Electrician software for Australian electrical businesses
A switchboard upgrade in Parramatta starts as a phone call, becomes a site visit, turns into a quote, waits a fortnight for the owner to decide, gets booked, gets done, and ends as an invoice. Six steps, and most electrical businesses run them across a diary, a text thread, a quote template and a shoebox. Electrician software exists to keep all six attached to one customer and one address.
This page sets out what Opsler does across that workflow for an Australian electrical contracting business, with the limits stated where they matter. The biggest one is worth knowing up front so you can decide whether to keep reading: Opsler manages the job, not the certificate. Compliance paperwork stays with your state scheme and your licence.
What electrician software should connect
Vendors sell this category as a feature list. It is more useful to think of it as four connections, because a tool that breaks any one of them puts the work back on you.
- Customer to property. Domestic sparkies serve addresses, not just people. The same owner may have three rentals; the same address may change owner. If the software cannot hold a service address separately from a billing address, every agent-managed property becomes a manual workaround.
- Quote to job. An accepted quote should become the job, carrying its line items. Retyping is where the numbers drift — the quote said four downlights, the invoice says six, and nobody can say when that was agreed.
- Job to field. Whoever is on the tools needs the address, the access notes and the scope on their phone, without ringing the office.
- Job to invoice. Completed work should produce an invoice from what was actually done, with your ABN and GST treatment already on it.
People search for this in a dozen ways — electrician job management software, electrical business management software, electricians software, plain software for electricians — and they usually mean the same four connections. The distinction that does matter is against estimating. Electrical estimating packages price work from drawings: cable schedules, takeoffs, supplier catalogues, labour units. Opsler does none of that, deliberately. It picks the job up once you know what you are charging.
If you want the full lifecycle view across every trade rather than the electrical one, the job management software page covers the same ground without the trade framing.
Keep customers, properties and electrical job history together
A customer record in Opsler holds the service address, an optional separate billing address, a phone number and an alternate, notes, and every job ever done at that property. That last part is what turns electrical job management software from a filing cabinet into something that earns its keep.
Take a real pattern: a real-estate agent rings about a tripping safety switch at a rental in Coburg. You have been to that address twice. Job history tells you the board was partially upgraded eighteen months ago, that the previous fault was a failing RCD on the light circuit, and what you charged. You quote from what the work actually cost, not from memory, and you arrive knowing which circuits were already touched.
The billing split matters more in this trade than most. Agent-managed properties mean the person who calls you, the person whose power it is, and the person who pays are three different people. Opsler bills the billing address while the job stays filed against the service address, so the history stays with the property even when the owner changes.
What the record does not hold
There is no asset or equipment register. You cannot create a record for a specific switchboard with its model, install date and last test date and track it independently of the jobs performed on it. Details like that live in the job notes, the description, or the photos attached to the job. For most domestic and light commercial work that is enough. If you maintain hundreds of distributed assets — emergency lighting across a portfolio, say, or switchgear on a maintenance schedule with per-unit test intervals — a system with a real asset register will serve you better, and you should choose one.
Build clear quotes without becoming estimating software
Opsler builds an itemised quote against a customer and a property, from a price book you maintain yourself. You set the line items, the quantities, the rates and the tax treatment. The quote goes to the customer by email; they approve it with a one-time code and a signature, typed or drawn. That approval is recorded against the quote with its timestamp, which is the part that matters when someone later remembers the conversation differently.
For a two-day rewire quoted at $4,200 across eleven line items, the useful behaviour is what happens next: accepted, it converts into the job with those eleven lines intact, and the invoice is raised from the same record. Nobody retypes anything, so nobody transposes a digit.
Where it stops is worth being exact about. There are no supplier catalogues and no live pricing feeds — if cable prices move, you update your own price book. There is no takeoff from plans, no cable-sizing calculation, no labour-unit library, and no automatic margin optimisation. Those belong to electrical estimating software, and for tendered commercial work you will want one. Opsler assumes you have already decided the number.
The quote workflow itself — revisions, variations, status, conversion — is covered in more depth on the quoting software page, which owns that intent for Australian tradies.
Schedule service calls and project work
Electrical work splits into two shapes that fight each other for the same calendar. Service calls are short, urgent and unpredictable — a dead circuit, a tripping breaker, a hot-water element. Project work is booked, longer and planned — a rewire, a solar install, a shop fit-out. Any electrician scheduling software has to hold both without one shoving the other off the board.
Opsler's dispatch board shows a day or a week, with an unscheduled queue sorted by priority alongside a lane for each electrician. Unbooked work stays visible rather than disappearing into a list, which is the mechanism that stops an accepted quote sitting unbooked for three weeks. Assigning a job attaches the customer, the address and the scope to whoever is doing it. If you book someone onto two jobs that overlap, the conflict check flags it and names the job it collides with, rather than silently accepting a double-booking.
