Glossary · Updated May 2026

The trades & CRM glossary

Plain-English definitions of the software, pricing, and business terms that come up when you run a trade business — the words on your invoices, in your CRM, and in every "why am I not making money?" conversation. 48 terms, grouped by topic.

CRM & field-service software Money & pricing Running the business

CRM & field-service software

CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Software that keeps your customers, jobs, and communication history in one place, so you can track every lead and repeat client instead of relying on memory, a notebook, or scattered texts.
Field service management (FSM) software: A category of software for businesses that send workers to job sites — covering scheduling, dispatching, work orders, invoicing, and customer communication. For a solo trade, an FSM tool and a CRM are usually the same product. JobStack by trade
Work order / job: The record of a single piece of work for a customer: what was requested, when it's scheduled, who's assigned, the parts and labor involved, and its status from booked to paid.
Dispatching: Assigning jobs to workers and letting customers know when to expect them. In a one-person business, dispatching is really just managing your own day and texting customers an arrival window.
Scheduling software: A tool that organizes your jobs on a calendar, prevents double-booking, and automatically sends customers appointment confirmations and reminders.
Route optimization: Ordering a day's job stops to minimize driving time. It matters most for route-based trades like lawn care, pool service, and pest control, where a tighter route means more jobs per day.
Voice-to-estimate: An AI feature that turns a spoken description of a job into a written, itemized estimate using your past pricing, so you can quote on site without typing. Free estimate generator
AI auto-responder: An AI feature that replies to customer calls or texts when you can't — answering with your rates and availability and booking the job — so you don't lose a lead while you're under a sink or on a roof.
Customer (client) portal: A web page where customers can view quotes, approve them, see invoices, and pay. Lighter tools use a simple link instead of a login.
Maintenance agreement / recurring service plan: A contract where a customer pays for regular service — HVAC tune-ups twice a year, weekly pool cleaning, quarterly pest control. These recurring plans are the steady revenue base of many trade businesses.
Sales pipeline: A view of where each lead or job stands — from new inquiry to quoted, won, and paid — so nothing stalls or slips through the cracks.
Contact record: The profile for a single customer that holds their details, full job history, notes, and past communication in one place.
Workflow automation: Rules that handle routine work for you — sending a reminder when an invoice is due, confirming a booking by text, or following up on an unanswered quote — without you lifting a finger.
Two-way texting (SMS): Sending and receiving texts with customers inside your CRM, so the whole conversation is logged against the job instead of lost in your personal phone.
Online booking: A link or page that lets customers request or schedule an appointment themselves, capturing jobs even when you can't get to the phone.
Card on file: Securely storing a customer's payment card so you can charge approved work automatically — essential for recurring plans and for getting paid the moment a job is done.
Estimate-to-invoice conversion: Turning an approved estimate into an invoice in one step, carrying the line items over so you never re-enter them. Free invoice generator
Integration: A connection between your CRM and another tool — like QuickBooks for accounting or a payment processor — so data flows between them instead of being typed in twice.
Reporting / dashboard: The at-a-glance view of your business — revenue, outstanding invoices, jobs booked — that turns scattered records into decisions.
Appointment reminders: Automatic texts or emails sent before a scheduled job to cut no-shows and the 'are you still coming?' phone calls.
Reputation management: Systematically requesting and tracking customer reviews — which drive both local search ranking and whether a customer picks you over a competitor with fewer stars.
Lead capture form: A form on your website or profile that collects a prospect's details and drops them straight into your CRM as a new lead.
SaaS / cloud-based software: Software you access online for a monthly subscription, with no installation and automatic updates — the model behind most modern CRMs, including JobStack.

Money & pricing

Markup: The amount you add to your cost to set a price, expressed as a percentage of the cost. Add $400 to a $1,000 job and that's a 40% markup. Markup vs. margin calculator
Margin (gross margin): Profit as a percentage of the price you charge — not of your cost. A 40% margin actually requires about a 67% markup; confusing the two is the most common way trades underprice. Markup vs. margin calculator
Overhead: The ongoing cost of running your business that isn't tied to any single job — truck, fuel, insurance, tools, software, phone, marketing. Every price you quote has to cover a share of it. Hourly rate calculator
Billable hours: The hours you can actually charge a customer for, as opposed to time spent driving, quoting, buying materials, and doing admin. They're usually far fewer than the hours you work — which is why your rate must be higher than your target wage. Hourly rate calculator
Break-even rate: The hourly rate you must charge just to cover your costs and pay yourself, before any profit. Anything above it is margin; anything below it loses money.
Payment terms (Net 7 / Net 14 / Net 30): How long a customer has to pay an invoice from its date — Net 30 means 30 days, Net 14 means 14. Shorter terms get you paid faster. Payment terms guide
Deposit (down payment): Money collected before work starts, common on larger jobs to cover up-front material costs and confirm the customer is serious.
Accounts receivable (A/R): The money customers owe you for work already done but not yet paid. A growing A/R balance is a warning sign about your collections.
Cash flow: The timing of money moving in and out of your business. A profitable business can still fail if it runs out of cash while waiting on slow-paying customers.
Burdened labor cost: The true hourly cost of an employee — their wage plus payroll taxes, insurance, workers' comp, and benefits — not just their pay rate. It's what you actually need to recover when you bill their time.
Late fee (finance charge): A charge added to an overdue invoice, often 1–1.5% per month. It's enforceable only if it's stated in your agreed terms and stays within your state's legal limit. Late fee calculator
Net profit: What's left after every cost — materials, labor, overhead, and taxes — is subtracted from revenue. The number that actually tells you whether the business works.
Job costing: Tracking the real cost (materials + labor + overhead) of a specific job to see whether you actually made money on it, rather than guessing.

Running the business

Lead: A potential customer who has shown interest — a call, a form submission, a referral — but hasn't booked yet.
Speed to lead: How fast you respond to a new inquiry. Because most customers hire the first pro who replies, faster response directly wins more jobs.
Follow-up: Reaching back out to a lead that went quiet or an invoice that's gone unpaid. Automated follow-up recovers a large share of jobs and payments that would otherwise slip away.
Estimate vs. quote: An estimate is your best approximation of what a job will cost and can change as the work is scoped; a quote is a fixed price you commit to. Stating which one you're giving avoids disputes. Free estimate generator
Customer lifetime value (LTV): The total revenue a customer generates over the whole relationship, not just their first job. High LTV is why retention and recurring work are worth more than chasing one-off jobs.
Recurring revenue (MRR): Predictable income from ongoing agreements — maintenance plans, weekly routes — as opposed to one-off jobs. It smooths out seasonal swings and makes the business far more stable.
Change order: A documented change to the scope or price of a job after it's been agreed. It protects you (and the customer) when extra work gets added mid-job.
Punch list: The list of small remaining tasks needed to finish a job, common on larger construction and remodeling work.
Seasonality: The predictable rise and fall in demand across the year for a given trade — like HVAC peaking in summer and winter, or lawn care in spring. Planning for it is how operators survive the slow months. Trade demand seasonality
Conversion rate: The share of leads or quotes that turn into booked, paid jobs. Lifting it is usually cheaper than buying more leads.
Churn: The rate at which recurring customers cancel or stop coming back. Low churn is what makes recurring-revenue trades — cleaning, pest control, pool, HVAC plans — so valuable.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC): What it costs, on average, to win one new customer — your marketing and sales spend divided by customers gained. Worth comparing against lifetime value.

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