№ 13 — FIELD TRADES
The job's booked. The van's stocked. And the card's still in date. All on one screen.
A plumbing, electrical or gas business does not fall over because the work is hard — it falls over in the gaps between jobs. A recurring service that nobody re-booked. A van that turns up without the part. An engineer whose Gas Safe card quietly expired last month, on a job that needed it. Navigare Field Trades pulls scheduling, recurring visits, van stock and your team's trade registrations into one system — so the diary, the stores and the credentials all stay in step, and the day stops depending on whoever remembers what.
THE PROBLEM
The work is never the problem. The gaps between jobs are.
A small trades firm runs on memory and a phone full of texts, and that holds — right up until it doesn't. The cost isn't one big failure; it's a steady drip of re-booked services, wasted return trips, and the day you find out a registration lapsed only because a customer asked to see the card. Every item below is the kind of thing that's invisible until it costs you a job.
i
A Gas Safe card expired and nobody noticed
Trade registrations don't announce themselves when they lapse. A Gas Safe, NICEIC or FENSA registration that quietly ran out leaves an engineer on a job they're no longer covered to do — and you only find out when it's already a problem.
ii
The van turns up without the part
What's actually on each van is anyone's guess. The engineer arrives, the fitting isn't in the back, and a one-visit job becomes two — a return trip, a second slot in the diary, and a customer kept waiting on a missing £4 part.
iii
The recurring service nobody re-booked
Annual boiler services and planned maintenance fall due and slip through. Without the next visit scheduled the moment the last one closes, recurring work depends on someone remembering — which means lost revenue and a customer who drifts to whoever called them first.
iv
The paperwork lives on the dashboard
Job sheets, parts used and what was agreed end up on scraps in the van or a clipboard on the dash. By the time it reaches the office to be invoiced, half of it is illegible and the rest is from memory — so jobs get billed late, or not for what they were.
HOW NAVIGARE SOLVES IT
One system where the diary, the van and the cards stay in step.
Built on Odoo Community with our field-trades vertical on top: scheduled jobs, recurring visits that re-book themselves, van stock you can actually see, and a credential tracker that watches your team's trade registrations — in one place, in pounds, with UK data residency. The idea is plain: the things that fall through the gaps shouldn't depend on memory, so the system holds them for you.
The principle: a trades business is only as reliable as the smallest thing it forgets. So Navigare puts scheduling, recurring visits and per-van stock in one place, and issues the statutory documents the job produces — CP12, EICR, EIC, Part P — with their renewal dates worked out and chased, and tracks every engineer's Gas Safe, NICEIC and FENSA registration with reminders before it lapses. The sections below describe exactly what the software does, as it actually behaves.
EVERYTHING ELSE THE BUSINESS NEEDS
The whole day's work, in the same system.
The credential tracker keeps your team covered, but a trades firm runs on the jobs themselves. Navigare Field Trades keeps the scheduling, the stock and the recurring work alongside it — one system, one record, in pounds.
Jobs with scheduling
Bookings become scheduled jobs with the customer, the address and the work in one record — so the diary is the single place the whole team works from, not a phone full of texts.
Recurring visits
Annual services and planned maintenance are set up to recur, so the next visit is queued the moment the last one closes — recurring work that re-books itself rather than slipping.
Van stock
Track what each van actually carries, so you know the part is in the back before the engineer sets off — fewer return trips, more jobs done in one visit.
Fleet integration
The trade work links to your vehicles and their servicing through Navigare's fleet module — vans, MOTs and maintenance kept alongside the jobs they carry, not in a separate spreadsheet.
Priced in pounds, UK-hosted
Billing and invoicing in GBP, with UK data residency — built for an English or Welsh trades business from the ground up.
One system, one record
Jobs, recurring visits, van stock and team credentials in a single place on Odoo Community — no re-entry between tools, and one place to look when something needs checking.
