Our company does mostly installation based work and I am currently designing a site to track jobs, invoicing etc.

I was hoping to incorporate some Google Maps functionality into it such as 'Click Here to Locate' which would either allow Google Maps to be visible on our page or it would be fine if it opens another window to Google Maps as well.

Our technicians also do routes of around 20-30 jobs a day and was hoping to have the ability to send the addresses to Google Maps and have them create a route based on the addresses I supply.

I haven't worked with or looked at the Google Maps API until today and on their main page I see:

To use the Maps API on an intranet or in a non-publicly accessible application, please check out Google Maps for Enterprise.

Sooo, I figure we might have to pay some money which is fine but in the FAQ it states:

Google Maps API Premier is extremely cost-effective, starting at just $10,000 per year.

Our company only has around 50-60 technicians and we would only be using the map function with our quality control team of around 5 guys using it maybe 5-10 times a day.

For that usage obviously our company is not going to pay $10k/yr..

So are we just out of luck or is there something I am missing??

I think its a wrong information. AFAIK Google Map API is free and you can integrate it into your website. You can even track the places and client locations using it.

The following link might be helpful

http://www.zimuel.it/blog/?p=23&elq=EF906120A6654A0FAC0B296FD8F784D1

The free API should cover all of your company needs. My company recently decided to buy the enterprise edition for Google Custom Search, and although it does have some nice extra features, there's not much bang for your buck.

The rule is; if you're making the maps publicly accessible, then you can use it for free.

However, have a think about this - on my photography gallery I provide maps with each of my photos marked on. In order to do this, I first have to geotag each of the photos - to do this I've written a little google maps integration that allows me to drag a marker around on the map for each photograph. This interface is only available to me, I don't want just anybody changing my photos geolocation. The point is, I'm using Google maps both publically and privately and I think that's a perfectly fair use of the system.

As long as you're providing some kind of map publically on your website, I think a fair amount of non-public use is acceptible.