review.
Reimburse Employee Fairly with Automatic Mileage Tracking
The benefits of tracking an electrician's mileage are twofold. First, you get data to reimburse electricians for using personal vehicles for business purposes. Second, tracking business mileage can significantly reduce your taxable income. According to the latest IRS rates, every business mile you track reduces your taxable income by 67 cents.
Timeero enables you to track mileage accurately to reap both benefits. It uses automatic mileage tracking and predefined minimum speed to create mileage logs that meet IRS standards. You don't have to invest in expensive gadgets to track mileage. The Timeero mileage tracker works on an electrician's smartphone.
Timeero pricing: 14-day free trial; paid pricing starts at $4 per user per month.
Apploye — Best For Tracking Time for Field Electricians
The Apploye mobile app displays the assigned job on the home interface.
Apploye is ideal for small businesses that want to track the time and location of electricians. With its simple job management module, it’s easy for dispatchers to create projects (and tasks) from incoming customer calls.
When you assign tasks to electricians, they will see them under the “task overview” section on their smartphones. They can tap on the assigned task, start and stop the task timer, or mark the task as complete. Managers can easily track task completion on the web portal as employees complete items.
Accurate Time Tracking
Apploye timer works best for electricians who hop from one customer location to another, such as those handling ad-hoc service calls. It’s not tied to a specific geofence location (or job site), so the technician can start and stop the timer anywhere. The timer is available with all plans, making it ideal for small businesses.
While Apploye does let you track the time spent on each task, the timer does have a downside. We found it to be error-prone since it depends on the electrician’s ability to remember to start and stop the timer.
The timer has no reminders, so if an electrician forgets to start it, you could end up billing the client for the incorrect number of hours.
However, Apploye offers a geofenced time clock to curb the timer's shortcoming. The manager or dispatcher creates geofences around customer locations. The purpose of the geofence is to ensure electricians clock in only when they’re within the designated job site.
Geofences prevent offsite punching, improving the accuracy of electrician timesheets. The geofenced time clock isn’t without downsides though. It’s only available with the higher paid plans and doesn’t use facial or fingerprint authentication to prevent buddy punching.
Location Tracking
Apploye live location tracking is available as an add-on feature.
Location tracking is in the “Field Services” suite, a feature available within the highest paid plan. Whether the price is justifiable depends on how effective the “Route Map” will be for your electrical business.
The Route Map isn’t a route planning or optimization tool, as the name insinuates. Rather, it shows the electrician's real-time location, route, and stops during the day.
Apploye Pricing: 10-day free trial; paid pricing starts at $2.50 per user per month
Apploye integrations: Trello, ClickUp, and Asana
Lystloc – Best For Tracking Electrician Time and Location
You can install the Lystloc app on any mobile device.
Lystloc is another reliable GPS tracker for electricians. It has an apt live location tracker, which gives you each technician's real-time location and route. When you get a request for service requiring immediate response, you can quickly pinpoint the closest electrician on the route map.
The app offers other notable tools for electrical contractors, such as geofencing, and fingerprint authentication, and idle marker – a feature that helps managers identify when electricians are in the same location without activity.
The problem is that you can’t configure the features and assign them to a department, team, or group of electricians. You have to set up each functionality for an individual electrician. If you have a large workforce, getting your team up and running on Lystloc can be laborious.
Accurate Task Time Tracking For Billing
Lystloc is one of the best apps for live location tracking.
Lystloc time tracker restricts electricians from checking in or out outside the designated customer location. It also requires electricians to use fingerprint authentication when checking in to thwart buddy punching.
These two features, coupled with check-out reminders, enable you to accurately monitor the electrician's location and the duration of each task. You can also configure the auto-logout tool to clock out electricians at the end of the day. These features enable you to accurately bill clients and compensate electricians for hourly tasks.
Lystloc pricing: 7-day free trial, paid pricing starts at $3 per user per month.
Kickserv — Best For Scheduling and Dispatching Electricians
Kickserv’s job management module works without a hitch on mobile devices.
Kickserv is a reliable GPS tracking app for small and medium electrical companies. The “Map” offers GPS check-ins and live GPS tracking of all technicians. It provides a timeline view with a snapshot of active field activities – you can search the field activities by electrician.
The only issue with Kickserv is that its mobile app presents a steep learning curve. The interface looks cluttered and some features are tucked away in odd places. For example, the clock-in button isn’t on the main screen. You have to open jobs and navigate to an assigned job to find it.
This minor issue aside, Kickserv is the only GPS app that updates customers on the electrician's expected time of arrival (ETA). Electricians simply swipe left on the assigned jobs on their smartphones to let the customer know they are on the way.
Efficient Dispatching Mapping
Kickserv is great for any electrician business looking to streamline dispatching.
What sets Kickserv apart from the rest of the apps we reviewed is its Planner, which gives contractors scheduling and dispatching flexibility. The different tools included, such as Schedule and Calendar, enable managers to pick a dispatch mode that best keeps business operations running smoothly.
The Dispatch Mapping tool works to eliminate delays and bottlenecks that could lower electrician productivity and customer satisfaction. It provides a unique combination of a map coupled with a timeline view of electricians' upcoming appointments.
You have the ability to view appointments relative to an electrician's home address, which helps dispatch employees based on proximity to customer sites. Dispatch Mapping also displays unassigned service tasks at the bottom of the timeline. Assigning these tasks to electricians is as easy as double-clicking them.
Kickserv pricing: 7-day free trial; paid pricing starts at $47 per month for five users.
Streamline Electrician Tracking With the Best GPS App
The best GPS tracking app for your electrical business depends on your company needs. If you’re struggling with scheduling and dispatching, pick a tool with a robust dispatch module. If you have difficulties billing customers, choose an app with a reliable time tracker.
If you need a tool that automates multiple aspects of your business, choose Timeero. The app lets you efficiently dispatch electricians and maintain a bird’s eye view of field activities. You’ll know where electricians are (who’s on-site) and when they arrive and depart from a customer location.
Start a 14-day free trial to get a first-hand feel of all the features. No credit card is required. Create an account, and start tracking electricians immediately.
GPS App For Electricians: FAQs
Which GPS App Is Best for Electricians To Navigate to Job Sites Efficiently?
Timeero is the best GPS app for electricians who need to navigate to job sites efficiently. Each assigned job has an address to make it easier for electricians to get to their designated sites.
What Features Should I Look for in a GPS App Designed for Electricians?
Some of the features to look for in a GPS app for electricians include real-time location tracking, scheduling and dispatching, route optimization, time and mileage tracking, and reporting.
Discover #1 GPS Tracking App for Your Electrical Business.
Timeero tracks your employees' time, locations, and mileage accurately.
Samson is a mathematician turned content marketer specializing in SaaS and Tech content. He focuses on the practical aspects of software systems while keeping abreast of the industry’s cutting-edge principles to create informative and engaging content. When he’s not writing, Samson spends time playing or watching soccer.
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