Field service management glossary
42 terms every service business runs into — defined in plain English, no vendor spin.
A
AHJ (authority having jurisdiction)
AHJ stands for authority having jurisdiction — the official or agency, such as a fire marshal, building department, or insurance underwriter, with the legal power to enforce codes and approve installations and inspections in a given area. Contractors document inspection results and deficiency corrections in the formats their AHJ accepts. Different jurisdictions can interpret the same code differently, so knowing your AHJ matters.
See how this works in Forz →Asset management
Asset management is keeping a complete, current record of the equipment a business owns or services — what it is, where it is, who has it, and its service history. For field service contractors that runs in two directions: customer-site equipment under inspection or maintenance, and company-owned tools, vehicles, and gear assigned to technicians. Good asset records cut losses and speed up every site visit.
See how this works in Forz →B
Billable hours
Billable hours are the portion of a technician's paid time that can be charged to a customer — wrench time on jobs, as opposed to drive time, shop time, and idle gaps. The ratio of billable to paid hours is a direct lever on profitability. Accurate time tracking against specific jobs is what keeps billable hours from leaking into write-offs.
See how this works in Forz →C
Callback
A callback is a return visit to redo or finish work from a previous job — at the contractor's expense, since the customer is rarely billed twice for the same fix. Callbacks consume truck rolls, burn schedule capacity, and erode trust. Tracking callback rate by technician and job type shows where training, documentation, or parts processes need attention.
See how this works in Forz →Certificate of inspection
A certificate of inspection is the formal document a contractor issues after completing a required inspection, recording the system or equipment examined, the results, deficiencies found, the standard followed, and the inspector's credentials. Building owners file it as proof of compliance for the AHJ and insurers. Many jurisdictions require certificates on a fixed cadence, which makes the paperwork as mandatory as the inspection.
See how this works in Forz →Change order
A change order is a documented amendment to an approved estimate or contract — added scope, substituted materials, revised price, or a new timeline — signed off by the customer before the extra work happens. It protects the contractor from doing unbilled work and the customer from surprise charges. Undocumented changes are one of the most common ways job margins disappear.
See how this works in Forz →Crew scheduling
Crew scheduling is assigning work to multi-person teams rather than individual technicians — common in landscaping, fire protection, and installation work where jobs need more than one set of hands. The crew shares a vehicle, a route, and a combined skill set, and the schedule has to respect all of it. It changes dispatch math: capacity is measured in crews, not headcount.
See how this works in Forz →Customer portal
A customer portal is a self-service website where a contractor's customers log in to view their own records — estimates to approve, invoices to pay, job status, and inspection reports — without calling the office. Portals cut inbound status calls and speed up approvals and payments. Commercial customers increasingly expect one, especially for compliance documents they must produce on demand.
See how this works in Forz →D
Deficiency
A deficiency is a condition found during an inspection that keeps a system or device from working as designed — a corroded sprinkler head, a dead alarm battery, a blocked extinguisher. Inspectors document deficiencies with photos and notes, report them to the customer and often the AHJ, and quote the corrective work. Deficiency repairs are a major revenue stream layered on top of inspection contracts.
See how this works in Forz →Digital signature capture
Digital signature capture lets a customer sign on a technician's phone or tablet screen to approve an estimate, authorize work, or confirm completion, with the signature stored on the record. It replaces paper forms that get lost between the truck and the office. Time-stamped signatures attached to the job are also the first line of defense in billing disputes.
See how this works in Forz →Dispatch
Dispatch is the process of assigning field technicians to jobs and getting them to the right site at the right time. A dispatcher weighs technician availability, skills, location, and job urgency when making assignments. In most field service operations, dispatch decisions drive the day's schedule, travel time, and how many jobs each crew completes.
See how this works in Forz →Dispatcher
A dispatcher is the office role that assigns jobs to technicians, builds daily routes, juggles emergencies against scheduled work, and keeps customers informed about arrival times. Good dispatchers balance urgency, proximity, skills, and workload across the whole board in real time. In most shops one dispatcher coordinates many technicians, making the role a force multiplier — or a bottleneck.
See how this works in Forz →E
Estimate-to-job conversion
Estimate-to-job conversion is turning an approved estimate directly into a scheduled job, carrying the customer, scope, and line items over without retyping them. The conversion rate — the share of estimates that become jobs — is also a key sales metric for tracking close rates by estimator, job type, and price level. Fast, accurate conversion shortens the gap between a yes and a scheduled crew.
See how this works in Forz →F
Field service management (FSM)
Field service management (FSM) is the coordination of work performed at customer locations — scheduling, dispatching, work orders, inspections, invoicing, and the technicians who carry it all out. FSM software replaces whiteboards, spreadsheets, and paper forms with one system of record shared by office and field staff. The term covers both the discipline and the software category.