Each electrician's availability shows as available, busy or offline, with their booked slots and a count of the day's jobs. Busy sets itself when a job timer is running, so the board reflects who is actually on the tools rather than who was meant to be.
Planned maintenance runs as a recurring series — quarterly RCD testing across a body corporate, for instance — generating jobs 30 days ahead on the Pro plan. It is a generated schedule, not an intelligent one: it does not choose the best day, it does not match the electrician to the work by skill, and it does not reschedule around a delay for you.
The diary itself — capacity, rebooking, cancellations, repeat work — is the subject of the job scheduling software page rather than this one.
Give electricians the verified field job record
On site, the job opens on a phone with the address, the access notes, the scope and the history at that property. The electrician moves it through the states the office can see: assigned, in progress, completed. Photos attach to the job, and a job cannot be closed without a before photo, an after photo and a signature — which sounds like friction until the first time a customer disputes what the board looked like when you arrived.
Time on the job is captured as work and pause intervals rather than a single running clock, with the pause reason recorded — a parts run to the wholesaler, a break, waiting on the customer. On a job billed at an hourly rate that distinction is the difference between an invoice you can defend and one you cannot. Timers are a Pro feature.
Notes taken on site stay on the job, so the next person to attend that property reads what actually happened rather than what was scheduled. Over a couple of years on a rental portfolio, that accumulated history is the most valuable thing in the system.
What the field record is not: it is not a test-results form. There is no field for insulation resistance, earth continuity or loop impedance, no pass/fail logic, and no test-instrument import. Readings can be photographed or typed into the notes, and that is the honest extent of it.
Move completed work into invoices with ABN and GST context
A completed job produces an invoice built from what was actually done. It carries your ABN, your business details and the tax treatment you have configured, and it moves through a defined status path — draft, approved where your business requires approval, sent, paid — so you can see at a glance what has gone out and what is still owed.
On tax, precision matters more than reassurance. You configure a GST rate and choose whether it applies to labour, to parts, or to both; the calculation and the breakdown then appear on the invoice. What Opsler does not do is decide your tax position for you. It does not lodge a BAS, it does not remit GST, it does not verify that an ABN is valid or current, and it does not certify that an invoice satisfies Australian Taxation Office requirements for a tax invoice. The ATO publishes what a valid tax invoice must contain; meeting it is a matter of how you configure the software and what your accountant advises, not a box the vendor can tick on your behalf.
Payment is recorded, not processed. Opsler marks an invoice paid and tracks what is outstanding; it is not a payment processor, takes no platform fee, and money never moves through it. If you want customers paying by card through a link in the invoice, that is a genuine gap and you should weigh it — several Australian competitors offer it.
Mobile, offline and accounting workflow boundaries
Opsler installs from the browser on a phone, a tablet or a desktop, and then behaves like an app — its own icon, its own window. It is not on the App Store or Google Play, and that is a deliberate trade: no store review between a fix and your phone, no download step for a new apprentice, one address that works on whatever device someone brought. If a store listing is a requirement for your business, this will not satisfy it.
Signal is the real constraint for electrical work — plant rooms, basements, meter rooms in the middle of a concrete building. Offline, an electrician can complete a job with photos and a signature, tick through the job, add notes, move the status along, and create estimates and invoices, all of which sync when the phone finds a connection again. What offline does not give you is the whole application: you cannot reschedule the diary or reorganise the board without a connection. Plan for the field to work offline and the office to work online.
Accounting is the boundary people misread most often, so it is worth stating flatly. Opsler exports QuickBooks-formatted and Xero-formatted CSV files that you import into your accounting package yourself. That is a file you download and upload — not a connection, not a two-way sync, not real-time, and not automatic reconciliation. It is a Pro feature. Tradify, AroFlo, Ascora and Fergus all describe live accounting integrations; if a nightly sync is what you are buying, they are the honest answer and you should go and look at them.
Customer communication runs on email. SMS is planned as a bring-your-own-provider option and is not live, so no appointment reminder texts and no on-the-way messages today. Mobile behaviour across devices is covered in more detail on the tradie app page.
Electrical certificates, licences and safety records: what to verify
This is the section to read carefully if you are comparing electrician software, because it is where marketing copy in this category is loosest.
Electrical certification in Australia is not a national scheme. New South Wales has the Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work, Victoria the Certificate of Electrical Safety, Queensland the Certificate of Testing and Safety, and the other states and territories their own arrangements — different forms, different lodgement paths, different rules on who may sign and when. Licensing is likewise state-based, and so is the treatment of prescribed and notifiable work.
Opsler does not generate, lodge or store any of those certificates. It does not verify that a licence is current, hold licence numbers against a registry, or produce SWMS, JSAs or risk assessments. None of that is a gap we intend to close with a template, because a compliance form that looks right but is not the current version of your state's instrument is worse than no form at all.
What Opsler does hold is the operational evidence that sits alongside compliance and is often what you actually need when a job is queried a year later: who attended, when they arrived and finished, what was done, the photos taken before and after, the customer's signature, the notes, and the invoice. Keep the certificates in your state's scheme. Keep the job record here. They answer different questions.
