Guide · simPRO automation
simPRO has an API, so the paperwork around a job can be automated: reports read and written into the right job, notes and documents added, jobs created from enquiries, and data passed to your other systems. For a NZ hazard consultancy, AI now reads twenty-page asbestos clearance reports and writes the billing quantities into the matching simPRO job in minutes rather than hours. As of October 2026 most simPRO automation falls between NZ$500 and $8,000.
simPRO is where the job lives, but a lot of what fills it still arrives as PDFs, emails and forms that someone has to read and key in. That reading and keying is what can be automated. simPRO's API lets an automation find the right job, add notes and documents, and work with customers, sites and quotes, so the person who used to do the typing checks the result instead.
Prices on this page are as of October 2026 and exclude GST.
A NZ hazard consultancy's asbestos clearance reports are now read by AI and written into the matching simPRO job the day they're issued, in minutes per report instead of hours.
Each clearance report is twenty or more pages of certificates, sample counts, lab references and air-monitoring days. Billing depended on one person reading every report and keying the quantities into the right simPRO job in a set note format. The client had built a prototype that scraped the PDF text, and it kept misreading the reports.
The reason turned out to be simple. In all 22 reports we tested, the certificate numbers weren't in the PDF's text at all. They only existed as images, along with some of the lab results. So the rebuild renders every page and reads it with AI vision instead.
It was proven on real reports before it touched simPRO, and the first live batch caught billing errors in 3 of 23 reports.
| Stage | Result |
|---|---|
| Proof run, July 2026 | 22 of 22 real reports extracted. 20 of 22 matched to the right job, and the two misses were correctly left out. |
| One report, side by side | 28 samples found where the old prototype saw 8. |
| First live batch, 4 August 2026 | 16 reports posted to simPRO. 3 of 23 had a billing error caught: over-billing, under-billing and a double-billing risk. |
| Since 5 August 2026 | Live, with the client's and the office manager's rulings on note format and edge cases built in. |
The time saving was the obvious goal. The billing errors were the bigger win: items a person skimming twenty pages had missed, in both directions. Read the full clearance case study.
It doesn't raise the invoice in simPRO, and that was a choice, not a limit. The office still creates the invoice from the note, with the evidence in front of them. The first stage was about getting the numbers right and visible. Automating the invoice itself is a later decision, made once the office trusts the numbers.
It also didn't change anything the field staff do. Same report template, same simPRO set-up, same office routine, minus the reading and typing. It runs on the consultancy's own machine, inside the AI workspace they already pay for, so there was no new hosting bill.
The same pattern works anywhere a document or message has to end up against a simPRO job. These are the ones I'd look at, depending on what your API key is allowed to do:
I'd start with whichever one hurts the most. Sometimes that's time. Often it's revenue leaking out, like the monitoring day that never got billed.
Most simPRO automation is NZ$500 to $5,000, or NZ$1,000 to $8,000 when long documents need reading, as of October 2026.
| The job | Range | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
| Automation between simPRO and the tools you already run | NZ$500 to $5,000 | Under a week to 4 weeks |
| Reading reports, forms or email into simPRO jobs | NZ$1,000 to $8,000 | 2 to 5 weeks |
| Small jobs, fixes and changes | Hourly, rate agreed upfront | As needed |
| Hosting, monitoring and support, where needed | From NZ$99 a month | Ongoing |
Builds are a fixed price after a free discovery call. The clearance work was a fixed-price job too, scoped on the free discovery call. Your simPRO subscription and any AI seats stay on your own bills. More on what's in and out of a fixed price in what a fixed-price AI project includes.
Three things to sort before anyone builds anything against simPRO.
Yes. simPRO publishes a REST API that covers jobs, quotes, customers, sites, notes and attachments, among other things. Your simPRO administrator issues the key, and what an automation can read or write depends on the permissions that key is given, so check that first.
Yes. In the hazard consultancy example, every page of each clearance report is read with AI vision, the job is found by the job number printed in the report, and the billing quantities are added to that job's notes in the office's existing format. Anything it is unsure of is flagged for a person rather than guessed.
It matches on the job number in the document, not on a guess. If the number is missing or points to a job that doesn't fit, the item is held for a person to check and nothing is written. Duplicates across reports on the same job are flagged too.
The API allows a lot, but whether you should automate invoicing is a separate decision. In the clearance example invoicing was deliberately left with the office: the automation writes the quantities and any billing query into the job note, and the office raises the invoice. That keeps a person on every number that goes to a customer.
As of October 2026, most simPRO automation sits between NZ$500 and $5,000, and between NZ$1,000 and $8,000 when long or messy documents need reading. Builds are a fixed price after a free discovery call, and small jobs are billed hourly at a rate agreed upfront. Prices exclude GST.
Bring the report, form or inbox that holds your simPRO jobs up to a free 30-minute call. I'll tell you what the API can reach and what it would cost to automate. Discovery is always free.
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