First-time fix rate
First-time fix rate is the percentage of service calls resolved on the initial visit, without a return trip for parts, information, or a different technician. It is a core field service KPI because every repeat visit adds a truck roll, delays billing, and frustrates the customer. Crews raise it with better job notes, parts availability, and skills-based dispatch.
See how this works in Forz →Flat-rate pricing
Flat-rate pricing quotes one fixed price for a defined task regardless of how long it actually takes, with the rate built from expected labor, materials, and margin. Customers like the certainty; contractors keep the upside when crews beat the estimate and eat the loss when they do not. It is the common alternative to time-and-materials billing in service work.
See how this works in Forz →I
Inventory transfer
An inventory transfer moves stock between locations a business tracks separately — most commonly from the warehouse to a technician's truck, or truck to truck — while recording quantities at each step. Transfers keep per-location counts accurate so dispatchers know which vehicle actually has the part. Without recorded transfers, truck stock becomes a black hole of shrinkage and surprise stockouts.
ITM (inspection, testing & maintenance)
ITM stands for inspection, testing, and maintenance — the recurring, code-mandated work that keeps fire protection and other life-safety systems compliant. NFPA standards prescribe what gets inspected, how it gets tested, and on what frequency, from weekly visual checks to multi-year internal exams. ITM contracts are the recurring-revenue backbone of most commercial fire protection businesses.
See how this works in Forz →J
Job costing
Job costing is tracking the actual labor, materials, equipment, and subcontractor costs against a specific job, then comparing those costs to the amount billed. It shows which jobs, customers, and job types actually make money. Contractors use job costing to price future estimates accurately and to catch margin leaks like unbilled hours and undocumented material usage.
See how this works in Forz →Job template
A job template is a saved, reusable job definition — job type, scope of work, standard line items, tax treatment — used to spin up new work orders in seconds. Templates standardize how repeat work is described, priced, and billed across the whole team. For shops doing the same inspection or service hundreds of times a year, they remove both typing and inconsistency.
See how this works in Forz →L
Lead/deal pipeline
A lead/deal pipeline is the staged view of potential work moving toward a sale: leads are prospects who are not yet customers, and deals are specific opportunities with a dollar amount and expected close date. Stages typically run from first contact through quoting to won or lost. Weighting each deal's value by its probability gives a rolling revenue forecast.
See how this works in Forz →M
Mean time to repair (MTTR)
Mean time to repair (MTTR) is the average elapsed time from when a failure is reported to when the equipment is back in service, including dispatch, travel, diagnosis, parts, and the fix itself. It is a standard measure of service responsiveness and a common SLA metric on commercial maintenance contracts. Falling MTTR usually reflects better dispatch, parts stocking, and documentation.
See how this works in Forz →Multi-site customer
A multi-site customer is a single account with work performed at many locations — a property management portfolio, a retail chain, a campus. Each site carries its own equipment, service history, and compliance schedule, while billing and contract terms roll up to one corporate relationship. Serving them well requires per-site records under one customer, not duplicate accounts.
N
NFPA 25, 72 & 10
NFPA 25, NFPA 72, and NFPA 10 are the National Fire Protection Association standards that govern most fire protection ITM work: NFPA 25 covers inspection, testing, and maintenance of water-based systems like sprinklers; NFPA 72 covers fire alarm and signaling systems; NFPA 10 covers portable fire extinguishers. Each prescribes the inspection frequencies and documentation that contractors and AHJs follow.
See how this works in Forz →NTE (not-to-exceed) limit
An NTE, or not-to-exceed limit, is a spending cap a customer sets on a work authorization: the contractor may proceed with time-and-materials work up to that amount, but must stop and get approval before exceeding it. NTE limits are standard with property managers and multi-site commercial accounts. Blowing through one usually means eating the overage.
See how this works in Forz →O
Offline mode
Offline mode lets a field app keep working without cell coverage — technicians can view job details, record results, capture photos, and log time, and the app syncs everything when connectivity returns. It matters in basements, mechanical rooms, parking garages, and rural routes where signal drops. Without it, field data reverts to memory and gets re-entered later, badly.
See how this works in Forz →P
PM schedule
A PM schedule is the calendar of preventive maintenance tasks for a piece of equipment, a site, or a whole contract portfolio — what gets serviced, at what frequency, and when each task is next due. Frequencies typically range from weekly checks to multi-year overhauls. A reliable PM schedule keeps contract work from slipping through the cracks and customers from lapsing out of compliance.
See how this works in Forz →Preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance is service performed on a fixed schedule — monthly, quarterly, annual — to keep equipment running and catch problems before they cause failures. It contrasts with reactive break-fix work, which is dispatched after something stops working. For commercial contractors, preventive maintenance contracts mean predictable recurring revenue and a steady source of repair leads.
