AI agents on ServiceM8 and Simpro

1. An AI agent does the next step on the job, a chatbot only talks about it

Ask a chatbot about your open quotes and it tells you three are more than a week old. Useful, and then you still do the work. An agent goes one step further: it sees the quote has gone quiet, drafts the follow-up from the job, and puts it in front of you to send.

An AI receptionist is one kind of agent, the one on the phone. It is the step at the very front: the call comes in, the job gets booked. Everything after that, the quote, the invoice, the chase, is office work that an agent can carry too. If the phone is the step you are after, the options that book straight into ServiceM8 or Simpro are compared in the best AI receptionists for Australian tradies.

The test for any agent is simple. Did the job move, in your own system, without anyone retyping it? If the answer lives in a chat window and someone still copies it into ServiceM8 or Xero, it was a chatbot.

2. ServiceM8 and Simpro now ship their own AI, and it works inside their own walls

ServiceM8: a connector for Claude and ChatGPT

ServiceM8 hosts an official connector. Turn it on in Claude or ChatGPT and the assistant can read your jobs, create them from your templates, schedule them, change their status and send job-linked SMS and email. The settings to check first are in how to connect ServiceM8 to Claude.

The catch is that a connector acts while you are talking to it. It does not notice on its own that a quote went quiet last Tuesday.

Simpro: Lightning, inside Simpro

Simpro launched Lightning in May 2026. At its centre is Cooper, which answers questions from your business data. The launch agents work around the technician and the job card:

• FieldReady trains technicians on your own workflows and standards.
• JobReady briefs the technician before dispatch from job history, site notes and parts.
• JobScribe captures job details from the technician’s voice.
• JobBrief writes the post-job summary for the customer.

More agents are on Simpro’s roadmap, including a customer service one. If you are on Simpro, use Lightning for the work on site. Simpro has no official connector for outside assistants like Claude (checked October 2026); the way in is a key you create in Simpro. Details are in using Claude with Simpro.

3. The money goes missing between the steps, not inside them

Booking a job in ServiceM8 works. Sending a quote from Simpro works. Raising an invoice in Xero works. What fails is the bit where somebody has to remember:

• The phone rings while you are on the tools, and nobody calls back.
• The quote went out, nobody followed it up, and the customer went with someone else.
• The job is finished in the system but nobody turned it into an invoice.
• The invoice is 30 days overdue and nobody has rung about it.

None of those is a job inside one system. Each is a handover between days, people or systems, and each needs something that notices on its own. That is where agents earn their keep in a trade business, and it is the part neither vendor’s AI is built around today. The quote and invoice half of it, step by step, is in connecting enquiries, quoting, jobs and invoicing in a trade business.

4. One job, passed along five times, with a person on every money step

Each handover gets one small agent with one job. It wakes when the step before it finishes, does its part, and leaves the job where the next one can pick it up. Each step has a free, open standard that says exactly what “done right” means.

You do not need all five. Start with the one handover that loses you the most, run it for a fortnight, then add the next. Each fix is small. Together they fill the bucket.

5. Every agent keeps the same job number, or the chain breaks

The quickest way to make a mess with agents is to let each one start its own copy of the job. The phone agent books job 1042, the quote agent makes a new customer because the name was spelt differently, and now the invoice has nothing to match.

So there is one rule across every step: the job number from the first booking travels with the job to the last payment. Every agent picks the job up by that number and hands it on with the same number. If an agent cannot find it, it stops and tells you, rather than guessing. That rule is written down as the Cash Seam, and every standard in the table above is tested against it.

The second rule: an agent saying “done” is not done. A step only counts when the note, draft or status can be read back from ServiceM8, Simpro or Xero. You get a log you can check, not a shrug.

6. On ServiceM8, start from the official connector and add what wakes it

The connector already reads and updates jobs, so most of the work is deciding when each agent runs and what it may touch. A quiet-quote check every morning, an unbilled-jobs check every Friday, an overdue list each day. Ready-made versions:

• Chase quiet ServiceM8 quotes with Grok Bot or Claude
• Find finished ServiceM8 jobs not yet invoiced in Xero
• List the equipment due for its next service

The check to run before you trust it. Ring your own business twice from the same mobile, 20 minutes apart, about the same burst pipe. You should end up with one job and two notes on it. Two jobs means it failed, even if every step said it worked. Most double jobs start as a double customer, so the agent has to look for the customer by mobile and address before it creates anything.

7. On Simpro, let Lightning brief the techs and let agents carry the cash steps

Lightning and outside agents do not have to compete. Lightning helps the technician get ready, capture the job and summarise it. The agents in the table above pick up after that: the quiet quote, the invoice, the chase. They read Simpro with a key you create in Simpro and can delete at any time, so you stay in control of what they see.

The spec for connecting Claude to your own Simpro is the Simpro Claude Connector standard.

The check to run before you trust it.Simpro has two different “yes” marks on a quote: the office’s own approval, and the customer’s acceptance. Mark a test quote approved by the office but not accepted by the customer. No invoice should be drafted. Then mark the customer’s acceptance and check exactly one appears.

8. No agent sends, approves or pays on its own

• No agent sends a quote, approves an invoice or pays a bill. It drafts, and a person decides.
• No agent makes up a price. If a line is not on your price list, the quote waits for you.
• No agent rings a customer without the Australian call rules built in: who is calling, that the call is recorded, permitted hours, and the do-not-call list. Calls go through a service that enforces them, not a prompt.
• Every agent gets a key with the least access its job needs, never your password.
• Anything an agent cannot finish lands on one list with a named person on it.

Why keys and not passwords, and the limits to set before an agent touches Xero, ServiceM8 or Simpro, are in is Grok Bot safe.

9. Build it yourself, or have it built

Yourself. Every standard is free. The Bot Team directory has ready-written bots for each handover, with an Add to Grok Bot link. One Bot Starter key (A$19 + GST a month) connects Xero, ServiceM8 or Simpro for all of them. How to run them as one team is in how to set up a Bot Team.

Done for you, on the phone steps. The two steps where a mistake costs most are both phone calls: the customer ringing in, and the call about money owed. Front Desk answers and books the job into ServiceM8 or Simpro during the call. Get Paid (A$199 + GST a month) rings the overdue invoices and quiet quotes against your live Xero, and records a promise to pay as a date.

Done for you, the whole chain. Tell us the one job you want off your plate, and we set up the agents on your own accounts. You approve every send.

10. Questions