Using Claude with ServiceM8: a practical guide

1. What the connector can do

ServiceM8 hosts an official connector built on MCP, the standard way AI assistants talk to other software. In Claude you add it as a custom connector and sign in to ServiceM8 in the browser; in ChatGPT it is an approved app. No API key, nothing installed.

According to ServiceM8’s own support article, read on 3 October 2026, it can:

• search and list clients, jobs, job filters, staff and queues
• read a job’s details, diary entries, activities and notes
• create jobs from your templates and add notes
• check staff availability, schedule jobs and create allocations
• send jobs to queues and change job status
• compose and send job-linked email and SMS

That is most of the office. It is also ServiceM8’s own code, so when their system changes the connector changes with it, which is more than can be said for a bridge someone built for you.

2. Set it up before you use it

1. Make it ask before every action. ServiceM8 says whether it confirms first depends on the assistant, its settings and the action. Set it to ask. That is the difference between an assistant that drafts and one that sends.
2. Leave messaging alone at first. Decline any SMS or email the assistant proposes until you have written down who may be messaged, about what, and when. A text in a customer’s pocket cannot be taken back.
3. Practise on a test client. Create a client called “Test” and do your first creates and schedules against it. Delete it when you are done.
4. One job at a time. A single clear request gets done well. “Sort out my week” gets done in a way you will spend Monday undoing.

3. Four things to think through

The connector will do what it is asked. These are the four places where getting the request right matters most, because they are rules about your business that no connector can know.

1. One job per caller. The customer who rang at 7 and again at 8 becomes two jobs unless something checks for the first one. Creating a job does not check.
2. An address that exists. A misheard street name is a van in the wrong suburb. An address should be looked up and confirmed, not typed from what was heard.
3. A price only from your price list. Ask an assistant for a quote and it will produce a number. If the number is not on your list, it is a guess with your name on it.
4. When a customer may be messaged. Consent, content and timing are your obligations, not the connector’s. The compliance paper covers what applies in Australia.

None of this is a fault in the connector. It is the part of the job that was always yours, and it now needs writing down because the person doing the typing has changed.

4. First task: a read-only health check

The best first use is one that reads and changes nothing. Paste this into Claude with ServiceM8 connected, and you will see the four things from section 3 as they already stand in your account.

Using the ServiceM8 connector, read my account and change nothing.
List, with job numbers:
1. Clients with more than one open job created on the same day.
2. Open jobs with no job address, or an address with no suburb or postcode.
3. Jobs in Quote status with no activity in the last 14 days.
4. Jobs in Work Order status with no scheduled time.
Do not create, edit, schedule or message anything. If a list is long, give me the count and the first ten.

Fourteen days and the status names are a starting point; change them to suit how you run. If the assistant asks to approve an action during this check, say no. Nothing here needs one.

The same check also installs as the servicem8-health-check skill, so you can run it again without pasting. In Claude Code or Cowork:

/plugin marketplace add digitalgym/aipathway-standards
/plugin install owner-checks@aipathway-standards

Read what comes back as a to-do list for section 5. Duplicate jobs say booking is the place to start. Quiet quotes say follow-up is.

5. A standard for each job you automate

Each job below has an open build standard: the checks in order, what must never happen, and what stays with a person. They are free under CC BY 4.0 and each one is also an Agent Skill, a folder of instructions Claude loads before it starts, so the rules are in front of it before the first action.

In Claude Code or Cowork, add them all as a plugin:

/plugin marketplace add digitalgym/aipathway-standards
/plugin install build-standards@aipathway-standards

Or take a single skill folder from the repository and add it to Claude. Then name the standard when you ask, and Claude works to it.

One rule sits across all of them. The connector confirming in the chat is not the same as the job being written once. A write counts when it comes back with the job’s id, and that id is the one the quote, the invoice and any chase read next. A second job for the same work is the failure to look for, because each chat that creates one looks finished on its own.

6. A worked example: drafting a quote

Quoting is a good second task: it is useful, and the standard keeps the one risk, an invented price, off the page.

Use the Quote Out standard.
Look at job [job number] in ServiceM8 and draft a quote for it.
Take every rate from my price list only. Anything the price list does not cover, park it with a reason instead of estimating it.
Show me the draft before you write anything to ServiceM8, and do not send it.

What you should get back is a draft built only from your price list, a short list of parked items with a reason each, and nothing sent. If a rate appears that is not on your list, stop and check the skill is loaded. That is exactly the failure the standard exists to prevent.

7. What a chat cannot do for you

It acts when someone asks. The call at 9pm, the quote that has gone quiet for a fortnight and the finished job nobody invoiced all happen when no one is typing. A connector makes the work possible; something still has to notice it, on a schedule or when the phone rings.

It does not answer the phone. Taking a call properly means the AI disclosure and recording consent before the first question. The Booked After Hours standard says not to build that part yourself, and to use a provider that does it.

A chat is not a record. When a customer disputes what they were told, you need what was said, what was written and which rule decided it. For anything that talks to customers without you there, keep a log that would stand up in that conversation.

8. When to get help

Everything in sections 2 to 6 is free and most owners can do it themselves. The two jobs in section 7 that have to run without you are already built:

• The phone. Booked After Hours answers after hours on your number, with disclosure and consent, and writes one job into ServiceM8 to the standard while the caller is on the line. $119 a month, flat, no call caps and no per-minute overage. Hear our voice agent.
• The chasing. Get Paid rings quiet quotes read from ServiceM8 and overdue invoices against your Xero, and records a promise to pay as a date. $199 a month. Hear it chase an invoice.

If you are comparing products that answer the phone into ServiceM8, the comparison of twelve AI receptionists for tradies sorts them by whether they write a real job.

9. A sensible order

1. Connect it and set it to ask before every action.
2. Run the health check and read the results.
3. Install the standards.
4. Automate the job the health check pointed at, on a test client first.
5. Add a second job only when the first has run cleanly for a few weeks.

That order is slower than switching everything on at once. It is also the one where nothing goes out to a customer that you would not have sent yourself.