AI Guides / Electrical

AI and automation for electrical businesses

Electrical work gets shopped. A switchboard upgrade or an EV charger collects two or three quotes and the customer decides over days, not minutes — so the money leaks from quotes that go quiet, not from an unanswered phone at 9pm. Everything below is built around that, plus the thing plumbers would kill for: the law hands you repeat work on a schedule, because rental safety checks and test-and-tag retests come due on dates already sitting in your job records.

Start at step one. Stop whenever you like — nothing below is needed for anything above it to work.

Start at step one Done this before? Jump to all 13 jobs

Prices checked by hand 27 July 2026 · nobody pays to be listed here

The whole page, in order

Week 1 · free$0 extra

If you already use ServiceM8, Tradify, or Simpro, switch on quote follow-ups, payment reminders, and recurring jobs for retest cycles. Two afternoons, roughly 22 hours a month back.

Software: ServiceM8, Tradify, or Simpro

Week 2$0–12/mo

Make web enquiries land somewhere that answers inside five minutes — an enquiry inbox that acknowledges, asks for switchboard photos, and books the site visit.

Software: ServiceM8 Inbox or Tradify enquiry form

Week 3$0

Pull every rental safety check and test-and-tag date out of your job history into one re-contact list. This is the closest thing on this page to found money.

Software: ServiceM8, Tradify, or Simpro export and recurring jobs

Week 4 · measure$0

Count quotes chased against quotes accepted, enquiries answered inside five minutes, and compliance reminders sent. Only then decide whether anything needs building.

Software: Job-software reports and a weekly tally

Step one · start here

What your current electrical software may already include

On ServiceM8, Tradify, Simpro, these are settings, not another subscription — check your plan includes them. On something else, search its help centre for the same feature name.

Extra software cost

$0*

if included in your plan

Hours back per month

≈22

Task 1

ServiceM8 or Tradify → Quote follow-up automations

saves ≈8 hrs/mo

Why it matters

Electrical work is compared across two or three quotes, and the job usually goes to whoever stays in the conversation. Up to five automatic email and SMS touches, stopping the moment the client replies. Off until you activate it in Settings.

What to do

Open the official guide below. In ServiceM8 or Tradify, find “Quote follow-up automations”. Follow the guide once, switch it on for one real job or customer first, and check that it did exactly what you expected before using it everywhere.

Open the official setup guide ↗

1 hour · $0 extra if included in your current plan

Task 2

ServiceM8 (Growing plan) → Inbox — work orders to job cards

saves ≈7 hrs/mo

Why it matters

Real estate agents and builders email PDF work orders all day. Inbox scans the PDF and pre-fills the job card with contact, work required and purchase order number, instead of someone retyping it.

What to do

Open the official guide below. In ServiceM8 (Growing plan), find “Inbox — work orders to job cards”. Follow the guide once, switch it on for one real job or customer first, and check that it did exactly what you expected before using it everywhere.

Check the official pricing and plan details ↗

2 hours · $0 extra if included in your current plan

Task 3

ServiceM8 or Simpro → Recurring jobs for retest cycles

saves ≈7 hrs/mo

Why it matters

Test-and-tag retests and rental safety checks recur on fixed intervals. Set the job once against the site and it re-creates itself on schedule — included on every ServiceM8 plan, and standard recurring job templates in Simpro Premium.

What to do

Open the official guide below. In ServiceM8 or Simpro, find “Recurring jobs for retest cycles”. Follow the guide once, switch it on for one real job or customer first, and check that it did exactly what you expected before using it everywhere.

Open the official setup guide ↗

Half a day · $0 extra if included in your current plan

Different software? The same switch usually exists under another name.

Step two · first workflow to implement

ServiceM8 Inbox or Tradify enquiry form: Answer the web enquiry while they are still comparing.

EV charger, switchboard and solar enquiries arrive as forms, and the customer sends the same form to three electricians. The first reply that asks for a photo of the board sets the terms for everyone after it.

Do this in order

1. In ServiceM8, open Inbox on the Growing plan. In Tradify, open the website enquiry-form settings.
2. Require the customer’s name, mobile, suburb, job type, and switchboard or problem photos before the site visit is offered.
3. Send an immediate acknowledgement that says when a person will reply and includes the next available site-visit booking path.
4. Submit the form yourself from a phone. Confirm the enquiry becomes a job or lead, every photo is attached, and the acknowledgement arrives inside five minutes.

Typical size

≈12 web enquiries/mo

Setup

2 days

What to use

ServiceM8 Inbox or Tradify enquiry form

ServiceM8 · $29–79/mo flat ↗Tradify · $47/user ↗

Buy or build: Small build

How you know it worked

Count it in week one, then count the same thing again in week four. If the number did not move, stop spending.

