OutSmart is gebruiksvriendelijk, compleet en gewoon makkelijk in gebruik. Voor ons dé tool die ik elke organisatie zou aanraden.
Kimberley, Oostendorp Nederland
Benchmark 2026 · 2,210 customer environments · 16.7 million work orders
How does your field service operation compare to 2,210 other companies?
The numbers behind 16.7 million work orders
How many work orders does a technician handle per month? How quickly does the invoice follow a completed job? And how long does a work order actually sit in the back office? These are not estimates from a survey — they are aggregated usage figures from 2,210 OutSmart customer environments.
All values are medians: half of the companies sit above them, half below. Reference date: 4 June 2026.
Meer dan 20.000 dagelijkse gebruikers
What is the Field Service Benchmark 2026? The Field Service Benchmark 2026 is an overview of aggregated usage figures from 2,210 OutSmart customer environments, with a reference date of 4 June 2026. It shows how many work orders field service companies process, how quickly work moves from planning to invoice, and how those figures differ by company size and by country. All numbers are medians across companies rather than averages, so a single very large company cannot pull the result upwards.
The point of this page is to put your own numbers next to those of comparable companies. If five technicians produce 20 work orders a month while the median sits at 52, that tells you how much work still runs outside the system. If it takes three weeks to invoice a completed job while the median is four days, you know where your working capital is going.
The scale behind these figures
Across all customer environments, 16.7 million work orders have been processed. In 2025 that was 2.97 million, up from 2.77 million in 2024 — 7% growth in total volume. Of the companies active in both years, 55% saw their work order count increase.
| What | Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Work orders | 16,671,290 | total processed; 2.97M in 2025 |
| Completed forms | 5,134,638 | checklists, inspections, handover reports |
| Automations executed | 6,429,790 | by 752 companies (34%) |
| Quotes | 531,259 | of which 180,670 approved |
| Maintenance contracts | 148,677 | of which 113,301 active |
| Assets recorded | 1,335,320 | installations, machines and locations |
| Customer records | 5,168,980 | with 13.3M line items |
Source: aggregated usage data from 2,210 OutSmart customer environments, reference date 4 June 2026.
Cycle times: from quote to archive
The most interesting part of this data is not the execution — it is the administration afterwards. A work order is executed within a median of 2.9 days and administratively processed within 4.6 days. After that it still takes a median of 39 days before it is finally settled and archived, and a quarter of companies take more than 218 days.
| Step in the process | Median | Companies |
|---|---|---|
| Quote created → approved | 8.0 days | 733 |
| Approval → work order created | 2.6 days | 520 |
| Work order scheduled → completed | 2.9 days | 2,044 |
| Completed → administratively processed | 4.6 days | 1,850 |
| Completed → invoiced | 4.1 days | 877 |
| Processed → archived | 39 days | 1,576 |
| Quote → invoice (no work order) | 28 days | 406 |
| Contract → first automatic work order | 4.2 days | 461 |
| Trial started → live in use | 30 days | 2,159 |
Medians across companies. The number of companies differs per step because not every company uses every module: quotes are used by 53% of companies, maintenance contracts by 26%.
Benchmark by company size
Company size is the strongest predictor in the entire dataset. The typical company has five licensed technicians; a quarter has nine or more. An active technician handles a median of 24 work orders per month, rising to 84 among the ten percent most productive companies.
| Technicians | Companies | Work orders per month | Hours per work order | Uses automation | Uses contracts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (sole trader) | 246 | 7 | 2.15 | 7% | 3% |
| 2–4 | 625 | 18 | 1.99 | 14% | 10% |
| 5–9 | 848 | 52 | 2.09 | 43% | 37% |
| 10–24 | 401 | 134 | 2.84 | 55% | 40% |
| 25 or more | 86 | 280 | 3.12 | 74% | 35% |
The jump happens between four and five technicians
Between companies with two to four technicians and companies with five to nine, use of automation triples (from 14% to 43%) and working with maintenance contracts goes from 10% to 37%. Below five people, software is mainly used to record work orders; above it, it becomes the system the work itself originates from.
