Richard Coburger (Blue Collar Nerd) reviews ServiceTitan's PriceBook Pro: he calls it a useful step forward that reduces reliance on third-party price-book providers and helps onboarding, but criticizes it for remaining spreadsheet-based, being a paid extension (per-technician fee), and for gating basic utilities (e.g., a duplicate button) behind the paid product. He says PriceBook Pro is mainly appropriate for new ServiceTitan onboardings or for teams willing to completely rebuild their price book; it lacks electrical and installation support and does not solve the deeper need for an in-UI, margin-aware pricing editor tied to payroll and vendor costs.
What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Coburger here, the blue collar nerd. You know, it's no secret that Service Titan's Price book framework has not ever been its strongest feature. I actually made a whole big long 20 minute or something video about this about a couple of years ago before I started Blue Collar Nerd. I'm gonna re upload that to YouTube. If you're interested in exactly why the Surface Titan price book is a bit of a problem, check that video out. It is a bit of a time investment, but you'll come out of it with a pretty clear understanding if you don't already have one. And most of that video is unfortunately still pretty relevant, except for one thing, which is that now we have this new thing that Servicetitan came out with called PriceBook Pro. So does PriceBook Pro finally make editing and creating a price book in ServiceTitan quick, simple and easy? No, it does not. I'm just kidding. Well, I'm kidding about that being the whole video. I'm not kidding about what I said. Now don't get me wrong, PriceBook Pro is a great step in the right direction. Service Titan can now onboard its employees without leaning on third parties. You can't go live without a price book. And ServiceTitan didn't really have anything to offer except for build your own, which is hard and awful, or go to one of these third parties. Profit Rhino, the new flat rate. Buy their version, it's basically just a spreadsheet and import that and work with that. Pricebook Pro is ServiceTitan's answer to that. It makes it so that they are no longer reliant on third parties for their user experience on onboarding. Now let's go ahead and get one thing out of the way. This is a paid extension. It is not something that's going to just come with Service Titan by itself. It's something you pay extra for. And there's a per tech per month fee and of course more technicians. You could probably negotiate a little bit of a lower fee and that's okay. I have no problem with ServiceTitan charging extra for this. It's something that they're putting work into. It's something that third parties are already charging us for. So it makes sense. If you don't want to build your own price book and you want somebody to make it for you, Service Titan's got something and they're going to charge for it, that's fine. Starting with PriceBook Pro is going to be way better in the long run than starting with Profit Rhino or the new Flat Rate or something that's not inherently built for Service Titan because everything is built to work with the Pricing Wizard. So you can always just update your prices within Service Titanium without doing a whole bunch of exporting and all that kind of crazy stuff. PriceBook Pro suffers from one fatal flaw though, and that is that it is still based around the same spreadsheet based system that we've always had. And that system is a flawed one. So who is PriceBook Pro for? To me, it's really only useful in two scenarios. One, you're onboarding onto ServiceTitan, you haven't started using it yet and you're getting onboarded. You should probably sign up for PriceBook Pro over something like Profit Rhino or the new Flat Rate. In my humble opinion, option number two, you are so unhappy with your current pricebook that you're willing to burn it and start over. Those are really the only two scenarios where PriceBook Pro is the right solution for you. If you have a price book that you're mostly happy with and it just needs some work, or you're just not happy with how long it takes to make Updates and edits, PriceBook Pro is not really the solution that we need. See, truly the pricebook framework needs a ground up rework. All pricebook building and editing needs to be easily done within the user interface. No importing, no exporting, no spreadsheets. We need more flexibility in pricing models. We need to be able to price off of things like gross margin. Payroll needs to tie in much closer with the price book so we can use labor costs as a direct cost so that we can price on gross margin. And then any change to our vendor costs or our payroll should automatically and live update all of our price book prices according to that task. Settings and much closer relationships need to be built with vendors. These provider integrations, they're not good and they vary in quality. Some of them are at least better than nothing and some of them are literally as good as not having it at all. It might as well not exist. Lennox it's also important to note that PriceBook Pro for right now is service work and it is H vac and plumbing. Electrical is not here yet and installations are not here yet in any way, shape or form. So overall PriceBook Pro is basically just another version of a pre made spreadsheet and the Price Book wizard that we've kind of always had or at least had for a while now. Other than that, Price Book Pro does come with a couple of extra Feature enhancements. One of them is this mobile preview feature that's kind of handy, actually. I wish I had that, but I'd have to pay a monthly fee for something I mostly don't need, so not worth it. Okay. And it also comes with. Wait, is that a duplicate button? Excuse me just one moment. I have to have a quick word. Service Titan. Service Titan. Service Titan. Hey, what are you doing, man? I defended you. You're embarrassing me. No, no. You can't gate those behind a paid feature. That doesn't make any sense. No, no. You know what? It's time for a Titan timeout. You need to go to your room. Yes. Right now. I'm doing this because I love you. This part of PriceBook Pro is infuriating. These two features should be part of a regular update. They should not be gated behind a paid extension, especially the duplicate button. Duplicate is a very simple function. It's basic, and we should have had it a long time ago. After all of these hours and hours poured into this price book, manually recreating similar items over and over, finally there's a duplicate button, and they gate it behind something that we have to pay for that has mostly nothing to do with the feature. I mean, if I have Price Book Pro, I need a duplicate button. Less if I'm building my own price book, I really need that duplicate button. This feature came really late, and to roll it out this way really feels like one of these Service Titan employees. Look at me. Look at me in the eyes. Hey, look at me. Look at me in the eyes. I know some of you watch these videos. You can't do this. You can't do it. The pitchforks are gonna come out. All of you current Service Titan users watching this video, please make your opinion known. If you do agree with me on this, be polite about it. Keep in mind, whoever you're talking to most likely had nothing at all to do with this decision. But do make your opinion known. If you agree with my stance on this, politely. I mean, that's the only way that this gets changed. Paid extensions are fine. I am not saying that I have a problem with Service Titan offering paid extensions. I think it was inevitable and necessary. That's the only way that the product continues to get better without all of the existing users paying more and more for features that they don't necessarily want or need. But that's the key. If you're going to make a paid extension, it's got to be a feature that not everybody will want or need. The PriceBook Pro product itself. Yes, not everybody will want or need it. Duplicate button. That's a basic tool. I don't mind that when I buy a copy of Microsoft Windows, I have to pay extra to buy Microsoft Excel. But if I bought Microsoft Windows and they made me pay extra for copy and paste, I'd be pretty copy and pissed off. This is not gating something behind a paid extension because not everybody will want or need it. This is crippling the core product to make the extension look better. That's just my opinion. I only say this because I love Service Titan. I believe in Service Titan. I want it to do well, and I want to express my opinions about it, good and bad. Drop the mic, Sam.
