7 Best Inventory Apps for Electrical Contractors (2026)

TL;DR

• Inventory apps for electrical contractors are the layer that knows what is on the truck, what was used on the job, and what to reorder—not a generic warehouse WMS and not a parts website.

• ServiceTitan wins when the shop already lives there and will pay per-tech for ops plus inventory; Jobber, Housecall Pro, FieldPulse, and Service Fusion win as field-service ops with inventory modules; Sortly wins as a dedicated stock app; Knowify wins when the electrical shop is job-costing like a contractor.

• Electrician median pay: $61,590 is the labor you burn driving back to the shop for a breaker.

• US Tech Automations sits above the field app: it can turn a completed job into a parts decrement and a PO draft. It should not be your bin location system.

Who this is for

This page is for owners, warehouse leads, and service managers at US electrical shops running 6–40 technicians who still lose breakers, fittings, and panels to the floor of the van. It assumes you already dispatch jobs in a field-service tool or a contractor job-cost tool, and you can name who is allowed to buy from the supply house.

A 12-tech shop should pick one job tool and one stock truth. If Jobber already dispatches, do not add Housecall Pro “for inventory.” If ServiceTitan already runs the company, turn on materials and count two vans before you shop Sortly. A second app the techs do not open is a $0 count. The adoption table’s 2-van pilot exists because 40-van cutovers without a Friday count create negative on-hand by Monday and then nobody trusts the system.

Supply-house integrations are a later prize. First get job close with materials, van on-hand, and a PO hold over $500. Then talk to the wholesaler about punch-out or file drop. Shops that start with a vendor EDI project still have techs writing parts on van walls. The overlay drafts a PO; a human still releases it. That is the point. A night-time auto-send of a $4,000 panel is not a win.

Red flags: you have two vans and a clipboard still closes; you wanted a $0 “AI parts bot” with no counts; you will not scan or count on Fridays; you cannot tell a job-costed material from a truck-stock item.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: if Jobber or ServiceTitan already decrements truck stock on job close and drafts the supply-house PO; if you have no second system and a weekly wholesaler run is enough; if you will not name a human to release a PO over your dollar cap.

The three ways teams solve this today

Electrical shops solve inventory three ways: (1) the field-service platform’s inventory module, (2) a dedicated stock app plus a job tool, (3) the supply-house counter and a spreadsheet. The third way feels cheap until a tech drives 40 minutes for a $12 fitting. Pair this shortlist with parts and supply ordering and contractor supply-house automation rather than buying a second “AI purchasing” tab that never sees the van.

Software dollars are list-class sketches. Confirm current vendor pages. Miles and callbacks are the real inventory bill.

Homeowner marketplaces do not stock your van. ANGI counted 7.5 million homeowners using the network for service requests according to ANGI (2024 Annual Report). An electrical shop that lives on those inbound jobs still needs breakers, fittings, and whip on the truck, or the tech drives back while the homeowner waits. Marketplace leads make empty bins more expensive, not less.

What automating inventory tracking changes

Automation here is not a drone in the warehouse. It is a rule: when the job closes, materials on the ticket leave the van count, and when on-hand hits a minimum, a PO is drafted for a human. If the tech never closes the job, you automated fiction.

Worked example: a 12-tech shop running 40 vans with a $180 average material ticket can treat Jobber JOB_CREATE as the open-job event, as documented in Jobber’s webhooks. When the job later completes, decrement the 8–12 truck-stock SKUs on the ticket, draft a supply-house PO if any SKU is below minimum, and hold send if the PO is over $500 so a manager reviews it. Those three figures—12 techs, 40 vans, $180 tickets—are the volume that makes a missing 20-amp breaker a callback, not a stationery problem.

US Tech Automations can listen for that job event, decrement the mapped SKUs, and queue a manager task when the PO is held; prerequisites are API keys, a SKU list, and a person who still releases the supply-house order. Permits and inspections are a sibling delay; do not mix them into the same queue as permit tracking.

A Zapier zap can add a row to a Sheet when a job is created. It does not know bin locations, does not prevent a negative count, and does not stop a $4,000 panel order at 9 p.m. If you only need a list, stay on no-code. If you need van truth and a PO hold, the recipe above is the job.

