Private Technician Network
Offering Work to Your Network Technicians
Your Private Network is your own roster of trusted technicians you've connected with: independent technicians, and companies that share their technicians with you. When you send one of their techs a job, the pay is settled directly between the two of you, off-platform — Service Envoy charges no marketplace fee on Private Network work. It sits between assigning your own employee and posting to the open Tech Marketplace: you pick a specific network tech, but they still get to accept or negotiate before they're on the hook.
Before you start
You need the Technician Network add-on on your plan.
At least one technician has to be in your Private Network: an independent technician who joined, or a company that joined and shared a technician with you. Until then, the Private Network option appears but stays greyed out.
Setting the pay
On the new ticket form, each site visit has a Technician Assignment choice. Pick Private Network and fill in the amber Technician Pay section that appears — this is what you are paying the technician (rate type, amount, rate limit, travel pay — or, for a Per Device rate, the per-device amount and device count), completely separate from the green Client Pay section above it, which is what your client pays you.
If you fill in Client Pay first, Technician Pay picks up its shape for you — the rate type, the rate limit, a blended rate's hour split, and a Per Device rate's device count. It never copies a dollar figure: the amount, travel pay and blended dollar amounts are always yours to type, so your client's rate can't end up in front of a technician by accident. Anything you change in Technician Pay stays as you set it, even if you edit Client Pay afterwards.
If you routinely pay one of your network technicians the same rate, you can save it on their profile and have it filled in for you — see A standing rate for a technician below. Most network work is priced per client, project or visit, so this is entirely optional.
The visit is created unassigned, and the routing step opens so you can choose who to offer it to. Nobody is assigned until a technician accepts.
On an existing site visit, the pay terms live on the Technician Rates card on the Financials tab, badged Private Network. It also shows an estimate of what the visit pays — labor and travel, less your payment fee if you set one. There is never a platform fee on this lane. Offering the work happens on the Routing tab.
Choosing how to route it
Open the site visit's Routing tab and click Offer to Network Techs. The drawer lists the technicians your network partners have shared with you, ranked by how well they match the visit and how far away they are. You can filter by skill, tool, insurance and distance, and tick one technician or several. There is no distance limit unless you set one — these are people you chose to work with, so nobody is hidden just because they're further away. If a technician has missed one of your Private Network visits, their no-show count shows beside their name here (see No-shows below).
Above the list is a routing method choice, and it decides what a technician's "yes" actually does:
Direct Route — accepting is the assignment. Offer it to several technicians and the first one to accept takes the visit. Fastest way to get covered, and you give up the choice of who.
Offer — accepting requests the visit. Everyone you offered it to can put their hand up, the visit stays unassigned, and you pick from the technicians who asked. Slower, but nobody takes the job out from under you by clicking first.
Use Direct Route when coverage matters more than who. Use Offer when you'd rather see who's interested before committing — for example the first time you use a partner's technician.
There's also Offer to everyone in range, which sends the same offer to every shared technician inside a distance you choose, instead of ticking each name. It asks you to set that distance deliberately, because offers land in other companies' queues the moment you click and withdrawing them afterwards is a conversation, not an undo.
There is no funding step on Private Network work. No escrow is held and no platform fee is taken — that's what off-platform pay means.
How the back-and-forth works
Once you send an offer, one of a few things happens:
The tech accepts your terms. On a Direct Route the visit is theirs immediately at the pay you offered, and that becomes the agreed amount of record. On an Offer, their acceptance arrives as a request on the Routing tab and the visit waits for you.
The tech counters. They propose different pay. On the Routing tab you'll see their counter and can Accept & Assign, Counter with new terms, or Decline.
You'll see when it's your move. While a technician's request or counter is waiting on you, the Routing tab shows a count, and the top of the site visit shows a technician responses waiting badge — click it to go straight there. A counter you sent back is waiting on them, so it isn't counted.
You counter back. If you counter, the ball is in the tech's court again — they can accept, counter, or decline. This can go back and forth until someone accepts or walks away.
One exception: offers made at a Per Device rate are accept-or-decline only — no counters in either direction. The device count fixes the pay shape, so if the terms need to change, withdraw the offer, adjust the pay, and re-send.
While an offer is open you can take it back: click Withdraw offer beside that technician on the Routing tab and confirm. The technician is told it's no longer available. Withdrawing one technician's offer leaves any others on the visit open.
What the Routing tab offers you depends on what the technician sent. On a counter: Accept & Assign, Counter (send your own terms back, with an optional message) or Decline. On a request (the Offer method): Assign to them, Counter or Not this one. Counter isn't shown on a Per Device offer.
Reviewing requests (Offer method)
When you route by Offer, technicians who want the visit show up on the Routing tab as requests, and the visit stays unassigned however many come in. You assign the one you want, and the rest are closed out automatically. Until you choose, nobody is on the hook and nothing is locked in — several technicians asking for the same visit is the point of this method, not a conflict.
What the technician sees
The tech finds your offer on their Available Work page, alongside any marketplace jobs, marked with a Network badge and a note that the work is paid directly by you. If their list is busy, they can use the Network filter to show just network offers.
