A photograph proves what it looked like. It doesn't say what you did.
Field View solves the camera roll problem, and solves it well. FieldPal solves the other half: the account of the work, spoken while it happens, and the technical question that came up halfway through.
Who this is for
Building and trade contractors (plumbing, roofing, HVAC, electrical, landscaping, painting) documenting jobs across crews and wanting proof of what was done.
What Field View does well
The camera roll problem, properly solved. Burst capture, automatic tagging, and photos you can still find two years later, organised by job rather than buried in a phone. Add annotation, client galleries, scheduling, a job map, geofenced clock-in and clock-out, and it is one app on every van. It works offline, it is one plan with nothing gated, and the trades rate it highly.
What FieldPal does instead
FieldPal is voice-first. The tradesperson describes the job out loud while working and the structured record is assembled from what they said: the fault, the cause, the fix, the parts. Ask a question mid-job and Find answers it from the manuals, technical instructions and past jobs your business already holds, with the source named.
Head to head
Two products aimed at different halves of the same job. On photographs, scheduling and time, the right-hand column is stronger and we aren't going to pretend otherwise.
| Capability | FieldPal | Field View |
|---|---|---|
| Primary record | Spoken account | Photographs |
| Primary input method | Speak naturally | Point and shoot |
| Hands-free operation | Yes | No |
| Head-mounted devices (RealWear) | Yes | No |
| Structured record built from free speech | Yes | No |
| Answers from your manuals and past jobs | Yes | No |
| Photo capture, tagging and annotation | Simpler | Extensive |
| Finding a photo from a job two years ago | No | Yes |
| Branded client galleries | No | Yes |
| Scheduling and calendar sync | No | Yes |
| Time tracking and geofenced clock-in | No | Yes |
| Works offline | Recordings only; full offline coming soon | Yes |
| Published, single-plan pricing | No | Yes |
The argument
The camera roll problem is real, and Field View solves it
Anyone who has run a trade business knows the failure: three hundred photographs across four phones, no idea which job they belong to, and a dispute six months later that hinges on one of them.
Organising that by job, tagging it automatically, and making it findable years later is genuinely valuable work, and Field View does it better than we do. If that is the problem in front of you, buy it.
But the photograph is only the evidence
A picture shows the state of something. It doesn’t say which valve was replaced, why the first repair didn’t hold, what the customer was told, or which part number went in.
That account lives in the tradesperson’s head for about twenty minutes, and then it becomes “replaced the valve, all good”. Written up in a van at the end of the day, from memory, if at all.
FieldPal captures the words while the job is happening. Not a caption on a photo, but a structured record: what was reported, what was found, what was done, what was fitted.
The question that came up halfway through
There is also the other half of a bad day on site: the boiler nobody on the van has seen before, the fitting that doesn’t match the drawing, the fault code that means something different on this model.
That usually ends in a phone call to whoever in the business knows. FieldPal Find answers it instead, out loud, from your own manuals, technical instructions and previous jobs, and names the document it came from.
No photo product attempts this, and we wouldn’t criticise them for it. It is simply a second problem most contractors have.
Where we’d run both
Photographs and a spoken account aren’t competing records. They are the same record from two directions: one showing, one telling.
If Field View is already on every van and working, keep it there. The gap worth closing isn’t the pictures. It is everything the pictures can’t say.
Which one is right for you
Choose Field View if
- Photographic evidence is the record your business runs on
- You need to find a specific photo from a job two years ago
- Client-facing galleries are part of how you close out and get paid
- Scheduling, the job map and clock-in and clock-out matter as much as documentation
- A single published plan with nothing gated is how you prefer to buy
Choose FieldPal if
- What you did needs describing in words, not just showing in pictures
- Your people are up a ladder, in a loft or under a floor, with both hands busy
- Time is lost looking things up as much as it is lost on paperwork
- The write-up currently happens in the van at six o clock, from memory
- You are deploying head-mounted devices, or expect to be
Bring us a job you documented last week
Send the photos and the write-up that went with them. We'll show you the same job captured by voice, and what the record looks like when the words arrive with the pictures.