Serialized gear is the exception you should name on day one. Panels, EV chargers, and some lighting controls need serials for warranty and for the job cost. A count of “2 panels” that cannot tell which serial went to which address will fail the callback. Sortly and heavier field platforms can store serials; a Sheet column labeled “serial” that nobody fills is not a serial system. Put serial SKUs on a short list and refuse job close without them.

Truck-stock versus job-costed material is the other split. A bag of 1/2-inch fittings is truck stock. A 200-amp panel for 14 Oak Street is job-costed. If you dump both into one on-hand bucket, your van will look empty while the panel for tomorrow’s job sits in the warehouse, or the opposite. Knowify-style job-cost tools are stronger on the second type; Sortly is stronger on the first. Most electrical shops need both types, which is why the shortlist includes ops platforms and a dedicated stock app.

Of contractors with openings, 94% reported difficulty filling positions according to AGC (2024 workforce survey announcement). That is a labor-market figure, not software ROI, and it is why you cannot staff a full-time parts runner for every missed breaker.

Time + cost deltas

Price the app and the windshield time together. Electrician median pay is the unit cost of a parts run. Figures below are public list or quote; confirm. The sketch is 8 billed users and 12 techs.

List prices change. “Contact vendor” means we will not invent a per-tech ServiceTitan fee. Parts-run dollars are a labor sketch.

ServiceTitan shops should not leave for Sortly just because a demo counted boxes. If dispatch, memberships, and invoicing already live in ServiceTitan, configure inventory there and add an overlay for PO holds. Leaving a working ops platform to save a per-tech dollar, then re-typing jobs into Jobber, is how a parts problem becomes a company problem. The “Leaving ServiceTitan?” case on this page is for shops whose van stock never worked in that platform, not for shops that never turned the module on.

Electricians had a median annual wage of $61,590 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook). Sending that wage back to the shop for a fitting is how “cheap” inventory process loses to a $49 Jobber plan.

US construction spending has run above $2 trillion on the Census C30 series according to the U.S. Census Bureau (construction spending survey). Electrical contractors sit inside that spend; empty vans do not.

Where US Tech Automations fits

US Tech Automations is not a seventh inventory app. After Jobber, ServiceTitan, or Housecall Pro closes a job, it can decrement mapped SKUs, draft the supply-house PO, and hold anything over your dollar cap for a manager. That is a workflow step, not a warehouse product.

Inspect the same hold-and-review pattern at US Tech Automations and keep bin locations in the app the techs already open.

DIY/no-code contrast: Make and Zapier can copy a job number into Sortly. You still own units of measure, serialized panels, negative-count rules, and who can buy. If those rules live in one owner’s head, the zap will order the wrong conduit at 6 a.m.

Friday counts are the habit the app cannot fake. A 12-tech shop should pick one warehouse lead, one hour, and the 20 A-items that actually stop jobs: 20-amp breakers, 12/2 and 12/3, 1/2-inch fittings, 3/4-inch EMT connectors, whip, staples, wire nuts in the sizes you burn. If those 20 are wrong, the other 200 SKUs do not matter this week. Techs who never close jobs with materials will keep a shadow tote in the van. The overlay will decrement fiction. Fix close compliance before you buy a scanner.

Returns and unused job material are the leak after stockouts. A panel ordered for 14 Oak Street that never got installed has to come back to the warehouse or it becomes truck stock with no SKU. Knowify-style job-cost tools can keep it on the job; Sortly can take it into a returns bin if someone actually walks it in. Neither happens if the tech leaves it in the customer’s garage. Write a 48-hour unused-material rule and put it on the same exception queue as negative counts.

Adoption timeline

Do not migrate 40 vans in week one. Count two trucks for 14 days, then add a PO hold, then add the rest. The table is a 12-tech shop, not a national rollout.

How we evaluated

This is a seven-product shortlist for electrical shops, not a generic WMS bake-off. We scored inspectable checks: van-stock truth, job-cost link, PO path, implementation weight, public price, and whether a job event exists for an overlay. Weights are editorial.

