simPRO is serious software for serious trade shops, and its reviewers describe the tax it collects: an interface where common tasks take multiple clicks, a mobile side that’s clunky for exactly the things field techs do most (finding jobs, attaching photos), report customization that “needs advanced skills or external tools,” and a wish for contract and agreement handling. simPRO’s API is well documented, which makes every one of those a contained build. Five, pictured.
The field app techs stop fighting
Field work is three verbs: find, see, attach. A companion built on the API makes them instant, search or nearby, scope on screen, photos that upload in a tap and queue offline, while simPRO stays the record underneath.
Owner reporting without the BI degree
The review line is telling: custom reports need advanced skills. An owner view needs a glance instead: WIP, invoiced versus cost, margin by division, and the jobs drifting off quote, including the unbilled variation that pays for the whole dashboard.
Multi-click tasks, one screen
The daily tasks deserve lanes: the progress claim staged from the schedule of values, retention math done, one review and one confirm. Month-end claims go from an afternoon to an hour, and the format never drifts.
The contract layer reviewers wish for
Maintenance agreements, renewal dates, rate uplifts: reviewers wish simPRO integrated them, and a register layer does, linked to live jobs and billing, drafting the renewal letter when the date approaches.
The month that starts with answers
A first-of-month digest assembles WIP, invoiced totals, unbilled variations, and upcoming renewals from simPRO overnight, so the management meeting starts at the decisions.
The common thread
simPRO remains the engine; the layers remove its tax. Each is a phase with a visible timeline, and the field companion is the one your techs will actually thank you for.
Have a project like this in mind?
Describe it in a sentence or two and I’ll tell you what it would run, how long it would take, and whether it’s worth building at all. No pressure either way.