Question 1

What should job card software do for a South African trade business?

Accepted Answer

At minimum it should let a technician complete the job card on a phone with photos, tasks, parts, time and a signature; let the office schedule and dispatch work without double-booking; turn a quote into a job and a job into a VAT invoice without retyping; send the customer on-my-way, completion and invoice messages by the channels South Africans use, which means WhatsApp and email; and take payment from the invoice. Beyond the minimum, the trade decides: recurring contracts for pest control and cleaning, certificate expiry tracking for security and electrical work, project phases for solar installs, asset histories for HVAC and geysers. Two local conditions matter more than they would elsewhere: the app must cope with load shedding and patchy coverage, and prices should be in Rand with VAT stated so the monthly cost is what the invoice says. Omni Field covers the minimum on every plan and the trade-specific items on Growth or as add-ons.

Question 2

How much does job card software cost in South Africa?

Accepted Answer

Published prices in 2026 range from free plans to several hundred Rand per user per month, and the basis differs: per user, per technician, per team-size band, per appointment volume, or on request. Two adjustments make them comparable. First, put every figure on the same VAT basis; some vendors show prices excluding 15% VAT, which adds a visible amount to the monthly bill. Second, count the people who need a login, because a per-user price charges for the office as well as the field, while a per-technician price does not. Omni Field is R0 on the Free plan for up to two users and 300 jobs a month, R149 a month plus R149 per technician seat and R99 per admin seat on PaYu, and R349 a month including one technician plus R349 per extra technician and R199 per admin seat on Growth, all including VAT, with a 30 day trial on paid plans and no credit card. Other vendors' figures are on their own websites.

Question 3

Is there free job card software in South Africa?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Several South African vendors offer a free tier, usually limited by users, clients or jobs, and Omni Field's Free plan is one of them: R0, up to two users and 300 jobs a month, with job cards, scheduling, quotes, invoices, a customer list, WhatsApp and email notifications and a digital business card included, and no time limit. That is enough for a sole trader or a two-person business to run the whole quote-to-payment loop. Free spreadsheet and PDF job card templates are also widely available and work until the volume of paper becomes the problem the software solves. When comparing free tiers, check what forces the upgrade: a cap on jobs, a cap on customers, a watermark, or a feature held back. Omni Field's cap is users and jobs per month, and the paid plans start at R149 a month plus seats when a second technician arrives.

Question 4

Which job card software works during load shedding?

Accepted Answer

Any that keeps the job card on the phone once it has been opened, and the vendors differ in how far that goes. Ask each one three questions: can the technician keep completing the card with no connection, are photos and the customer's signature captured locally, and does the app sync on its own when the signal returns. Some products maintain a full local database and describe themselves as fully offline; others, including Omni Field, are offline tolerant, meaning opened work is held in a sync queue and sent when coverage returns, while fetching new jobs and sending customer messages wait for a connection. Both approaches keep a technician working through a two-hour outage; the difference shows in whether a job that was never opened can be started without signal. Omni Field describes its behaviour as offline tolerant deliberately, and the glossary entry on load shedding sets out what that means day to day.

Question 5

Does Omni Field rank the other vendors on this page?

Accepted Answer

No, and that is a rule of the site rather than a courtesy. Each vendor entry states the company's own description of itself and how it presents its pricing, taken from its public website on the date shown next to the entry, and the page never asserts what another product lacks, because published feature lists change monthly and a stale "they do not have X" is a false claim. No competitor price number appears here either; prices belong on the vendor's own page where they are kept current. What this guide does instead is name the five checks a South African buyer should run, describe what Omni Field does on each with the shipped feature behind it, and link the comparison pages where each vendor is described in more depth on the same terms. The comparison pages also list the buyers each other product may suit better, because a comparison that cannot do that is an advert.

Choosing job card software in South Africa in 2026

Check one: is the price published, in Rand, with VAT stated?

Check two: what happens when the signal drops?

Check three: does the customer hear from the job record?

Check four: VAT invoice and payment collection

Check five: the trade's paperwork

The South African vendors, named neutrally

The vendors, in their own words

What Omni Field does here

Common questions

Start on the free plan