Keep this implementation simple

Use the steps above with the software you already have. Test the workflow on your own phone before adding another product or paying someone to build around it.

Step three · keep going without adding complexity

Once step two works, take the next three jobs in this order.

One at a time. Finish it, test it on real work, then start the next.

ServiceM8 / TradifyTypical size≈30 quotes/mo

Chase every quote at day 2, 7 and 14

In this trade the quiet quote is the single biggest leak. Rewires, boards and chargers all get shopped, and most of them go silent for want of one nudge — not a discount.

Setup effort: 1 hour

Make.com + job softwareTypical size≈20 checks due/mo

Rental safety-check reminders on the two-year clock

Victoria requires an electrical safety check of every rental every two years, by a licensed electrician, and the rule extends to all rental agreements from October 2026. Every check you have ever done is a diarised repeat job.

Setup effort: 1 week

ServiceM8 recurring jobs / SimproTypical size≈2 sites/mo

Test-and-tag retests chased from your own records

AS/NZS 3760 sets the retest interval — three months on construction and hire gear, out to five years for low-risk — and the due dates are on the tags you printed. A reminder to the site contact books the round before a competitor's flyer does.

Setup effort: Half a day

Step four · only once the first three are running

These are useful, but they are not the place to begin.

The first point where paying for a build makes sense — once the earlier steps are running.

Make.com + job softwareTypical size≈8/mo spotted

Quote the upgrade you saw while you were there

Ceramic fuses, no safety switches, a full board with no spare ways — your techs see it on every second service call and it evaporates in the van. A photo and a one-line note should become a drafted quote by the next morning.

Setup effort: 1 week

ServiceM8 Proposals (Growing)Typical size≈3 agencies worth pitching

Package compliance for property managers

An agent with eighty doors wants one electrician who tracks safety checks and smoke alarm interconnection across the whole rent roll, not eighty separate bookings. A per-property proposal with the dates managed for them wins the roll, not the job.

Setup effort: 2 days

Does this look familiar?

These are the problems the named tools above are meant to remove.

Answer the web enquiry while they are still comparing

Chase every quote at day 2, 7 and 14

Rental safety-check reminders on the two-year clock

Test-and-tag retests chased from your own records

Quote the upgrade you saw while you were there

Package compliance for property managers

After thirty days

Four numbers. If they have not moved, stop and do not spend another dollar.

Number one

Answer the web enquiry while they are still comparing

Write down the current monthly number before you switch anything on. Compare it with the same number after thirty days.

Number two

Chase every quote at day 2, 7 and 14

Count it the same way in week one and week four. Do not change the definition halfway through.

Number three

Quote follow-up automations

Use the history inside your existing software to count how often the automation actually ran.

Number four

Hours given back

Ask the person doing the work now. They will know before a dashboard does.

Every other figure here is a typical size. These four are yours.

Reference

All 13 jobs for electrical, in order of what they return.Open ↓

Wins work

Answer the web enquiry while they are still comparing with ServiceM8 Inbox or Tradify enquiry form

Typical size: ≈12 web enquiries/mo
Buy or build: Small build · ServiceM8 Inbox or Tradify enquiry form
Effort: 2 days

Chase every quote at day 2, 7 and 14 with ServiceM8 / Tradify

Typical size: ≈30 quotes/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · ServiceM8 / Tradify
Effort: 1 hour

Rental safety-check reminders on the two-year clock with Make.com + job software

Typical size: ≈20 checks due/mo
Buy or build: Small build · Make.com + job software
Effort: 1 week

Test-and-tag retests chased from your own records with ServiceM8 recurring jobs / Simpro

Typical size: ≈2 sites/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · ServiceM8 recurring jobs / Simpro
Effort: Half a day

Quote the upgrade you saw while you were there with Make.com + job software

Typical size: ≈8/mo spotted
Buy or build: Small build · Make.com + job software
Effort: 1 week

Package compliance for property managers with ServiceM8 Proposals

Typical size: ≈3 agencies worth pitching
Buy or build: Already paid for · ServiceM8 Proposals (Growing)
Effort: 2 days

Saves hours

Fill the certificate on site, not at the kitchen table with ServiceM8 Forms

Certificates of compliance and safety certificates, generated from the job card on the phone before the van moves, filed against the job for the years you are required to keep them. The Form Store has state-specific electrical certificates ready-made, including the Victorian rental safety check.

Typical size: 9 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · ServiceM8 Forms (Growing)
Effort: Half a day

Quote from the supplier price file, not memory with Tradify price lists / ServiceM8 supplier import

Electrical quotes are materials-heavy and wholesale prices move. Import the supplier price list once, set your markup per level, and the sell price updates when the buy price does.

