What roofing software must do
Roofing is not a service-call trade. A roof is a multi-day, multi-phase, weather-gated project: a site visit and measurement, a bid the homeowner (or an insurance adjuster) trusts, a tear-off crew and an install crew on different days, hundreds of photos documenting deck condition and flashing, a fall-protection plan, and an invoice that closes it out. Software that only handles one of those steps just moves the chaos somewhere else. The tools that actually help do the whole arc without you re-keying the same job into four apps.
At a minimum, roofing software has to (1) turn a site visit into a professional, line-itemed quote with e-signature, (2) convert an accepted quote into a job without re-entry, (3) schedule tear-off and install as separate crew assignments that can absorb a weather slip, (4) capture and organize job photos so the record is searchable years later, (5) document a job-specific fall-protection plan the crew signs, and (6) get you paid. Anything short of that and you are back to stitching CompanyCam to a scheduling app to QuickBooks by hand.
The honest test for any tool: could a foreman run a tear-off-and-install from the truck — quote, schedule, photos, JSA, daily log, invoice — without opening a second app? If the answer is no, you are buying a piece of the workflow, not the workflow.
The decision criteria that matter for roofing
Every vendor demo looks good for 30 minutes. These are the criteria that actually predict whether the tool survives contact with a real roofing season. Weight them for how you work — a restoration shop weights insurance-supplement workflow heavily; a retail-only shop weights measurement and production reporting.
- Photo and documentation depth — Roofers shoot hundreds of photos per job: before, tear-off, deck condition, underlayment, flashing detail, final. The tool has to tag them by category with EXIF, GPS, and crew attribution so a warranty claim or an adjuster question five years out is answerable in seconds. A flat camera roll is not documentation; it is a liability.
- Insurance-supplement workflow — Restoration work is a huge share of roofing revenue, and margin lives in supplements. You need claim details attached to the job, supplements tracked as change orders, and Insurance/Inspection photos grouped for the adjuster. Be realistic: field-service tools organize the claim's field side — they do not replace estimating platforms like Xactimate or claims tools like Symbility. Know which side of that line you are buying.
- Measurement integration — Aerial measurement (EagleView, Hover) is how modern roofers scope and price. Ask exactly how measurements enter the tool: a native API pull is best, but PDF-attach-to-job is a legitimate baseline. Beware vendors who imply full integration and deliver a file upload — confirm it in the demo with a real report.
- JSA / fall protection — OSHA fall-protection rules mean every roof needs a documented hazard analysis with crew acknowledgement. The tool should ship a real fall-protection JSA template, let the crew sign on a phone before stepping on the roof, and export an audit trail for OSHA and your insurer. Paper in a truck folder is not a control; a timestamped, GPS-stamped signature is.
- Crew production reporting — You cannot improve what you cannot see. Look for revenue vs. labor + materials + subs per job, so you know which crews and which roof types actually make money. 'Squares per day per crew' is the roofing-native version of this — some tools surface it directly, others make you derive it from time-clock and job data. Confirm which.
Where Vexor fits on these criteria
On four of the five criteria above, Vexor is built for exactly this. Photo categories are roofing-shaped out of the box (Before, Tear-off, Deck Condition, Underlayment, Flashing, Final), every photo carries EXIF, GPS, and the crew member who took it, and the whole set stays searchable on the job forever. The JSA is a first-class feature, not a checkbox: a real fall-protection template, crew sign-off on the phone before work starts, and a PDF audit trail for OSHA and insurance. Tear-off and install schedule as separate crew assignments that absorb a weather reschedule. And on the Operations plan, the per-job profit dashboard gives you the revenue-vs-cost view that tells you which roofs actually paid.
On the two criteria where the honest answer is 'partial,' Vexor says so. Insurance restoration: claims attach to the job, supplements track as change orders, and adjuster photos stay grouped — but Vexor does not replace Xactimate or Symbility, it organizes the field side of the claim. Aerial measurement: EagleView/Hover reports attach to jobs as PDFs today; a direct API pull is on the roadmap, not shipped. If either of those is the center of your business, weigh it accordingly and pair Vexor with the specialist tool.
In Vexor
Vexor is field-service and crew-management software for residential and light-commercial roofers. Field ($99/mo) covers quoting with e-signature, jobs, roofing-tagged photos, crew scheduling, GPS time clock, fall-protection JSA, daily logs, and payroll reports. Operations ($199/mo) adds invoicing, per-job profit dashboards, advanced reports, a branded client portal, and QuickBooks Online sync. Both plans include unlimited office users and unlimited field crew plus subcontractors — no per-seat fee. 30-day free trial, no card.
