What Is an FST Manager?
An FST manager, or field service manager, is the person who runs a team of field service technicians. That might be the owner of a small engineering firm with four engineers, a subcontractor who supplies technicians to OEMs, or an experienced technician who has grown past what one pair of hands can deliver.
The defining problem is allocation. You are not selling your own time, you are matching the right person on your team to the right piece of work, and then standing behind the result. Everything else, the quoting, the compliance paperwork, the invoicing, is overhead in service of that decision.
Team Profiles in one paragraph
One login holds up to ten technician profiles. Each is a real, public profile with its own name, location, skills and verification, and each can be sent to missions independently. Companies see the individual technician they are hiring, along with the fact that they are part of your team. Payments for all of them settle to your single connected account.
Why FST Teams Work Differently From Individual Profiles
The obvious workaround, giving every technician their own separate account, breaks down quickly. Each one needs its own payout setup, its own insurance, and its own invoicing, and none of them can be reassigned if the person booked becomes unavailable. As a manager you also lose any single view of what your team is committed to.
Team Profiles keeps the things that must be individual separate, and consolidates the things that should not be. Identity, competence and reputation belong to the technician. Payout, insurance and account administration belong to you.
Held per technician
- Name, location and public profile
- Skills, machines and industries
- Identity verification documents
- Certifications and licences
- Completed missions and earnings
Shared across the account
- One connected payout account
- Liability insurance, linked per profile
- One login and one set of notifications
- A single view of every live booking
Building and Verifying Your Technician Team
Before you can add anybody, your own technician profile must be complete and your payout account must be set up and ready, because team members share it. After that, adding technicians is quick. Verifying them is the part that takes real time, and it is worth doing before you need it.
Step 1: Your team roster
Every profile on the account appears in one list, showing verification state, skills count and earnings to date. Your own profile is marked as the account owner. Acting as shows which profile you are currently working as, and you can switch between them at any time.
Step 2: Add a technician
Adding a technician creates a new public profile under your account with their name, location and a short biography. You then set their expertise. Until their documents are approved the profile shows as verification pending and cannot be sent to missions, so it is worth starting this early rather than when a mission is already live.
Step 3: Verify their identity
Each technician on the team needs their own identity document, a passport or national ID card, which is reviewed before the profile can work. Verification is deliberately per person rather than per account: a company hiring one of your technicians is relying on that individual having been checked, not on you vouching for them.
Step 4: Link the insurance
Professional liability insurance is required, but it is held at account level. If your policy already covers the team, you select the existing policy and apply it to the new profile rather than uploading the same certificate again. That is usually how a firm-wide policy works in practice, and it saves repeating the approval for every technician you add.
Step 5: Add certifications
Certifications and licences are optional but worth uploading: diplomas, safety cards, and any discipline-specific authorisation. Several missions can be restricted to technicians holding particular credentials, and site requirements frequently assume them, so a well-documented profile simply sees more work.
Booking Your FSTs to the Missions You Choose
Once profiles are verified, allocation is a single decision on the application itself. There is no separate dispatch tool to learn.
Choose who applies
When your account holds more than one profile, applying to a mission starts with an Apply as selector. Pick the technician you want on that job. Profiles that are not yet verified appear but cannot be selected, which prevents committing somebody who would fail the requirements. The company sees the profile you chose.
Quote hourly or fixed price
Quote an hourly rate against the estimated hours, or a single fixed price covering labour, travel and materials for the whole mission. Either way the arithmetic is shown before you send: your amount, the 6% platform fee the company pays on top, and the total. You keep 100% of what you quote.
Send it with a message
A short written pitch accompanies the quotation. As a manager this is where you explain why this particular technician is the right one for this machine, which is generally more persuasive than a generic company introduction.
Fixed price for defined work
Where the scope is well understood, a single agreed price for the whole mission removes daily timesheets and gives the company certainty. The same 6% applies, calculated on the fixed fee. Managers often prefer this on repeat work, because the margin is known before anybody is dispatched.
One Flat 6%, However Big the Team Gets
The platform fee is a flat 6%, made up of 3% payment processing and 3% platform. It is charged to the company on top of your quoted amount, which means your technicians keep 100% of the rate they quote. There is no separate charge for holding multiple profiles, and no per-seat cost for adding somebody to your team.
That matters more for a team than for an individual. The traditional route for a firm supplying technicians involves agency layers between you and the end client, and recruitment and contractor agencies typically take a margin on every hour worked, with figures commonly reported in the industrial staffing market falling somewhere in the 25% to 50% range. Those margins are charged per technician, per hour, so they scale with the size of your crew and the length of the engagement.
A flat 6% does not behave that way. Running one technician or ten, on a two day mission or a two month one, the proportion is the same and it is visible before anybody commits. Removing the agency layers is the point: no account managers, no rate cards negotiated on your behalf, and no margin you cannot see.
Worth knowing
Because the fee sits on top of your quote rather than being deducted from it, the number you put in the quotation is the number that reaches your account. There is no need to gross up a rate to absorb an agency margin, which makes it considerably easier to price consistently across a team.
How Payouts Work Across a Team
Every profile on the account pays out to the same connected account, which is yours as the account owner. Whichever technician worked the mission, the settlement arrives in one place. How you then pay your technicians, whether as employees, subcontractors or something else, is a matter between you and them, and sits outside the platform.
This is also why the payout account must be fully set up before you can add anybody. Team members inherit it rather than configuring their own, so it has to exist and be ready to receive funds first.
Earnings are still attributed per profile in the roster, so you can see which technicians are generating what without unpicking a single combined figure.
Swapping a Technician on a Live Booking
Real crews change. Somebody falls ill mid-mission, or a company invites the wrong profile in the first place. Rather than cancelling and rebooking, you can request that a live booking be reassigned to another profile on your team.
The request goes to the company, and they must approve it before anything changes. That is deliberate: they chose a specific technician, so they get a say in who replaces them. If they decline, the original technician stays assigned.
When it is approved, only the assignment changes. The quote, the price and the payment all stay exactly as agreed, because both profiles work under the same account and the same payout details. The account-level liability insurance covers the whole team, so cover does not change either. Any hours already logged remain attributed to the technician who actually worked them.
When a swap is available
Reassignment is possible while a booking is pending, confirmed, accepted or in progress. It is not available once the mission is completed or cancelled, or while a booking is in dispute. The incoming profile must be verified and free of a conflicting booking on the same mission.
What Companies See
Team membership is disclosed rather than hidden. A company viewing one of your technicians sees that the profile is part of your team, and can expand the roster to view your other profiles. Nothing about the arrangement is concealed from the people hiring.
In practice this tends to help rather than hinder. A company that has had a good mission with one of your technicians can see the rest of the crew, and is more likely to come back for the next piece of work knowing there is depth behind the individual they already trust.
Disclaimer: This guide is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional, legal, or financial advice. All rates, timelines, and market data referenced are indicative estimates based on general market observations and may not reflect current conditions. Actual costs, qualifications, and regulatory requirements vary by country, industry, and project. Always verify information with relevant local regulations, obtain professional advice where appropriate, and request multiple quotes before committing to any engagement. FindFST accepts no liability for decisions made based on the content of this guide.
Run Your Team on FindFST
Add your technicians, verify them once, and choose who goes to each mission. One login, one payout account, and no per-seat charges for building the team out.
Run your field service technician team on FindFST. No agency layers, just a flat 6% platform fee, and your technicians keep 100% of their rate.