Key Concepts
Before you dive in, it helps to understand a few terms that Loma uses throughout the platform.
Leads and Customers
A lead is a potential customer you’re tracking before they’ve committed to service. Leads have basic contact information and an address, but you can’t schedule jobs or set up billing for them. Once a lead is ready to move forward, you convert them into a customer.
A customer is a full record with locations, contacts, services, billing, and everything else you need to manage the relationship. You can also create customers directly if you don’t need the lead stage.
Service Templates
Templates save you time without locking you in. A service template defines a type of work your company offers, like “Standard Office Cleaning” or “Deep Clean.” Templates are created in Settings and include details like the base price, estimated duration, tasks, and any products used.
When you set up a recurring service or schedule a job for a customer, you select a service template as the starting point. The template fills in the defaults for you, but you can adjust anything on a per-job or per-service basis.
For example, you might have a “Bathroom Cleaning” template with a standard price and task list, but when you’re setting up service for a customer with a larger-than-usual bathroom, you can increase the price and add extra tasks right there in the setup flow.
Services and Jobs
A service is the ongoing agreement you have with a customer:
“Standard Office Cleaning every Monday and Thursday at this location for $150 per visit.”
A job is a single instance of that service on a specific date. When you create a recurring service, Loma automatically generates individual jobs according to the schedule you set. You can also create one-time jobs that aren’t tied to a recurring service.
Routes
A route is a geographic territory with one or more technicians assigned to it. Routes help you organize your work by area so technicians aren’t driving across town between stops. When a customer location falls within a route’s territory, jobs at that location are automatically assigned to that route.
Locations
A customer can have one or more service locations. A restaurant chain might have five locations across different parts of the city, each on a different route with different services. Billing can be handled centrally (one invoice for all locations) or per location.
How they fit together
Customer
└── Location
├── Recurring Service → generates Jobs automatically
└── One-time Job
└── Tasks
└── Assigned to a Route