Typical size: 8 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · Tradify price lists / ServiceM8 supplier import
Effort: Half a day

Chase overdue invoices without touching them with Xero

Reminders at 7, 14 and 30 days, with your builder accounts excluded because a builder who owes you for three fit-offs needs a phone call, not an email.

Typical size: 6 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · Xero
Effort: 20 minutes

Stop retyping agents' work orders with ServiceM8 Inbox

Emailed PDF work orders scanned straight into pre-filled job cards — contact, work required, PO number — instead of an hour of data entry every morning.

Typical size: 7 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · ServiceM8 Inbox (Growing)
Effort: 2 hours

SWMS and safety paperwork from templates with ServiceM8 Forms

Commercial jobs will not start without the safe work method statement, and rebuilding it per site in Word is an evening gone. A templated form with per-site answers takes minutes and files itself against the job.

Typical size: 5 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · ServiceM8 Forms
Effort: Half a day

Log test results against the asset, not a spreadsheet with ServiceM8 Asset Management / Simpro

Scan the barcode, record the result, and the site's asset history builds itself — which is also the list the retest reminders above run off.

Typical size: 6 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · ServiceM8 Asset Management (Growing) / Simpro
Effort: 1 day

Timesheets from GPS instead of Friday memory with ServiceM8 auto time tracking

Clock-on, check-in and travel time recorded automatically from the phone, exported to payroll — instead of reconstructing four techs' weeks from texts and guesswork.

Typical size: 5 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · ServiceM8 auto time tracking
Effort: 1 hour

The stack

The tools named, priced, and judged.

Tools named in this guide, what each one is for, its price, and the verdict.
Tool	What it is for	Price	Verdict
Job managementServiceM8	Job cards, quoting, forms and certificates for a small crew, priced flat per month rather than per user.	$29–79/mo flat ↗	The best value here if your techs carry iPhones — the Android app is a cut-down Lite version, so check what your crew actually runs before committing. Forms and asset management need the $79 Growing plan.
Job managementTradify	The same job, per user, with supplier price lists and quote reminders built in.	$47/user ↗	Per-user pricing overtakes ServiceM8's flat rate at about two users, so do that arithmetic first. If you are already on it, the quote and invoice reminders are included — switch them on before buying anything else on this page.
Job managementSimpro	Asset maintenance, service contracts and real project accounting for larger electrical businesses.	On quote ↗	Right past roughly ten staff with maintenance contracts; below that the setup effort eats the benefit. Note the Maintenance Planner everyone raves about is a paid add-on to Premium, not included.
AccountingXero	Invoicing, reconciliation, and the overdue-payment reminders nobody enables.	$35/mo (Ignite, AU) ↗	You almost certainly have this already. The reminders are free and off by default — twenty minutes in settings, no new spend. Watch the Ignite plan's invoice cap if you bill per job.
Phone & messagingOpenPhone	A business number with a shared inbox so enquiries stop living on one person's mobile.	$19/user ↗	Useful, but in a scheduled trade this is not the first dollar to spend — your leak is quotes going quiet, not calls ringing out. Buy the follow-up discipline first.
AutomationMake.com	Connecting two tools that will not talk to each other, without writing code.	$9/mo ↗	The engine behind the safety-check and spotted-upgrade rows above. Powerful, and very easy to build something fragile that breaks quietly — keep the scenarios few and boring.
AssistantChatGPT Team	Answering the questions your team asks each other all day, from your own rates, service areas and processes.	$25/user (annual) ↗	Only earns its keep after you feed it your real prices, service areas and compliance checklists. Out of the box, with nothing loaded, it will not move a single number in your business — and it must never fill in a certificate.
Job documentationCompanyCam	Before-and-after photos of every board and defect, tagged with time and place, filed against the right job.	$29/mo ↗	Pays for itself the first time a defect notice or a warranty claim is disputed. Skip it if your job software already handles photos properly — ServiceM8 and Tradify both do a passable job.

Do not bother

Three things not to buy yet.

Anything that drafts your certificates.

A certificate of electrical safety carries your licence number and your legal liability. Software should move the test results you took into the form — the moment a tool invents a reading you did not take, you have signed your name to it.

Photo-quoting a switchboard upgrade.

You cannot price what is behind the escutcheon — asbestos panels, undersized mains, a meter isolation the network has to book. A number given off a photo becomes an argument on site, and you will wear it.

A 24/7 AI receptionist as your first purchase.

That is the right first buy for a plumber, whose money arrives at 9pm. Yours mostly does not — electrical demand is planned and quoted, so the first dollars belong in quote follow-up. Revisit answering only if your missed-call log says otherwise.

Sources