In August a cleaning business on the Surf Coast called us because their ServiceM8 dispatch board had started showing the same jobs twice. Several cleaners had doubled-up bookings on the same days. After about two weeks it cleared itself, and the owner wanted to know why it happened before it came back. Fair enough too.
What was going on
The business runs its regular cleans through ServiceM8's Recurring Jobs. That's the right tool for a client who wants the same clean every week or fortnight. Each visit becomes its own job.
ServiceM8 also has a setting called Simple Recurrence, which works differently. It keeps the same job number, and when a job's completed it books the next one automatically. Somebody had switched Simple Recurrence on for jobs that were already set up as Recurring Jobs.
So every regular clean was getting booked twice. Recurring Jobs created the next visit as planned, and Simple Recurrence created another one off the back of the completed job. The cleaners saw both on their boards.
How it got switched on
We couldn't say for certain who changed it. Most likely it was a staff member who'd had higher permissions for a short while. Their access has since gone back to standard staff level, without pricing.
Nobody did anything wrong on purpose. ServiceM8 has a lot of settings, and anyone with access to them is going to click around. That's why I'd give most staff the access their job needs and nothing above it.
The fix
What I'd do is turn Simple Recurrence off across all the job templates at the root level. Going job by job is slow, and it's easy to miss one.
Then check this week's and next week's jobs on the dispatch board and make sure each clean shows up once. Recurring Jobs can carry on handling the regular cleans by itself.
If you're still choosing job software for a cleaning or trade business, our ServiceM8 vs Tradify guide goes through how each one handles repeat work.
What to take from this
If a regular client's job shows up twice, check whether more than one kind of recurrence is turned on. That's the first place I'd look.
And keep staff permissions as tight as the role allows. Most cleaners need to see their jobs, check in and out, and add notes. They don't need to change how the business books its work.
Next time you're in ServiceM8, I'd take five minutes to look at who has admin access and whether they still need it. Our get booked page covers the booking side, and ServiceM8 setup is where we help businesses get it right from the start.