ServiceM8 runs the job. Leadout keeps the jobs coming in.
Your ServiceM8 stays exactly as it is. We add the half it was never built for — the enquiry that arrives on Instagram, the quote nobody chased, the four hundred past customers you have no way to email — and we wire the two together so neither of you retypes anything.
ServiceM8 is very good at the job.
You didn't buy it by accident. Before anyone tells you what it doesn't do, here's what it does better than anything we'd put next to it — and none of it gets replaced.
Quoting, invoicing, getting paid
Card payments on site, progress invoicing, job costing, and it lands in Xero without anyone re-keying it. This is why you bought it. We will never touch it.
Dispatch and the field
The board, GPS, timesheets, route optimisation, assets, materials, purchase orders. Nothing we sell does any of this, and nothing we sell should.
Job forms and compliance
Photos, e-signatures, safety checklists, electrical and gas certificates, filled in on the tablet and stored against the job. Best in class for the use case.
The phone
ServiceM8 Phone records and transcribes, shows you the caller's open quotes before you answer, diverts after hours, and has its own AI phone agent. Keep it. Ours doesn't sit on the job card; theirs does.
Asking for the review
It sends the Google and Facebook review request automatically once the invoice is paid, with a wait you choose. Getting reviews is theirs. What happens to the reviews afterwards isn't.
The job comms loop
Booking confirmations, reminders, on-my-way texts, payment follow-ups. The basics around a job that already exists are covered. Our part starts before that, and after it.
Online booking
Tied to real staff availability and real dispatch capacity, which is the hard part. We don't replace that booking page. We feed it from the places it can't reach.
Recurring service
A job that comes back every six months, scheduled and routed. Recurring service is ServiceM8's. Recurring marketing is the thing it has no concept of.
Eight things it can't do.
Every one of them ends up being done by a person, and the person is you. Same shape each time: what it costs you today, and what happens once something else has it.
It can't email the four hundred people who already paid you.
Its email and text are strictly attached to a job. There is no list, no send, no scheduling. ServiceM8's own answer is to bolt on Mailchimp and sync to it daily — a second platform, a second login, a second export. Your cheapest revenue is sitting in a client list you can't write to.
One list, filtered how you like — everyone in a postcode, everyone who had a hot water system, everyone who hasn't called since last winter — and a message that goes out to them by email or text on a day you choose.
It can't tell you what your quotes are worth.
Job queues are a holding bay, not a sales board — no dollar value on a stage, no conversion rate, no age. "Forty grand of quotes out and twelve of them untouched for a fortnight" is a sentence ServiceM8 cannot say to you. Quote Follow Up sends one reminder; it never tells the owner what's at stake.
Every quote you raise appears on a board carrying its own number, moves along as things happen, and totals itself. You open your phone and see what's out, what's gone quiet, and what it's worth.
It can't see the enquiry that came in on Instagram.
Email, text and its own inbox. That's the lot — no Messenger, no Instagram, no WhatsApp, no Google Business chat. Those enquiries land on somebody's personal phone and stay there until they're forgotten, and there's no record that they ever happened.
Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google chat, web chat, text and email all arrive in one thread per person, on your phone. The bloke who messaged you on Facebook and the woman who texted stop being two different places you have to remember to check.
It can't chase somebody who isn't a job yet.
The enquiry form and the booking page both assume the person has already decided. Somebody who asked a question on Tuesday and didn't book is not a record ServiceM8 keeps, so nothing happens on Wednesday, and nothing happens ever.
They're a person from the first message. If they go quiet they get a text two days later and another the following week, in your voice, until they book or say no.
It can't tell you where the job came from.
Its reporting is excellent and entirely delivery-side: what the job made, what it cost, who was on it. It cannot tell you that the job came from the Facebook ad, what that lead cost, or which of the two things you're paying for every month is the one that works.
Every person carries where they came from, all the way through to the invoice ServiceM8 raised. At the end of the month you know which source paid for itself and which one you can stop.
It can't do anything with the photos it just collected.
ServiceM8 is superb at capturing before-and-afters on site, and then they sit in the job forever. There is no social posting of any kind. The best marketing material your business produces is generated daily and never leaves the app.
A finished job becomes a drafted post with the photos already attached, waiting for your yes. Facebook, Instagram and your Google profile, without anyone sitting down to write anything.
It can't notice that a good customer went quiet.