Three questions worth asking any vendor
- “Which certificate, in which state?” A vendor claiming compliance forms should name the instrument and the jurisdiction. If the answer is generic, the form is generic.
- “Who is liable if the form is out of date?” Read the terms. The answer is almost always the licensed electrician.
- “Does it lodge, or just print?” Producing a PDF and lodging with the scheme are very different things.
Electrician software evaluation checklist
Run this against Opsler and against every alternative you are considering. Use your own jobs, not the demo data — vendor demos are built to succeed.
- Enter a real agent-managed rental: service address at the property, billing address at the agent. Raise an invoice and check which address it goes to.
- Quote a switchboard upgrade with ten or more line items. Accept it. Confirm the job inherits every line without retyping.
- Book two electricians onto overlapping jobs on purpose. See whether you are warned, and whether the warning names the clash.
- Put a phone in aeroplane mode. Complete a job with photos and a signature, then reconnect and confirm it arrived intact.
- Export to your accounting package and actually import the file. Time it. This is the step vendors describe most optimistically.
- Configure GST and produce an invoice. Show it to your accountant before you commit, not after.
- Ask the certificate question from section 9 and write down the answer.
- Count the seats you actually need. At US$25 per seat with no minimum, three electricians and an office manager is four seats — do the sum against your current spend.
The free Budding plan is a reasonable way to run steps one to four on real work before committing: two seats, 50 jobs a month, unlimited customers, 100 inventory items in one location, 21 core features. If you need the accounting export or recurring maintenance during the test, the 14-day Pro trial does not ask for a card.
What Opsler does and does not do
Checked against the product, not the brochure. Amber means it exists with a condition attached.
| Claim | Opsler | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Customer record with service address and full job history | Every callout filed against the property it happened at | |
| Separate billing address for landlords and agents | Bill the agent, service the tenant's address | |
| Itemised quotes with customer approval recorded | One-time code by email plus a typed or drawn signature | |
| Quote converts to a job without re-keying | Line items carry through to the job and then the invoice | |
| Dispatch board with unscheduled work visible | Day or week view, priority-sorted queue | |
| Conflict check when double-booking a sparkie | Flags the clash and names the job it collides with | |
| Job photos and on-site signature | Before and after photos are required to close a job | |
| Invoices with your ABN and your GST treatment | You configure the tax rate; it prints on the invoice | |
| Recurring job series for scheduled maintenance | Fixed interval, generated 30 days ahead — Pro plan only | |
| QuickBooks and Xero export | Formatted CSV you import yourself — Pro plan. Not a live sync | |
| Certificates of Compliance or Safety Certificates | Not produced. Use your state's scheme — see section 9 | |
| Licence or registration verification | Opsler does not check or store licence validity | |
| SWMS, JSA or risk assessment forms | Separate category — use dedicated safety software | |
| Cable calculations, takeoffs or supplier pricebooks | Estimating tools do this properly; Opsler does not attempt it | |
| SMS to customers | Planned bring-your-own-provider, not live. Email works today | |
| Card payments taken in the app | Invoices record what you were paid; money never passes through Opsler |
Opsler does not, and you should be sceptical of any job management tool that says it does without naming the scheme. Electrical certification in Australia is state and territory business — a Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work in New South Wales, a Certificate of Electrical Safety in Victoria, a Certificate of Testing and Safety in Queensland, and so on, each with its own lodgement path and its own rules about who may sign. The form is a legal instrument, not a PDF template, and the obligation sits with the licensed electrician, not with software. What Opsler holds is the operational record around that obligation: which electrician attended, when they arrived and finished, what was done, the photos taken before and after, the customer's signature, and the invoice raised from it. That record is genuinely useful when you are asked to substantiate work months later. It is not a certificate, and calling it one would not make it one.
Realistically, a sole trader can, and a two-person shop is where it starts to bind. The Budding plan is free forever and gives you two seats — one admin and one technician — with 50 jobs a month, unlimited customers, 100 inventory items and one inventory location, across 21 core features including the dispatch board, quotes, invoices and job photos. The honest limits: recurring maintenance series, the QuickBooks and Xero export, technician timers and office-staff roles are all Pro features, and 50 jobs a month is roughly two or three callouts a working day. When you take on a second sparkie or start booking planned maintenance, Pro is US$25 per seat per month with no seat minimum, and there is a 14-day trial that does not ask for a card.
No — Opsler bills in US dollars, at US$25 per seat per month, and your card issuer handles the conversion. That is a real consideration and worth knowing before you compare it against Tradify, Ascora, AroFlo or Fergus, all of which quote in AUD. Separately, and this trips people up: the invoices you issue to your own customers are a different thing entirely. Those are in Australian dollars, with your ABN and the GST treatment you configure, formatted for Australian customers. The subscription currency and your invoicing currency are not the same setting.
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