A badge tells them which method you used: Routed means accepting takes the visit, Offered means accepting asks for it and you choose. Once they have asked, the badge reads Requested while you decide.
They answer through Apply / Counter — the same button and the same form marketplace work uses. Inside it they can take the terms you offered, propose different pay, propose a different date, or propose both, and add a note. Decline sits beside it.
The technician never sees "Service Envoy" as the client, since they joined your network: once they accept, the site visit, ticket and calendar show your company's name — and never your end client's details.
Only the technician you named — or the office staff at their company (owner, admin, staff) — can answer the offer. A co-worker at the same company can't accept a visit that was offered to somebody else.
If the visit is a time window that needs a firm arrival, they commit to an exact start in that form before they can take or request the work. On a request, that committed start appears on your Routing tab beside their name — it is usually the thing that decides who you pick — and it is applied to the site visit when you assign them.
Once they're assigned, the visit looks the same as a marketplace job to them. They see a Technician Rates card on their Pay tab with what the job pays them, and never your client rates. The Metrics tab is read-only for their whole company, part prices are hidden (they see cost only), and Messages work both ways. After they submit, they see that it is awaiting your approval.
If they change their mind
While a request or counter is still sitting with you unanswered, the technician can Edit it or Withdraw it from their Available Work page — the same as a marketplace technician.
Withdrawing is not declining. Declining means they do not want the visit and the offer closes. Withdrawing just retracts what they said: your offer is untouched and still there for them to accept or counter later. You will be notified either way.
The same applies to you. If you counter back and they have not answered yet, Withdraw counter on the Routing tab puts your original terms back on the table.
When offers run out
Offers don't sit open forever. Service Envoy checks every 15 minutes and closes an open offer, request or counter when either clock runs out:
The visit's window has passed — the scheduled date (or the end of the arrival window) is behind you, so every open offer on that visit expires.
The technician's own deadline has passed — a technician can put an expiry on their request or counter ("this stands for 4 hours"). When it runs out, that request closes.
The visit shows Offer Expired and both of you are notified. Nobody decided anything, so an expired offer isn't a decline — if you reschedule the visit, the technician can still ask for it again.
After it's accepted
Once a tech is assigned, the pay rate is locked — neither side can quietly change it. If something unexpected comes up on site (extra hours, a part the tech had to buy), the tech uses the normal request additional pay and reimbursement tools on the site visit, just like any other assignment. The base rate stays put.
What else happens once a technician is assigned:
It lands on their calendar. The site visit is added to the technician's own Service Envoy calendar as well as yours. Their entry shows their pay — never your client's rate.
The status follows the work. The visit reads Assigned, then In Progress when they check in and Work Complete when they check out, then Awaiting Approval once they submit it to you.
Rescheduling works the same as on the marketplace. Either side can use Request Schedule Change on the visit; nothing moves until the other side accepts.
They see only what they need to do the job. The technician and their company see the site visits assigned to them and nothing else — not visits that went to someone else, and never your Client Pay, your billing status or your client's reference numbers. Inside their company, a technician sees only their own visits; their office staff can see all of their company's.
"Hidden from Techs" means every technician. A file you mark Hidden from Techs is hidden from your own employees and from outside technicians alike, network or marketplace.
Changing the agreed rate after assignment
Locked does not mean stuck. It means the number cannot move without the other company agreeing — and there is a path for that from your side.
On the site visit, the Technician Rates card carries a Propose Pay Change button once a technician is assigned. It opens with the current agreed terms already filled in, so you only edit what is actually changing, and it asks for a reason. The reason is required because the technician reads it when deciding — “the site turned out to be two closets, not one” gets agreed; a bare new number gets a phone call.
What happens next:
The proposal sits on the visit for both companies to see. The technician gets Approve and Decline; you get Withdraw for as long as they have not answered.
Nothing moves until they approve. Approving is the only action that writes the new rate onto the visit — while it is pending, the visit still carries the terms they accepted.
If they decline, the rate stays exactly as it was. Service Envoy escalation isn't part of this lane — settle it between you, or unassign and re-route if you can't agree.
One proposal at a time. A visit can only have one open pay change, so a technician is never asked to choose between two numbers from you. Withdraw the first if you want to send a different one.
The button is there while the visit is still open. Once it has been submitted for approval or closed, the rate is settled and this is no longer the right tool — the visit approval flow is.
Two more things worth knowing. This is separate from the technician asking you for more: extra hours or a part they bought still come through request additional pay and reimbursement on the visit, and the base rate is untouched by those. And because Private Network pay is off-platform, agreeing a new rate here moves no money — it changes the number both companies have on record, and you settle as you always do.
If your account has been frozen after a chargeback, this button is blocked along with the rest of your marketplace activity, even on Private Network work. Contact support to sort the chargeback out first.
If the technician can't do it any more
Plans change, on either side. Private Network work has its own tools for this, and none of them charges a fee or posts anything to the marketplace — this is your own contractor.