Jobber documents JOB_CREATE as a webhook topic according to Jobber, which is the 1 open-job signal this overlay binds. That sentence is here so the overlay uses a real object; it is not a reason to pick Jobber over ServiceTitan if you already live in ServiceTitan.

Pros and cons

ServiceTitan

Pros

• Deep field-service ops plus inventory when the shop already pays for the platform.

• Job, tech, and material objects a workflow can bind.

• Strongest path for shops that will not leave the platform.

Cons

• Quote-only; contact the vendor.

• Per-tech economics are why shops shop this page.

• Implementation is a 60–180 day program.

Jobber

Pros

• Public-ish starting rung and a documented JOB_CREATE event.

• Good fit for smaller electrical shops already on Jobber.

• Faster implementation than ServiceTitan.

Cons

• Inventory depth is plan-tied; confirm the module.

• Not a warehouse WMS.

• Techs who skip job close will fake your counts.

Housecall Pro

Pros

• Field-service ops plus an inventory conversation at a public-ish price.

• Familiar to residential electrical shops.

• Faster than an enterprise field platform.

Cons

• Confirm inventory SKU on the plan you will actually buy.

• Not ServiceTitan-depth for large shops.

• Overlay still needed for PO holds.

FieldPulse

Pros

• Field-service plus inventory for shops that picked FieldPulse as the ops app.

• Lower weight than ServiceTitan.

• Usable on a 6–20 tech desk.

Cons

• Confirm current list and inventory module.

• Less ecosystem than Jobber/Housecall Pro.

• Counts still depend on job close.

Sortly

Pros

• Dedicated inventory as the core product, not a module.

• Fast time-to-first-count.

• Fine when the job tool is already chosen.

Cons

• Job-cost link is your stitch.

• Not a dispatch platform.

• Easy to run a second source of truth.

Knowify

Pros

• Contractor job-costing that treats materials as a job cost, not only a van bin.

• Better for project electrical than a pure residential dispatch app.

• PO path lives near the job.

Cons

• Quote-led / confirm commercial terms.

• Van-bin UX may trail Sortly.

• Not a consumer-style service dispatch tool.

Service Fusion

Pros

• Field-service platform with inventory as part of the ops story.

• Fit for shops already standardized on it.

• Job objects an overlay can bind.

Cons

• Quote-led commercial terms.

• Implementation is still a project.

• Leaving it for Sortly only is rarely cheaper than configuring it.

FAQs

Is Sortly enough as the only inventory app for an electrical shop?

It is enough for counts; it is not enough for dispatch, job close, or invoicing, so you will still own the stitch to the job tool.

Can Jobber replace ServiceTitan for van stock?

For a smaller shop, yes if techs close jobs with materials; it is not a reason to rip out ServiceTitan if the rest of ops already lives there.

What is the cheapest inventory app for 8 electricians?

Sortly or a low Jobber/Housecall plan on list price; the cheapest complete file is the platform techs already open, because a second app they ignore is $0 truth.

Should we buy a warehouse WMS for 12 trucks?

Usually no. You need van bins and job materials, not a 50,000-square-foot WMS.

How do we compare Housecall Pro vs Jobber on parts specifically?

Ignore the generic FSM bake-off and inspect one job: materials on the ticket, van on-hand after close, and whether a PO can be held over $500.

Do we need an overlay if ServiceTitan already has inventory?

Not if decrement, mins, and PO release already work with a named owner; yes if counts still live in the supply-house login.

Confirm home services vendor pricing on each named product's current public card, or write contact-vendor when that card is missing (G10736).

Vendor facts on this page were last reviewed September 1, 2026.

Key Takeaways

• Buy van truth plus job-cost, not a generic WMS. ServiceTitan is the heavy ops suite; Jobber, Housecall Pro, FieldPulse, and Service Fusion are field-service modules; Sortly is counts; Knowify is contractor job-cost.

• $61,590 electrician median wage is what a parts run costs.

• Spreadsheets lie by Friday. Two-van pilots beat 40-van cutovers.

• An overlay can decrement SKUs and hold POs; the field app still owns the job.