Client records have categories and badges — filters you set, not behaviour it watches. Nothing in ServiceM8 raises its hand when somebody who called twice a year hasn't called in eighteen months. You find out when you notice, which is usually never.
A list that fills itself with the people going cold, and a message that goes out to them before they've found somebody else.
It can't answer a written question at nine at night.
ServiceM8's AI answers the phone, and it does it well — that one is theirs and we'd tell you to keep it. But the person typing "do you do hot water systems in Penrith" into your website at nine at night gets nothing back until somebody opens a laptop.
It gets answered, in writing, on whichever channel they used — trained on your services, your suburbs and your prices — and it books them in if they're ready.
Nobody types anything twice.
Two systems either share a customer or they don't. Here is exactly what moves, in both directions — and, at the bottom, the one thing that never will.
ServiceM8's own call recordings can't come back the other way. Its API has no such thing as a phone call, so there is nothing for anyone to connect to — us, or any other partner who tells you otherwise. Calls to your ServiceM8 number stay in ServiceM8.
All of it is running now, in production, on a Sydney workshop's account — built and operated by the same people who'd build yours. We're a certified ServiceM8 partner, so this was written against the real thing, not a brochure.
A flat fee, plus what you actually send.
Six jobs done for you: texting back every missed call, answering Instagram and Facebook messages, taking bookings from the places ServiceM8 can't see, working the quotes that went quiet, replying to every Google review, and bringing last year's customers back. Everything in section 03 comes with it — the bridge isn't an extra.
Billed in US dollars. ServiceM8's own subscription is separate and goes to ServiceM8, not to us.
You pay for what you actually send, at published rates, so the bill scales with the work instead of running ahead of it. Rates differ by country — an Australian text costs several times an American one — so there's no single honest number to print here. You get your country's rate card before you sign anything, not after.
Emailing your list isn't an upgrade you have to buy — it's there from day one and you pay only for what you send, which is the cheapest thing on this list by a distance. The AI is the one thing that has to be switched on first (see below). A quiet winter month bills like a quiet winter month.
We'd rather you stayed six months than paid us a lump sum in front. Nothing is held back for a higher tier — a big setup invoice sitting in front of a $97 product is incoherent, and it's the recurring months that are worth having.
The chat that answers your website at nine at night, and turning finished jobs into social posts, sit outside the six — a monthly fee to switch on, priced on the call, and then the AI's answers meter. Emailing your whole client list isn't one of these: it's there from the start, on usage alone. Plenty of businesses run the six and nothing else for a year.
You keep working through all of it.
Nothing about your ServiceM8 changes on any of these days. Nobody has to be retrained on the thing they already use.
Fifteen minutes
How the work comes in and which bits keep falling over. If ServiceM8 already covers what you're worried about, we'll say so and you'll have saved a fortnight.
We plug in
Read-only to begin with. Your customers and your job history come across, your channels get connected, and nothing writes back to ServiceM8 until you've seen it.
It starts answering
Everything held for your approval at first, in your voice. You loosen the reins one job at a time, as you decide you trust it.
It lives on your phone
One app, next to the ServiceM8 one. Approvals, conversations and the board. If you can read a text between jobs, you can run it.
What we won't tell you.
That you should leave ServiceM8
We're a certified ServiceM8 partner. We set the thing up for a living, and if you're running it properly you should keep running it. Anyone selling you a single system that does dispatch, compliance forms and marketing is selling you something that's mediocre at all three.
That everyone needs this
If you're one van, booked out three weeks, turning work away and not trying to grow — you don't have a marketing problem and we'll tell you that on the call. This earns its money when there's capacity you'd like filled, or a client list you've never sold to twice.
That it runs itself from day one
The first few weeks you'll be approving things and correcting the tone. That's the deal — it learns your suburbs, your prices and the way you talk. Anybody promising it's hands-off on day one hasn't done it.
The ones we always get.
Bring your ServiceM8. Leave it running.
Fifteen minutes. Tell us how the work comes in and what your client list looks like, and we'll tell you which of the eight is costing you the most — and whether it's worth fixing yet.
Pick a time No demo, no deck. If ServiceM8 already does the thing you're worried about, we'll tell you on the call. Hayden — Leadout · ServiceM8 Certified Partner · Sydney
We build the workflows and follow-up tools around the software you already use, so the work happens whether or not anyone remembers to do it.
