A Business Phone for Appliance Repair — Without the Add-On Gouge

If you're still running your appliance repair business off your personal cell, you already know the two problems. Every customer you've ever had has your private number forever. And there's no record — calls and texts live in your phone, not on the job, so nobody else in the company can see what was said. A proper business phone for appliance repair fixes both, and Taskrol has one built in.

A business line, SMS, call history, automatic texts to customers when the tech is on the way: plenty of tools offer these. What's different in Taskrol is what it costs.

It usually comes with a markup. Ours doesn't.

Telephony and texting tend to be sold as a fat add-on — a real monthly upcharge on top of your plan. We went the other way. In Taskrol, Voice & SMS is an add-on in published tiers by minutes and lines, from $25 a month, with unlimited SMS on every tier. It's priced so you turn it on and use it. You can see the current tiers on the telephony pricing page.

Here's what you get for that: a dedicated business number, SMS conversations and calls right inside the app, and every one of them automatically tied to the right customer in Taskrol's CRM for appliance repair. When a call comes in, you know who it is and what job it's about. When a tech taps On My Way, the customer gets a text instead of calling you to ask "where are you?" Your personal number stays personal.

Sales tax and drive-time ETA: a separate add-on

Taskrol looks up the sales-tax rate by the job's ZIP and computes a drive-time ETA for the customer through a separate automation add-on, $10 per user a month.

If you work more than one city, you know the annoyance — sales tax changes by location, and you end up Googling the right rate for a customer's address so you don't over- or under-charge on the invoice. With that add-on, Taskrol looks up the rate by the job's ZIP and applies it for you. It's a small thing that saves a genuinely irritating chore on every out-of-town job, and it feeds straight into clean invoices.

What it costs

The phone stuff isn't rare. Being able to afford to use it is. Separating your business line from your personal cell, keeping every call and text on the customer's record, and cutting the "where's my tech?" calls with an On My Way text — none of that should cost you a painful monthly surcharge. Voice & SMS is priced near what it costs to run, and the tax-and-ETA automation is $10 per user a month on top, only if you want it.