See how this works in Forz →Punch list
A punch list is the itemized list of remaining tasks, corrections, and touch-ups that must be completed before a job or project is considered finished and final payment is released. Items get assigned, completed, and checked off one by one. On commercial work, a clean punch list walkthrough is often the trigger for closeout documents and retainage release.
See how this works in Forz →Purchase order
A purchase order (PO) is a formal document a contractor issues to a vendor committing to buy specified items at specified prices — line items, quantities, delivery date, and payment terms. POs create a paper trail from order through receiving to the vendor's bill, so what arrives can be checked against what was ordered and what gets paid. The term also covers the PO number a commercial customer issues to authorize your invoice.
Q
QuickBooks sync
QuickBooks sync is an integration that keeps a field service platform and QuickBooks accounting in agreement — typically sharing customers, items, invoices, and payments so nothing is entered twice. The operations team works in the field service system while the bookkeeper stays in QuickBooks. Without a sync, double entry consumes hours each week and the two systems drift apart.
See how this works in Forz →R
Recurring job
A recurring job is a work order that regenerates automatically on a set cadence — weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually — instead of being created by hand each cycle. Each occurrence gets its own job number and flows through scheduling, completion, and billing like any other job. Recurring jobs are how maintenance contracts and inspection programs get executed without anyone remembering to create them.
See how this works in Forz →Route optimization
Route optimization is using software to sequence each technician's stops so the day requires the least drive time while honoring job time windows, durations, skills, and vehicle capacity. Done manually, routing a multi-tech day takes a dispatcher hours; an optimizer solves it in seconds. The payoff is more jobs completed per truck per day and less fuel burned between them.
See how this works in Forz →S
Service agreement
A service agreement is a contract committing a contractor to recurring service — typically scheduled maintenance or inspections — for a fixed term and price. Agreements smooth out seasonal revenue, lock in repeat customers, and feed a steady pipeline of scheduled work. In commercial trades they often bundle required inspections with priority response for repairs.
See how this works in Forz →Service level agreement (SLA)
A service level agreement (SLA) is the contract section that defines measurable service commitments — respond to emergency calls within four hours, complete repairs within 48, hit scheduled inspection windows — and what happens when they are missed. Commercial and multi-site customers use SLAs to hold vendors accountable. Contractors need timestamps from dispatch through completion to prove compliance.
See how this works in Forz →Smart lists
Smart lists are saved, filter-driven views of records that update themselves as data changes — every overdue invoice, every job stuck in a status for more than a week, every contract expiring this quarter. Unlike a static report, a smart list is always current the moment you open it. Teams use them as daily worklists that surface what needs action without manual digging.
See how this works in Forz →T
Technician utilization
Technician utilization is the share of a technician's paid hours spent on productive, usually billable, work. A tech paid for eight hours who spends five on jobs runs 62.5% utilization. Operators watch utilization alongside callback and first-time fix rates, because pushing utilization too hard with overtight routes can backfire as rushed work and repeat visits.
See how this works in Forz →Time and materials (T&M)
Time and materials (T&M) is pricing where the customer pays for actual labor hours at an agreed rate plus the materials used, often with markup. It fits diagnostic and open-ended work where scope cannot be fixed up front. T&M shifts cost risk to the customer, which is why commercial buyers often pair it with a not-to-exceed limit.
See how this works in Forz →Time tracking
Time tracking is recording when technicians start and stop work — clocking in and out of shifts and logging hours against specific jobs. It feeds three things at once: payroll-ready hours, accurate labor costs for job costing, and proof of time on site for billing. GPS-stamped clock events from a mobile app have largely replaced paper timesheets in field service.
See how this works in Forz →Time-to-invoice
Time-to-invoice is the lag between completing a job and sending the bill for it. Every day in that gap delays payment and increases the odds of disputed or forgotten charges. Field service operations shrink it by capturing labor, materials, and signatures on-site so the office can invoice straight from the completed work order instead of chasing paperwork.
See how this works in Forz →Truck roll
A truck roll is one dispatched trip: a technician, a vehicle, and the drive to a customer site. Each roll carries a real cost in labor, fuel, and opportunity — an hour spent driving is an hour not billed. Operators track avoidable truck rolls caused by wrong parts, repeat visits, and bad addresses, because eliminating them is the cheapest capacity they can add.
See how this works in Forz →W
Work order
A work order is the record that authorizes and documents a single piece of field work: the customer, site, scope, assigned technician, parts, labor, and completion notes. It travels with the job from creation through scheduling, on-site work, and billing. Work orders are the core unit of record in field service management — most other records reference one.
See how this works in Forz →Now see it all in one platform
Dispatch, work orders, service agreements, inspections — the whole glossary, working together in a 15-minute demo.