Mid-America Electric joined ServiceTitan to go paperless. Now, it’s seeing healthier revenue

For a while, Mid-America Electric's profit margins were somewhat of a mystery.

The full-service residential and commercial shop in Imperial, Missouri, had long relied on QuickBooks to track job costs. But the process was “clunky,” Phil Burmeister, vice president of Mid-America, said. Plus, there was no way to easily track labor and materials costs, which had to be entered into the system manually. 

“We had the job costing when the invoice was paid,” Burmeister said. “I mean, we could get a little bit of an idea, but it wasn't like I click a button and I can see it right there.”

Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. 

That’s because Mid-America started using ServiceTitan, the software built for the trades. 

Now, Burmeister can easily see detailed breakdowns of job costs in real-time. Because ServiceTitan automatically assigns labor, purchase orders, equipment costs, and more to individual jobs, finding out how a project is progressing has become much easier.

"Instantaneous job costing is one of my favorite things,” he said. “If things are starting to not go great on a project, I can figure out where things need to be improved.” Job costing is a big reason why Mid-America switched to ServiceTitan. But it's far from the only one.

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Technology that keeps the money flowing

Mid-America went live with ServiceTitan in September 2022. Last year, the company pulled in $4.7 million in revenue. This year, it’s on track to hit $5 million. 

The growth is exciting for Burmeister, who’s been working at Mid-America—his father’s company—for over 20 years. 

“I think (my dad) recognized (that) for us to grow, we needed to come up with something that was a little more robust (...) to help run the day-to-day activities,” Burmeister said. And with ServiceTitan, “Everything was all in one spot. You’ve got pretty much everything you need right there at your fingertips.”

Through ServiceTitan, Burmeister has been able to make Mid-America a paperless company—something he’d wanted for years. And ditching those stacks of paper has made the billing department especially happy.

Now, when a job is completed, ServiceTitan’s billing feature allows the team to quickly pull together purchase orders and see what work has been completed on a specific job—without hunting through crumpled paperwork or chasing down techs.

That means Mid-America can send invoices and get paid faster. Much faster.

“(Our billing person) used to be two-to-three weeks behind on invoicing, just because it was a process to go through with all the paper and everything else,” Burmeister said. “Now, it’s almost instantaneous.”

Plenty of features to love

While Mid-America continues to explore the many features ServiceTitan offers, there are a few stand-out tools that Burmeister is particularly excited about.

• Inventory: Keeping track of inventory has always been “a battle,” Burmeister said—until the team started using ServiceTitan’s inventory feature. Techs can tally up their equipment on a tablet, see what needs replenishing and even send purchase orders from the field. Techs now show up to each job fully prepared, boosting efficiency and customer service.

• Dispatch: Mid-America no longer uses a sprawling Google Calendar to show techs when their next job is. Instead, ServiceTitan’s intuitive dispatch board serves as a single-source of truth for every job on the books. From the board, techs can navigate to a customer’s job history, book follow-up appointments and even listen to the original scheduling call—all with a touch of a button.

• Online payments: Through ServiceTitan, Mid-America is able to give customers the option to pay their bills online. According to Burmeister, customers love this convenient option, and as a result, the company has “been getting payments a lot quicker.”

Finally, one of Burmeister’s favorite features isn’t something tangible—but it’s ServiceTitan’s commitment to constantly improving the platform.  

“It looked like there was constant work being done, from what I could tell when I was being sold on ServiceTitan, and that there was just constant evolution,” Burmeister said. “It’s gotten a little more user-friendly, even from when we started.”

Finding real partnership—and community—through ServiceTitan

Switching from a series of tech tools to one single platform was a big undertaking for Mid-America. But Burmeister has found a supportive partner in ServiceTitan, which has multiple resources to ensure his team is comfortable using the software.

Surprisingly, that’s not a given for many field-service platforms. 

Before signing on with ServiceTitan, Burmeister had briefly tried using a competitor’s platform—but the onboarding process was so unhelpful, he never figured out how to use the software. Frustrated, he turned to ServiceTitan.

“(ServiceTitan’s) academy and knowledge-base (resources) pretty much have everything you need to figure something out,” Burmeister said. “They didn’t have any of that in (the competitor’s platform).”

Recently, Burmeister has taken advantage of the ServiceTitan Certified Administrator Program, which trains users on how to best use the software. He’s also started getting involved with the Torch Network, a community that connects people in the trades and allows them to share tips for using ServiceTitan.

Learning new tech isn’t always easy, but Burmeister knows mastering ServiceTitan will pay off in the future—for him and his team. 

“Once I feel really comfortable with all the items, then I plan on delegating some of those features to the right people,” he said. “Hopefully, it’ll free up a lot of my time.”