Red flags that cost you for years
The mistakes that hurt most are not the ones you notice in the demo — they are the structural ones you feel a year in, when switching is painful. Screen for these before you sign.
- Per-seat pricing — Roofing is crew-heavy and seasonal. A tool that charges per user (per office seat, per field worker, or per tech) punishes you exactly when you grow or staff up for the busy season. Ten crew on a $19-24/user photo tool is $200-290/mo for photos alone. Flat, unlimited-crew pricing is the roofing-native model; per-seat is a tax on hiring.
- Quote-only 'call us' pricing tiers — If a vendor won't publish a price, it's usually because the number is large and negotiated per-tech. ServiceTitan and FieldEdge run this way (typically hundreds of dollars per tech per month). For a residential/light-commercial roofer, that pricing is built for a business you don't run yet — and you'll pay for capacity you never use.
- Weeks-long onboarding and implementation fees — If the tool needs a paid implementation, a data-migration project, and weeks of setup before your first quote, that is a signal it was built for enterprise, not for a roofing crew that needs to bid a job this week. You should be quoting on day one, not month two.
- Service-only tools sold to project trades — Housecall Pro, Jobber, ServiceTitan, and FieldEdge are excellent at one-tech-one-call-one-invoice. Roofing is not that shape. Watch for the tell: a 'job' that's really a single appointment, no multi-day crew scheduling, no phase-based documentation, no fall-protection JSA. A service app can be bent into roofing, but you'll fight it forever.
- Photo tools masquerading as roofing software — A dedicated photo app (CompanyCam ~$19-24/user/mo) documents beautifully but doesn't quote, schedule, run JSA, or invoice. If you buy it as your 'roofing software,' you've bought one-fifth of the workflow and will bolt three more subscriptions around it.
Do the honest cost math
The sticker price is not the cost. The real cost is the stack you end up running plus the per-seat multiplier plus the hours lost re-keying jobs between tools. Roofers routinely run a photo app, a scheduling/dispatch app, an estimating tool, and QuickBooks — four subscriptions, four logins, and manual re-entry between all of them.
Price the whole stack honestly. A representative roofing stack — a per-user photo tool (~$19-24/user/mo), a per-user service/scheduling tool (Jobber ~$39-599/mo tiered; Housecall Pro Basic ~$59/mo), plus your accounting — climbs fast the moment you add crew, because two of those legs are per-seat. Vexor is a flat $99 (Field) or $199 (Operations) per month regardless of crew size. For a growing roofing company the gap is not a rounding error; it's the difference between paying for the office and paying for every person who steps on a roof.
Then weigh switching cost. The tool you pick should still fit at 3 crews and at 12. Per-seat tools get worse as you grow; enterprise quote-only tools were never right-sized for you. A flat, unlimited-crew tool that covers the whole arc is the one you don't have to re-evaluate every hiring season.
In Vexor
Vexor's whole pitch on cost is structural, not a discount: two flat plans, unlimited office users and unlimited field crew plus subcontractors on both, so adding a roofer never changes the bill. The savings math is simple — take the stack you'd otherwise run, subtract $99 or $199, and the difference is what per-seat pricing and app-stitching were quietly costing you.
Step by step
- 1
Map your real job arc first
Write down every step of a typical roof from site visit to paid invoice — quote, accept, tear-off, install, photos, JSA, daily log, invoice. This is your checklist; score each tool against it, not against its demo.
- 2
Weight the five roofing criteria for how you work
Rank photo/documentation depth, insurance-supplement workflow, measurement integration, JSA, and crew production reporting by what your business actually leans on. A restoration shop and a retail shop will weight these very differently.
- 3
Confirm the pricing model, not just the price
Ask directly: is it per-seat, per-tech, or flat? Is there an implementation fee? Get the number for your actual crew size, including seasonal peak — not the starting tier.
- 4
Test measurement and photo flow with a real job
In the demo, upload an actual EagleView/Hover report and run a real photo set through the categories. Verify 'integration' means what you think, and that photos carry EXIF, GPS, and crew attribution.
- 5
Verify the JSA and audit trail
Have the vendor show a fall-protection JSA, a phone sign-off, and the exported PDF audit trail. Confirm it captures name, timestamp, and location — that's what protects you with OSHA and your insurer.
- 6
Price the whole stack, then subtract
Add up every subscription the new tool would replace at your crew size, subtract the flat plan you're considering, and make sure the tool still fits at double your current headcount.