ServiceM8 Integration Guide: Connecting Your Job Management to Everything Else

ServiceM8 has become a go-to job management platform for Australian trades businesses — plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, pest controllers, and dozens of other field service operators. It handles scheduling, quoting, job tracking, and invoicing in a mobile-friendly package that field teams actually use.

But ServiceM8 doesn’t run your business alone. Your accounting software needs the financial data. Your CRM needs the customer history. Your inventory system needs to know what materials were used. And if those connections aren’t working properly, someone on your team is spending hours every week manually bridging the gaps.

Here’s how to connect ServiceM8 to the rest of your business — and where the common traps are.

ServiceM8 and Accounting: The Core Integration

For most trades businesses, connecting ServiceM8 to your accounting software is the first and most important integration. ServiceM8 offers native integrations with both Xero and MYOB, and for straightforward businesses, they work reasonably well.

ServiceM8 to Xero

The native Xero integration syncs completed jobs as invoices, pushes customer contact details, and maps line items to Xero accounts. For a one-person operation or a small team with simple pricing, this covers a lot of ground.

Where it works well:

• Creating Xero contacts from ServiceM8 clients
• Pushing completed job invoices to Xero
• Basic line-item mapping with GST handling
• Payment status syncing back to ServiceM8

Where it falls short:

• Complex job types with different account codes for labour, materials, travel, and disposal
• Multi-stage jobs where you need to invoice progressively
• Handling variations and extras that don’t fit the original quote structure
• Splitting a single job across multiple Xero invoices (e.g., warranty work billed to manufacturer, balance to customer)

ServiceM8 to MYOB

The MYOB integration follows a similar pattern but tends to be more limited. MYOB’s API is less flexible than Xero’s, and the native connector reflects that. If you’re on MYOB AccountRight Desktop (not cloud-hosted), the native integration may not work at all.

Beyond Accounting: CRM Integration

ServiceM8 tracks job history, but it’s not a CRM. It doesn’t score leads, manage sales pipelines, track marketing campaigns, or segment customers for follow-up. If you’re growing and want to market to past customers, follow up on quotes that didn’t convert, or track lifetime customer value, you need a CRM alongside ServiceM8.

The problem: ServiceM8 doesn’t have native integrations with most CRMs. Connecting HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Salesforce to ServiceM8 means using middleware (Zapier or Make) or a custom integration.

What’s worth syncing from ServiceM8 to your CRM:

• New client records (name, address, email, phone)
• Job history — what work was done, when, and the value
• Quote outcomes — accepted, declined, or expired
• Recurring service schedules

What’s worth syncing from your CRM back to ServiceM8:

• Lead source — so your field team knows how the customer found you
• Customer notes — special access instructions, communication preferences, key contacts
• VIP or priority flags for long-term contract clients

Inventory and Materials Tracking

For trades businesses that carry stock — parts, fittings, consumables — knowing what materials were used on each job is essential for costing, reordering, and pricing future work accurately.

ServiceM8 lets you add materials to jobs, but it doesn’t manage inventory levels, reorder points, or supplier pricing. If you’re running a separate inventory system, you need an integration that:

1. Deducts stock when materials are recorded against a ServiceM8 job
2. Updates costs so your job costing reflects actual material prices, not estimates
3. Triggers reorders when stock drops below minimum levels
4. Maps materials to the correct accounting codes in Xero or MYOB

This is where off-the-shelf integrations struggle. The connection between “Field tech used 3x copper elbows on job #4521” and “Deduct 3 from warehouse stock, update COGS, check if reorder needed” involves three systems working in concert. Zapier can handle simple versions of this, but it breaks down with multi-warehouse setups, serialised parts, or bulk materials measured in metres or litres rather than individual units.

The Middleware Approach

Zapier and Make both connect to ServiceM8, and for simple automations they work well enough. Common middleware setups include:

• New job completed triggers a Slack notification to the office
• Quote accepted creates a task in your project management tool
• New client adds a contact to your email marketing list
• Job completed pushes a summary to a Google Sheet for reporting

These are single-step, one-directional flows — and middleware handles them fine. The trouble starts when you need multi-step logic: “When a job completes, check the job type, look up the correct account codes, create a multi-line Xero invoice with GST applied per line item, then update the CRM with the job outcome and value.” That’s not a Zapier workflow — that’s software.

Planning Your ServiceM8 Integration

Before connecting anything, work through these questions:

1. What’s your biggest admin bottleneck? Invoicing? Inventory? Customer follow-up? Start with the integration that saves the most time.
2. How complex is your pricing? If every job invoices the same way, the native Xero integration might be enough. If you have different rates, account codes, or GST treatments by job type, you’ll need more.
3. Do you need two-way data flow? Pushing data out of ServiceM8 is simpler than keeping two systems synchronised. Decide which system owns which data.
4. What’s your volume? Ten jobs a day is different from fifty. Higher volume amplifies the cost of manual workarounds and the value of automation.
5. Who handles exceptions? Every integration has edge cases — failed syncs, unmatched clients, unusual job structures. Someone needs to monitor and resolve these.

The trades businesses that get integration right stop treating ServiceM8 as a standalone app. ServiceM8 handles what it’s brilliant at — scheduling, mobile job management, and field communication. Your accounting software handles the finances. Your CRM handles the relationships. And a well-built integration makes sure data flows between them accurately, automatically, and without your admin team retyping everything.