You take them off before they start: Unassign Technician. On the site visit, open Site Visit Actions and choose Unassign Technician (or Replace & Route to go straight to finding someone else). The technician is told they don't need to go. The visit stays on your network at Needs Routing with the same pay terms, ready to offer to someone else.
They back out before they start: Request Removal from Visit. The technician finds it under Tech Actions on the visit. You're told, and the visit goes back to Needs Routing. It isn't recorded against them on their marketplace profile, and while the visit is still open they can ask for it again from Available Work.
You call the whole visit off: Cancel Site Visit. Cancelling a Private Network visit charges no fee and has nothing to refund. The technician is told and taken off the visit, and it leaves their calendar. It can't be cancelled while they're on site or inside the arrival window — the same rule as the marketplace, and the same applies to cancelling the ticket it belongs to.
After they've checked in: Remove Technician. Once a technician is on site, unassigning is no longer possible. Instead, Site Visit Actions → Remove Technician takes them off, with a reason you have to give. The original visit closes as Technician Removed and keeps its check-in and on-site record. A new replacement site visit is created at Needs Routing, and the page opens it so you can route it. It isn't available once the visit has been submitted, approved or paid. Any pay for the partial work is settled between you, off-platform, like the rest of this lane.
Service Envoy escalation isn't part of this lane. On marketplace work you can ask Service Envoy to step in; on a Private Network visit the arrangement is between you and your technician, so those options don't appear. Use the tools above instead.
No-shows
If an assigned Private Network technician doesn't turn up, a no-show is recorded the same way as on the marketplace — automatically once the no-show deadline passes, or by you with Mark No-Show on the visit's Metrics tab. Both of you are notified.
A Private Network no-show stays between you and that technician. It shows on the technician's profile for your company only, in a Your Private Network box ("No-shows on your site visits"), and beside their name in your routing drawer. It is not added to the no-show count on their public marketplace profile, and no other company sees it.
Visits on both the Private Network and the marketplace
One technician, one lane. Before anyone is assigned, a site visit can be offered several ways at once — to your own employee, to your network, on the marketplace. The moment a technician accepts, the visit belongs to that lane only: if one of your employees was on it, they are taken off it and told (in the app and by email, and it comes off their calendar), and the offers on the other lanes are closed. From then on:
Before they check in, you change course by unassigning them (or they withdraw) — the visit goes back to Needs Routing and you can offer it any way again.
After they check in, the visit is theirs. Lanes can't be changed and no new offers can go out; the only ways to change it are Remove Technician or cancelling it.
If the visit is funded on the Tech Marketplace, a network technician can't be assigned until you Remove from Marketplace — that returns the funds. Service Envoy says so if you try.
If a marketplace technician gets it first, any open Private Network offers on the visit are withdrawn and those technicians are told. The same happens the other way round: when a network technician takes it, open marketplace applications are closed.
You can't take Private Network off a visit while a network technician is assigned to it. Unassign them first.
A standing rate for a technician (optional)
Most network pay is agreed per client, per project or per visit, so there's usually no single "rate" for a technician. For the ones where there is — a contractor you pay the same way every time — you can save it for reference.
Open the technician's profile from your network and find Your pay rates for this technician. Add the rates you've agreed with them there; they're your company's records only, and neither the technician nor any other company can see them. Saving a rate there doesn't make it a default. It's a note of what you agreed.
You can star one as your usual rate with that technician. It's a reference only: Service Envoy never fills it in as a site visit's pay. Every visit is offered at the Technician Pay set on that visit, and a visit with none (or $0) can't be offered until you set it. When you offer a visit, the starred rate shows in grey as Usual rate beside that technician's name, so you can see if the visit's pay is below what they usually get before you send it.
Adding, changing and starring rates is limited to users who can manage rates — admins, project managers and accounting.
Your payment terms
Your network technicians need to know how and when you pay them, so you set it once for your whole network. Open your own company's client profile and go to the Billing tab. Only Owners, admins, project managers and accounting users can open that tab — if you can't, ask one of them to set these:
Payment Terms — how long after you approve a site visit you pay: Net 7, 10, 15, 21, 30, 45 or 60, or Paid on Receipt (due the day you approve).
Payment Method — how you pay: check, ACH / direct deposit, Zelle and so on. Tick every one you use.
Payment Fee (%) — optional. If you deduct a fee for sending a payment, enter it here. Tick Fee on Labor Only to take it from labor alone; otherwise it comes off the technician's whole approved pay.
Until your terms and at least one payment method are set, owners, admins, project managers and accounting users see an amber Set how you pay your network technicians banner on the dashboard and on the Network & Invites tab, with a Set payment terms button that takes you straight to those fields.
Your technicians see these terms before they accept anything — on the offer in Available Work (for example Pays: Net 15 after approval · Check · 2% fee on labor) and on your company's page under How they pay you.
Paying your technicians
Approving the work, what you owe and when, recording what you pay, the Network Tech Payments page and year-end 1099-NECs are covered in Paying Your Network Technicians & 1099s.