What to look for in field service software before you scale

For a shop with 5 to 15 people, start with a real week of work. Include the owner, office staff, estimators and field users who need access. Bring a lead, an estimate, a changed crew assignment and an unpaid invoice. Use those records to judge whether the software supports your handoffs.

The requirements below are questions to demonstrate, not a list of features to accept on a slide. Menaia's published workflows and pricing provide the examples. The cost scenarios use monthly billing in US dollars, checked on September 19, 2026, with stated usage assumptions rather than a claim about what every shop spends.

A requirements checklist for the demo

• Lead intake: show a call or text in the inbox, its contact and the follow-up owner. Demonstrate where a drafted reply waits for approval.
• Estimating: build a quote from our items and quantities. Show material costs, labor hours, discount, tax and final price, then identify the plan required for the calculator.
• Customer approval: open the proposal as a customer and show how the signature relates to the scoped work.
• Dispatch: move an assignment while another worker is off. Show the draft schedule, publish it and explain who receives the notification.
• Field use: find the assigned job on a phone, read the property notes, upload a project photo and record a shift.
• Billing: create an invoice from the estimate, record a payment and show what remains outstanding.
• Job economics: compare estimated and actual hours, identify the branch rate and trace a crew bonus into the Wallet.
• Office handoff: demonstrate the payroll export and any accounting connection your team needs, including the plan it requires.

Give each requirement an owner and a pass condition. The dispatcher should judge the schedule change; a field user should judge the phone workflow. Record a missing capability as a gap to resolve before rollout. A promise to show it later is not the same as a completed demonstration.

Separate feature fit from seat arithmetic

Menaia's monthly Starter plan is $134.99 for three seats and 4,000 tokens. Core is $199.99 for five seats and 6,000 tokens. Pro is $569.99 for fifteen seats and 17,000 tokens. Every additional active user, office or field, is $35 per month. Count people who need an account rather than only the trucks you run.

The price book, calculator and QuickBooks two-way sync start on Core. Pro adds Meni data integrations through MCP and connected sources. Starter includes CRM, estimates, scheduling and invoicing, but a shop that requires the catalog calculator should compare Core or above. Adding seats to Starter does not add that capability.

• Five people: Starter plus two seats is $204.99 before token packs. Core is $199.99 with all five seats, a larger allowance and the Core capabilities.
• Ten people: Core plus five seats costs $199.99 + $175 = $374.99 a month, including 6,000 tokens.
• Fifteen people: Core plus ten seats costs $549.99 with 6,000 tokens. Pro costs $569.99 with 17,000 tokens, so the $20 difference also buys a larger allowance and the Pro capabilities.

These figures are subscription and seat totals, not all-in bills for an unspecified workload. Yearly billing lists Starter at $121.49, Core at $179.99 and Pro at $512.99 per month, billed yearly. Keep that billing commitment separate from the monthly examples, and use the published pricing page to review your chosen configuration.

Budget the shared AI and phone allowance

The pricing calculator's example uses 200 Meni replies, 200 recorded call minutes, 150 outgoing single-segment texts, 100 incoming texts and one local number for a month. Treat that as a sample workload for the whole organization, not a per-person allowance.

• 200 Meni replies at 15 tokens each use 3,000 tokens.
• 200 call minutes at 4 tokens plus recording at 1 token per minute use 1,000 tokens.
• 150 outgoing message segments at 4 tokens use 600 tokens; 100 incoming messages at 3 tokens use 300.
• One local number uses 350 tokens per month. The example totals 5,250 tokens.

For the five-person shop, Core's 6,000 included tokens cover that example at $199.99 monthly. Starter needs two extra seats and 1,250 tokens beyond its allowance. Two 1,000-token packs cost $20, making the illustrated total $224.99 and leaving 750 purchased tokens unused. Do not add the full token value again when usage is already covered by a plan allowance.

Now consider a fifteen-person shop using 10,000 tokens in a month. Core with ten extra seats is $549.99 and needs 4,000 more tokens, which four $10 packs cover for a $589.99 total. Pro covers all fifteen people and that usage for $569.99. With only 5,250 tokens of usage, Core at $549.99 would instead have the lower monthly total, provided its features meet the requirements.

Other activity draws from the same balance: insights, playbook runs, briefings, voicemail transcription and additional numbers. Outgoing texts are charged per segment, so the single-segment assumption matters. Packs are published at 1,000 tokens for $10, 5,000 for $45 and 12,000 for $100. Compare packs against the shortfall you actually need to cover.

Plan tokens reset monthly; purchased packs do not expire. If the balance runs out, Meni and the phones pause until you top up. Leads, estimates, proposals, jobs, scheduling, timesheets, invoices and the Wallet do not draw tokens. Decide who will watch usage, because the phone allowance is an operating requirement as well as a cost.

Use migration questions to plan the first week

• Which customer, property and open-job records do we need on day one, and who checks them after migration?
• Who will clean up catalog items, labor allowances and duplicate records before the first estimate?
• Which active jobs stay in the current process until closeout, and where will the office look for their invoices?
• Can we trace one imported customer through an estimate, schedule, field record and invoice before the whole team changes over?
• What help is included, and which unusual imports or custom work need a separate scope?

Menaia includes guided onboarding and data migration on every plan, while custom imports and builds are listed under Scale. The trial runs 14 days and includes 1,500 tokens. That trial balance is smaller than the sample monthly workload above, so choose the phone and AI checks you need to perform rather than assuming a full month of usage fits inside it.

Make room for an honest decision

Compare adopting one platform with keeping the tools your team already uses. If your current process can demonstrate the required handoffs, record that alongside the switching work. If it cannot, identify the specific missing connection and show how the proposed system handles it. Do not assume consolidation alone fixes an unclear scope or an unowned follow-up.

Finish with three written answers: which workflows passed, what the subscription costs at your headcount and usage, and who owns the migration steps. Those answers make the purchase reviewable for a small shop without pretending that every business needs the same plan.