AI for Field Service and Trades Businesses
AI on the office side of a trades or equipment business: scheduling, quoting, invoicing and follow-up.
- Instructional hours
- 10
- Schedule
- 5 sessions of 2 hours, one per week
- Price
- $3,000 per trainee
- Cohort size
- Up to 8
- Format
- Live over video, on site, or hybrid
- Delivery
- 100% live and instructor-led, during paid work hours
What
Learning objectives
- 01Turn inbound calls, texts and emails into scheduled jobs.
- 02Draft quotes and follow-ups from a price list.
- 03Keep a job-management system and QuickBooks consistent without re-keying.
- 04Draft payment reminders for unpaid invoices that a person approves before sending.
- 05Produce a weekly view of booked, completed and billed work.
- 06Check AI output before relying on it.
Who
Who it is for
Office managers, dispatchers, estimators, service coordinators and owner-operators at Massachusetts contractors, equipment dealers, landscapers, detailers and repair shops with 2–100 employees.
No technical background required.
For Express-funded seats, all participants must be W-2 employees of the company receiving grant funds, including owner-operators.
Why
Why it matters
In a small trades business, one office person or the owner handles every hand-off between the phone, the schedule, the invoice and the bank, and evenings go to catch-up. Removing the re-keying returns hours each week and gets invoices out the day the job closes.
How
How it is taught
5 sessions of 2 hours, one per week, live with an instructor: interactive lecture, guided demonstration and hands-on practice. All practice uses the course's standardized practice material: A sample job list, price book, QuickBooks sample file and mailbox, identical for every participant.
Capstone
In session 5 each participant builds one end-to-end workflow on the practice shop, from an inbound job request to a scheduled job, a drafted quote and an invoice entry.
The instructor reviews each capstone live against a written rubric:
- The job, quote and invoice agree.
- A planted pricing error is caught.
- The steps are documented so another participant can run them.
- No customer data outside the practice files is used.
Each participant receives written feedback against the rubric.
Session by session
Hour-by-hour outline
10 instructional hours. Every hour is live with the instructor, and every exercise uses the course's standardized practice material.
| Session | Time | Content | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hour 1 | How AI assistants work on office tasks, where they fail, and how to check output before relying on it. | Lecture and demonstration |
| 1 | Hour 2 | Turning the practice shop’s sample calls, texts and emails into structured job requests. | Hands-on practice |
| 2 | Hour 1 | From request to scheduled job in a job-management system or spreadsheet. | Lecture and demonstration |
| 2 | Hour 2 | Scheduling the practice job requests in the practice shop’s job list. | Hands-on practice |
| 3 | Hour 1 | Drafting quotes and follow-ups from a price book. | Lecture and demonstration |
| 3 | Hour 2 | Quotes and follow-ups from the practice price book; catching pricing errors. | Hands-on practice |
| 4 | Hour 1 | Keeping the job system and QuickBooks consistent; invoice entries; payment reminders a person approves; the weekly booked, completed and billed view. | Lecture and demonstration |
| 4 | Hour 2 | Invoice entries in the QuickBooks sample file, drafted reminders and the weekly view for the practice shop. | Hands-on practice |
| 5 | Hour 1 | Capstone build: inbound job request to scheduled job, drafted quote and invoice entry on the practice shop. | Hands-on, instructor circulating |
| 5 | Hour 2 | Capstone review: job, quote and invoice agree, planted pricing error caught, steps documented for another participant; written feedback. | Instructor review against the rubric |
Paying for it
Express reimbursement, once approved.
This course is not yet approved, so employers cannot apply for it yet. Once it is, an employer with 100 or fewer Massachusetts employees can apply to the Express program for 100% of the course cost, up to $3,000 per employee. The employer applies at least 21 days before the first session, with a Department of Revenue Certificate of Good Standing, a Department of Unemployment Assistance Certificate of Compliance and a W-9. Program questions go to express@commcorp.org. Our help with the application is free.
Support Forge LLC is a registered training provider with the Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund Express program. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Commonwealth Corporation or the Workforce Training Fund. Program terms are set by Commonwealth Corporation (commcorp.org/express) and govern over anything on this page.