Medians per size class; percentages show the share of companies within that class that actually used the feature.
3232784
Werkbonnen per jaar
5172
Klanten vertrouwen op OutSmart
14
+
Jaren ervaring
OutSmart is zeer professioneel en onmisbaar in ons bedrijfsproces. Alle processen draaien nu veel efficiënter.
Twan van Horssen, Mobility Installations
Differences by country
Dutch companies are the largest group with 1,355 customer environments and invoice the fastest: a median of 0.75 days after completing the work order, against 2.06 days in Belgium. Portuguese companies are the heaviest users of digital forms: 87% of them complete forms alongside work orders, against 68% in the Netherlands.
| Country | Companies | Work orders per month | Uses forms | Uses automation | Records assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netherlands | 1,355 | 51 | 68% | 35% | 41% |
| Belgium | 240 | 40 | 48% | 20% | 39% |
| Portugal | 102 | 51 | 87% | 37% | 50% |
| German-speaking | 30 | 40 | 63% | 30% | 50% |
| Spain | 18 | 45 | 72% | 28% | 44% |
How to use this benchmark
Compare your own numbers to the row that matches your company size, not to the overall average. If you sit well below the median work orders per month, work is probably still running outside the system — by phone, WhatsApp or on paper. If you sit well above the median time to invoice, that translates directly into working capital: at 52 work orders a month, every week of invoicing delay costs roughly a week of revenue in liquidity.
Country names have been normalised; 455 customer environments have no country recorded and fall outside this table. The German-speaking region and Spain, with 30 and 18 companies, are too small for firm conclusions and are included for completeness only.
Frequently asked questions about the Field Service Benchmark
How many work orders does a field service company process per month?
That depends mostly on the number of technicians. The median is 52 work orders per month for companies with five to nine technicians, 134 for ten to twenty-four technicians and 280 for companies with twenty-five or more. Companies with two to four technicians sit at 18 work orders per month, sole traders at 7.
How many work orders does one technician handle per month?
An active technician handles a median of 24 work orders per month. A quarter of companies stay below 10.5 work orders per technician per month; among the ten percent most productive companies it rises to 84. The difference is mostly the type of work: short service visits produce more work orders per technician than multi-day projects.
How many hours go into a single work order?
A median of 2.25 recorded hours per work order, measured across 1,879 companies that log hours. For companies with twenty-five or more technicians this rises to 3.12 hours; for companies with two to four technicians it is 1.99 hours.
How long does it take from a completed work order to the invoice?
Companies invoicing from OutSmart do so a median of 4.1 days after completing the work order. In the Netherlands that is 0.75 days, in Belgium 2.06 days. Almost a third of companies invoice before the work order is administratively closed, for example with fixed contract amounts or advance payment.
How long does it take for a quote to be approved?
A median of 8 days between creating the quote and approval, measured across 733 companies. The corresponding work order then follows within a median of 2.6 days. When invoicing directly without an intermediate work order, quote to invoice takes a median of 28 days.
How big is the typical company using work order software?
Five licensed technicians is the median. A quarter of companies have two or fewer, a quarter have nine or more, and ten percent have sixteen or more. Companies with more than twenty-five technicians make up only 4% of the dataset.
How many companies work with maintenance contracts?
Just over a quarter of all companies (26%) have recorded maintenance contracts — 148,677 contracts in total, of which 113,301 are active. Among companies with five to nine technicians the share is 37%. After a contract is created, the first automatically generated work order appears within a median of 4.2 days.
Where do these benchmark figures come from?
From aggregated usage data across 2,210 OutSmart customer environments, with a reference date of 4 June 2026. All values are medians across companies rather than averages, because a single very large company can distort an average entirely. Each figure states how many companies it is calculated over. The figures cannot be traced back to individual companies and contain no names, revenue data or customer data.
How often is this benchmark updated?
The current edition has a reference date of 4 June 2026. The intention is to repeat the analysis every quarter, so the development over time becomes visible instead of a single snapshot.
Questions about the methodology, or interested in a breakdown for your own industry? Get in touch — we are happy to help.
Probeer OutSmart volledig gratis gedurende 14 dagen!
